I'm 26 and have been on Metformin for almost a decade at this point and will probably be on it until I die. Thankfully though, children are not in my future.
Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
151–160 of 234 posts
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, if they aren't suggesting dietary and exercise based solutions first, that's a huge red flag. Find a new doctor.
One of my scariest adulthood realizations is that doctors are like everybody else; fallible. And that being certified means you're good at studying, but doesn't always mean you're good at what you've studied. Not trying to discredit medical professionals or the amount of work they put in. I'm sure the majority are intelligent, conscientious and good at their jobs.
I have encountered a large number of excellent medical professionals, to whom I am greatly indebted for how they helped members of my family or myself.
Unfortunately I have also encountered an about equal number of medical professionals who have been grossly incompetent.
What I consider to have been by far the greatest mistake that I have made in my life, a mistake which had irremediable consequences, was to have excessive faith in the competence of some well-paid medical professionals.
Both my parents had the bad luck of being misdiagnosed the first time when they had some medical problems (for completely unrelated causes). In both cases the correct diagnostic was discovered by other medical doctors, but only after many months, when their conditions had become much worse.
Because of the delayed diagnostics, both their lives were shortened by maybe 4 to 5 years.
After the correct diagnostics, I have read the appropriate medical textbooks and I have discovered that in both cases my parents had presented the typical ensemble of symptoms described in the textbooks, they were not some weird cases, easily misdiagnosed.
For the correct diagnostics, the first doctors should have recognized the textbook symptoms and they should have sent them to the appropriate investigations that were necessary to confirm their maladies.
Instead of that, they have chosen the lazy way of saying that they do not need any further investigations because old people complain all the time for various minor problems and they have prescribed them some useless treatments.
If I would have been more skeptical about medical fallibility, I should have sought a second opinion since the beginning, but unfortunately I did not.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a harmful stereotype to label obese people as lacking willpower as you have done. Many obese people don’t have the resources (time, money) or tools (nutrition understanding) to improve their situation. Many have metabolic or familial history of obesity which has both physical and psychological (normalization) impact on their ability to control their weight. The former can be helped with diet and/or medication,…
Gp probably could have stopped after: > Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective Which seems to be true. If any advice your doctor could give yields no measurable difference, is there really a point to giving it?
Considering the root(?) commenter said that a low carb diet did in fact work for them even though they had to go research it on their own, it sounds like it was effective.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#154It’s so interesting that type 2 diabetes is curable with diet.
Type 1 is incurable.
My point is that the psychology of eating is so strong that people would rather take a drug that pass on birth defects to the future than change eating habits.
And I’m a person coming from struggling with just those habits. I think if someone could come up with a treatment to adjust mindsets - it would change healthcare forever and end the need for drugs like Metaform.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gp probably could have stopped after: > Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective Which seems to be true. If any advice your doctor could give yields no measurable difference, is there really a point to giving it?
Agree, mostly. Primary care doctors in the US are often limited to 15-30 minutes per patient for routine matters. Referrals to nutritionists / dieticians and other expensive options often lack follow through, or aren’t offered in the first place because prescribing is so much easier. Medical professionals have a duty to arm patients with the information needed to make good choices about their health, but often shirk…
Most systems, like Epic, will print out the standard info and counseling related to your conditions and medications when you get your paperwork at the end of the visit. That's easy and takes almost no time.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I recall reading about epigenetics, diabetes is caused by a too fast change in diet towards high calorie. After several generations the metabolism thriftiness goes down if the diet level remain the same, and thus diabetes rates will go down. Same concept happens in reverse when there is periods of famine.
Type 1 diabetes is an auto immune disease that destroys your pancreas. Type 2 diabetes is an acquired and reversible disease that follows insulin resistance and it is caused by excessive amounts of glucose in your blood, which forces your pancreas to release an ever increasing amount of insulin which then is absorbed by fat cells until they hit insulin resistance, then it fills up muscle cells including your heart un…
> live glucose monitor
As my endocrinologist put it, diabetes is a disease about decision making.
Right now, there’s little evidence that a CGM actually helps Type 2 patients make better decisions. More information doesn’t lead to better decision making. Better decision making processes and changes to lifestyle lead to better decision making.
From 2020:
“Although continuous glucose monitoring may benefit patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, there is limited evidence that it offers similar benefits in patients with type 2 diabetes, regardless of whether they are taking insulin.”
“Until we have research supporting continuous glucose monitoring for patients with type 2 diabetes, especially those not receiving regular insulin injections, there are no patient-oriented benefits to justify its great expense and additional hassles for patients and physicians.”
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective because many obese / type 2 diabetic people can't exercise self-control. That's why they're obese in the first place. It's way easier to take a pill than cut to 1500 calories a day for 2 years.
That's why you give them a continuous glucose monitor.
As I said in another comment, a CGM for Type 2 is not shown to improve outcomes.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, the field is vast. But I expect that a doctor should know the basics of a common condition. If they aren't counseling diabetics about carbs... wtf is going on? It would be different if it were a rare or complex topic, but even then the Epic system that most places use have standard printouts with information for patients.
Of course they start with diet/exercise - but ask yourself how many patients you think take that advice… high blood sugar is a really serious problem and the unfortunate reality is that people are very resistant to lifestyle changes — so the least harm is often to medicate.
Literally, the root(?) commenter said diet was not discussed. They had to find out about a low carb diet on their own, and it worked.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective because many obese / type 2 diabetic people can't exercise self-control. That's why they're obese in the first place. It's way easier to take a pill than cut to 1500 calories a day for 2 years.
> Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective because many obese / type 2 diabetic people can't exercise self-control. That's why they're obese in the first place. Research continues its trend against this statement. 1) One problem is the fact that the number of fat cells in the body is conserved after some point. So, if you grew lots of fat cells as a child, sucks to be you, you're now stuck with them as an a…
#4 is surprisingly difficult for people to understand. It seems to fly in the face of what weight loss is expected to entail.
Strength training, on the other hand, is (at least I hear) helpful in losing weight.
Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug
#160It’s so interesting that type 2 diabetes is curable with diet. Type 1 is incurable. My point is that the psychology of eating is so strong that people would rather take a drug that pass on birth defects to the future than change eating habits. And I’m a person coming from struggling with just those habits. I think if someone could come up with a treatment to adjust mindsets - it would change healthcare forever and en…
Don't forget a lot of food is engineered and marketed to create those habits in the first place. In the end it falls on the person but I can see it being extremely difficult if you're growing up in the wrong environment with a shitty diet and a particular brain.