Patient was educated on Metformin and its mechanism of action as follows:
- Metformin is an oral medication used for blood sugar management, especially in patients with type-2 diabetes.
- Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas in your body. Insulin helps with shifting the glucose in the blood into the cells of body tissues. This helps with regulating the blood sugar levels and providing nutrition to the cells of body tissues.
- Type-2 diabetes is a condition in which your body becomes resistant to the action insulin. Resistance to action of insulin hormone leads to poor shifting of glucose in the blood into the cells of body tissues. This leads to poor regulation of blood sugar levels with higher blood sugar numbers and poor nutrition supply to the cells of body tissues. Reduced nutrition supply to body tissues can contribute to diabetes symptoms, such as, feeling very tired, confusion, and blurred vision.
Metformin helps with regulating the blood sugar control and management of Type-2 diabetes by the following mechanisms:
- Metformin helps with increasing the sensitivity of skeletal muscle for insulin. Increased sensitivity of skeletal muscle for insulin leads to increased skeletal muscle uptake of glucose uptake from the blood. Increased glucose uptake from blood by the muscle contributes to lowered blood sugar levels.
- Decreasing gluconeogenesis – Gluconeogenesis is a process that normally occurs in the human liver in which glucose is made from nutrition sources other than carbohydrates, such as, proteins and fats. So, gluconeogenesis results in increased blood sugar levels. Regulation of the high blood sugars necessitate higher levels of insulin and so, contribute to increasing the insulin demand. Metformin inhibits the process of gluconeogenesis and reduces the synthesis of glucose from proteins and fats. This leads to lowered blood sugar levels.
- Metformin also helps with reducing absorption of glucose from the diet into the blood, thus contributing towards reduced blood sugar.
All the above discussed mechanisms contribute to lowered blood sugars. Reduced blood sugars need lesser insulin for regulation. Thus, by reducing the blood sugars, metformin reduces the need for insulin secretion from the pancreas, reduces the workload for insulin, which contributes to improved blood sugar regulation. Control of blood sugars over time with Metformin also results in lowering of hemoglobin A1c, which is a lab indicator of chronic blood glucose control, over the past 3 months. Metformin can be used either alone or in combination with other antidiabetic medications for improved control of blood sugars.
