My Bjj I'm prediabetic fasting glucose ranges from 95 to 110
that's not great and yes you are
prediabetic what you want optimum for those of you
who don't know is 90 or below for fasting glucose
I brought my A1c down to 5 by eating less than 100 carbs per day excellent
that's very good I saw a patient yesterday who's done
well he's lost 20 pounds just by dropping his carbs
down to 100 per day but you can tell by looking at
his HDL his triglycerides over HDL is continued glucose
bio- indicators his cardiovascular inflammatory markers
he still needs to drop it below there and that's one of the major things that
we talked about huge improvement on 100 grams now maybe
think about going to more like 50. anyway back to My Bjj he or she
has gone to less than 100 per day and that's keeping the glucose under 120
post-meal that's excellent that is really really
good I'm considering metformin any thoughts
yes I have that conversation with a lot of people
and just like everything else there's pros and there's cons
if you haven't seen our videos we've got a couple of them on
TAME the TAME study Targeting Aging with Metformin
take a look check it out the Targeting Aging with Metformin
the "principal investigator" is a fellow named
Nir Barzillai physician at Albert Einstein in New York
the reality is Dr. Barzillai really didn't develop the study so much as the
National Institute of Aging the gerontologist there said look we
know that the vast majority of problems associated with what
we have known to be "normal aging" are really
prediabetes so if that's the case maybe we ought to just put metformin in
the water and that's basically the TAME study
design they don't put it in the water but they say
once you reach a certain age you go on metformin or the placebo
and that's what they're looking at they got hung up in that study for years
because the NIH couldn't fund it because of
regulation the NIH regulation says "normal aging" is not a disease so
we can't do funding of things to look at normal aging so that's obviously been a
frustration the whole point behind that story Bjj is
to help underline the importance and focus point for metformin
it's like the conversation I was having with the patient I mentioned from
yesterday you know then the next question comes in
is what does metformin do well metformin we know tends to slow down the body's
gluconeogenesis "gluco" meaning glucose "neo" meaning new "genesis" meaning make so
the liver makes new glucose and puts it into the bloodstream as we
get insulin resistant our body sensors in
our brain become more accustomed to having high
levels of glucose so when yours gets down to 90 for
example My Bjj your sensors have all
started to say hmm that's too low we're used to it being higher
so the sensors are saying okay they go to the liver and tell your liver
they pump out a little cortisol or some other hormones to make your liver
start producing sugar to dump into the bloodstream well
that's why you're getting these higher fasting
glucose numbers again they're fasting that's
sugar that's being created by your liver now
the bottom line is with prediabetes your body's engine begins to run
too hot in the sensors for that glucose metabolism again
get accustomed to it and get accustomed to running your body
too hot you need to get into a position where you start slowing
down not only the post-prandial or post- meal glucose but also that
early morning glucose metformin helps in that area
there's some other things you know that some other people would say well
metformin if you look it up on Mayo Clinic website
Mayo Clinic would say oh metformin has the risk of
metabolic acidosis that's not true I've got some challenge
Mayo Clinic's a great place but their website has a lot of misinformation
not so much dangerous misinformation unless you would say okay well you know
some of their negative comments about metformin
might create problems and risk when people should have been taking it and
they didn't because of the website so you know you can debate anything the
bottom line is there have been not one but two Cochrane
meta-analyses showing that you don't get formic acid or metabolic
acidosis from metformin there are other people who say
well you know it does some damage to mitochondrial
function you can see that with Rhonda Patrick and
some others I think there's some validity to that I think the biggest
issue though is for those of us who do like a one- or
two-day extended fast if you're taking things like metformin
at the same time you need to be careful you can get
hypoglycemic so those are just all some of the pros and cons to be
thinking about in terms of metformin I hope that was helpful
continue to get great feedback regarding the webinars
and here's why you know on the Internet when you hear a webinar you expect for
somebody to try to sell you something we're not doing that we're trying to
tell you something people are coming in with their labs from Quest
inflammation panel OGTT insulin survey response
and then they're finding out do I have inflammation do I have insulin
resistance and where does that fit in terms of other folks
we're getting ready to start one for CIMT as well
so again people are really excited about finding out
their own status looking forward to seeing you there
thanks