One More Reason To Take Metformin

Like GLP-1 receptor agonists, metformin was first developed for type 2 diabetes management, before enjoying wider-scale use as a weight loss drug with some other fringe benefits.

Metformin works in 3 main ways:

• it decreases glucose absorption from the gut
• it decreases glucose production in the liver
• it increases insulin sensitivity (for why this matters, see: Improve Your Insulin Sensitivity!)

It doesn’t change how much insulin is secreted, and is unlikely to cause hypoglycemia, making it relatively safe as diabetes drugs go.

You can read more about these aspects of it, here: Metformin For Weight-Loss & More

Its benefits don’t stop there, though! See also: How Metformin Slows Aging

And there’s more…

So long, COVID!

First, we want to mention that “so long” doesn’t have to mean “goodbye”.

It can also be a snake compliment!

Ok, that silliness aside: the problem with long COVID is that it is very debilitating and appears to permanent unless it can be cured one day.

We don’t recommend it, and/but you might remember: How To Triple Your Chances Of Getting The “Razorblade Throat” COVID Variant Or Long COVID

You may be wondering: what does metformin have to do with long COVID? Isn’t it a metabolic drug?

And yes, it is, but it also dials down inflammation, including in the respiratory tract; we wrote about this here: The Diabetes Drugs That Can Cut Asthma Attacks By 70%

Researchers (Dr. Janine Makaronidis et al.) investigated its usefulness against long COVID, using data from 624,308 adults, of whom 2,976 started taking metformin within 3 months of their COVID diagnosis.

What they found is that it reduced the risk significantly, with a hazard ratio of 0.36 (the wiggle room, or “confidence interval” as scientists prefer to call it, being: 0.32–0.41), which means for every 1 case there is normally, now there will be 0.36 cases—in other words, a 64% reduction, or taking the confidence interval into account, a 63% reduction.

Importantly, this effect was consistent regardless of age, BMI, diabetes status, sex, and dominant COVID variant at diagnosis.

To read the paper itself, see: Effect of Metformin on the Risk of Post-coronavirus Disease 2019 Condition Among Individuals With Overweight or Obese: A Population-based Retrospective Cohort Study

Note: while the fact that this study used data only from participants over a certain BMI, it’s technically true that the results may not be applicable to people under that BMI cutoff. However, given that (as we mentioned above), BMI did not affect the effect within the range that was tested (i.e. it didn’t work better or worse depending on how high the BMI was), it seems very likely that BMI will continue to not affect the effect below that range, either. In other words, it looks a lot like it’ll work more or less the same for everyone* regardless of size and shape.

^{*with the exception of metformin non-responders (most if not all drugs have at least some non-responders, i.e. people for whom that drug simply does not work, for no apparent reason), or people with some unusual metabolic and/or immunological quirks as yet unforeseen.}

Want to learn more?

Check out:

What Can Be Done About Long COVID? ← scientists have found a possible cure, a procedure known as epipharyngeal abrasive therapy, which as enjoyable as it sounds, and is not yet proven to cure it completely (although to give it its due, the science so far really is promising)

Take care!