Metformin Is Simply the Least Harmful
Big Pharma and Big Medicine have faced many huge challenges over the past years to keep their cash cows—people with type-2 diabetes—each forking over an average of $13,700 annually (approximately 2.3 times more than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes). This financially rewarding system works well until the blood-sugar-lowering medicines, along with the gadgets and tests they rely on, are proven to be useless and dangerous. Unfortunately for the patients, industry fights back, defending their treasure-trove by hiring pricey medical experts, factoring in expected lawsuits, and exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the harms of their products.
Metformin (Glucophage) has been commonly prescribed for over 60 years to lower blood sugar. More than half of the 58 million Medicare claims for medications to treat people with non-insulin-dependent diabetes in 2014 were for this class of oral medication. Almost all physicians these days practice under the belief that metformin is the first-line medication for diabetes because it not only lowers blood sugar but has multiple additional benefits, including fewer heart attacks and strokes (cardiovascular events) for the patient. However, the truth is that since 2001 the evidence supporting the cardiovascular benefits of diabetic medications has been recognized as seriously flawed.
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