Safe Diabetic Drug Helps You Lose Weight

Adiponectin is rapidly becoming one of the more interesting stories in medicine these days, especially for weight loss and aging.

In the past, I told you about a study on how adiponectin might just explain why some people have such a difficult time losing weight even though they’re regularly exercising.

Now another new study is offering an answer to the problem.

In case you missed my email, adiponectin is a hormone that’s made in fat cells. One of the actions of adiponectin is to improve insulin sensitivity. In this sense, it’s an anti-diabetic hormone. It’s also an anti-obesity hormone. That’s because it also encourages the body to burn fat.

But what about all those people who exercise regularly, but don’t have the weight loss to show for it? It may be because they don’t make enough adiponectin.

We’ve known for years that one of the major anti-aging and weight-loss effects of exercise is that it activates the AMPK and PPAR-α pathways. These are special metabolic pathways that stimulate our mitochondria to burn fat and make energy. But how does exercise do that? The latest research shows that one way is through adiponectin receptors in the cells. Exercise increases the number of adiponectin receptors on the membranes of our cells. This allows adiponectin to exert its effects more powerfully. And one of those effects is to activate the AMPK and PPAR-α pathways. But what if your fat cells just don’t make enough adiponectin?

In that case, having more receptors for adiponectin won’t have much of an effect. It won't fully activate the AMPK and PPAR-α pathways, and you may not get the full effects of exercise. This includes losing weight. So if you fall into this category, here’s some advice.

You can get your adiponectin levels measured. It’s a blood test. Just ask your doctor to order it. If you’re on the low end of the spectrum and you can’t lose weight, that might be the reason. If that’s the case, what can you do to increase your adiponectin levels?

Researchers recently performed an experiment on 28 women and 8 men. All of them were obese. None of them had diabetes. The researchers gave them either a placebo pill, or they gave them the drug metformin. Metformin is a medication commonly used for diabetes that has been around for many years. What you may not know is that metformin also has some significant anti-aging properties to it. In fact, many aging specialists have been recommending for years that everyone over the age of 50 should start taking some metformin. In this experiment, the researchers used two doses of metformin, 500 mg and 850 mg. Then they measured the effect of taking just a single dose of the drug on adiponectin levels. Here’s what they discovered.

On average, the 500 mg dose increased the adiponectin levels by 35%. The 850 mg dose increased the levels anywhere from 65% to 84%. So for many of you, taking a single dose of metformin every day along with regular exercise might be an answer for your weight problems. But why am I, a doctor known for his knowledge of natural therapies, recommending medication? Two reasons.

First, not all medications are dangerous. Metformin has been around for years, and its amazing safety profile is well established. Some people cannot take it because it causes intestinal upset. But most people do not have that problem.

Second, as I said above, metformin has been used for the last 30 years by many anti-aging specialists because it can slow down some of the aspects of aging. Now, it looks like taking a small dose of metformin might be just the answer for many of you who have problems dropping weight even while watching what you eat and regularly exercising.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD