T Nation

Tell Me about Metformin

T Replacement
#1

On TRT for over a year now and since I stopped fucking with it all the time it’s worked really well. 150ng/week of t cyp. Nothing else.

However I’ve had ongoing issues with anxiety (mainly) and some depression, so recently pulled the trigger and started on Nardil again.

Thing is, it’s Notorious for weight gain. But a lot of people on it say metformin helps quite a bit.

I know Jay Cutler and some others push metformin in the TRT world but I never learned enough about it. What’re your experiences? Any benefits to make it worth trying?

#2

You can lose some weight with it.
I lost about 8 pounds.
My waist is down not sure if it was metformin or testosterone.

I was talking the 500xr 2x a day. Switched to immediate release a month ago cause of all the recalls on the extended release. I tolerate it very well.

I read about all it’s benefits and plan on continuing it for a while.

Also my mom and dad are basically pre diabetic but they are in 70s now. Their fasting glucose is near 100. I have NA fatty liver disease and I wonder if it’s better now.

Here are recent labs

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#3

Cool man, thanks for sharing all this.

Any sides? Do you get the infamous 30 seconds to the toilet thing?

How long have you been on it before seeing any benefits?

#4

I tried it for about 3 weeks. I don’t have any insulin or glucose issues, I was interested in the potential anti-aging benefits. Started first week at 250mg 2x day and then 500mg 2x day per doc’s recommendation. I had some “gastric distress” towards the end of the first week. I probably wasn’t on it long enough to get any benefit but I never felt quite right when taking it. Stomach a little off and just kind of fatigued. It’s probably useful for someone who is insulin resistant but it wasn’t for me.

You could also check out berberine, it has a similar method of action and is OTC. I tried it too and while it didn’t make me feel off like metformin it didn’t do anything for me so I stopped.

#5

It crashed my calcium hard. Like should have probably gone to hospital for IV calcium hard. Not a common side, but could possibly kill you if you don’t know what’s going on.

#6

If taken with food no gastric sides.

You start with 500 at dinner then add 500 in morning after a week or 2.
If doing extended release, can take 1k at once during dinner. But start at 500 for a week or 2.

After 3-4 weeks should see some weight loss of you are over weight.

#7

Im surprised that being in the trt forum almost nobody has mentioned that metformin heavily raises shbg. If your shbg is low, this might be a great drug. But if your starting point is an already high shbg, you can start feeling bad as I did. It would be great to know a rule of thumb to increase T while on metformin to balance back the free t.

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#8

Not sure if effects everybody the same way in that regard my shbg is super low and stayed super low even with 1k XR daily

#9

Mine went from 60 to 90 quite fast. It is a known effect and you can find medical papers describing this in Google. For sure I believe there are exceptions.

#10

I didn’t know this! One more thing for me to research. Do you know if this is information comes from a particular study. I’d love to read it.

#11

Metformin is known to elevate SHBG, but it is negligible in most people. And being on TRT decreases SHBG in most people, so it doesn’t usually make much difference. Higher SHBG is considered a marker for longevity, so the medical community likes that side effect.

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#12

You are right, it is a longevity marker, but it implies less free t. In my case was more a disaster than negligible. So at least I think it is good to raise awareness in this trt forum were usually not the easiest and common cases are commented.

#13

It’s been mentioned in a number of threads.

#14

I did a little poking around in PubMed and found a couple articles that showed an increase in SHBG, but these studies were mostly focused on women, obese men, and/or diabetic men taking insulin treatment. Then I came across this article. It shows a small (~10%) but significant (p<0.009) increase in SHBG in 12 normal men treated with 850mg Metformin twice per day.

Source: Shegem, N.S., Nasir, A.M., Jbour, A.K., Batieha, A.M., El-Khateeb, M.S., and Ajlouni, K.M. (2002). Effects of short term metformin administration on androgens in normal men. Saudi Med J 23, 934-937.

Effect of Metformin on SHBG

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#15

Noted…I’ll have my SHBG and FT tested too. Dr is starting me on metformin so we’ll see how this goes.