Metformin and Diabetes - What Diabetics Should Know

By >> Sherry Chandy 

Metformin can be used alone or in combination with other medicines to treat Type 2 Diabetes mellitus. It is not used to treat type 1 diabetes.

First of all what does this medicine do in the human body.

Metformin helps to control the amount of glucose (sugar) in your blood. It does this in three main ways:

> It decreases the amount of glucose you absorb from the food you eat and

> It decreases the amount of glucose made by your liver.

> Metformin also helps your body to respond better to insulin natural or injected.

Ezine and Web Articles | Normal Blood Sugar Levels What Are They?

Normal Blood Sugar Levels What Are They?

By >> Jo Trapp

The importance of normal blood sugar levels is related to the prevention of the complications of diabetes. If your blood sugar (glucose) level is not within the ideal or normal blood glucose range you can begin to experience short term and long term problems.

Short term problems include high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) and low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). Long term problems include blindness, kidney disease, heart disease, stroke, impotence, nerve disease and loss of limbs. Nerve disease can affect the feet and legs as numbness, pain or a burning, tingling sensation. Loss of limbs is the result when amputations are needed because of poor circulation, infection or nerve disease.

Normal blood sugar levels depend on when the test was taken. A fasting normal blood glucose level is taken from a person who has not eaten for 8 12 hours. A person who does not have diabetes will have a normal fasting blood glucose level somewhere between 70 and 100 mg/dL. The goal for people with diabetes for a fasting blood glucose level is less than 110 mg/dL or in some cases 120 mg/dL. This is also the goal for normal blood sugar levels just prior to meals.

Blood sugar levels after meals, specifically 2 hours after one starts eating (2 hour postprandial blood glucose level), are less than 140 mg/dL in a person who is not diabetic. Poorly controlled diabetics will often have higher 2 hour postprandial (after meal) blood sugar levels depending upon how much carbohydrate they have consumed, how much insulin they are producing and how responsive their insulin is to the carbohydrate consumed.