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Metformin medication: price, common doses and administration
Metformin is prescribed to treat type two diabetes and polycystic ovary syndrome, which we call PCOS. Metformin lowers your sugar levels by reducing the amount of sugar that your liver releases into your blood and also improving your body's response to insulin.
Metformin is usually prescribed in type two diabetes when diet and exercise alone hasn't been enough to reduce your blood sugar levels. For women with PCOS, Metformin stimulates ovulation even if you don't have diabetes, and it does this by lowering blood sugar levels and lowering insulin. Metformin not only does it help with PCOS and lower blood sugar levels, but studies have actually shown it to reduce your risk of cancer and help you lose weight.
Price of Metformin
Metformin costs from ?27.5 to ?159.0 per tablet. It depends on the type of product (e.g. lozenge or liquid) and the amount of active ingredients in each tablet (500 or 850 mg).
Common Doses
At first, 500 milligrams (mg) two times a day taken with the morning and evening meals, or 850 mg a day taken with the morning meal. Your doctor may increase your dose if needed until your blood sugar is controlled.
Side effects
Unfortunately, Metformin can cause side effects in some patients like nausea, wind, and diarrhea. But, the chances of developing these can be reduced by taking it after food and also when you first started on them, building up your dose slowly to the prescribed dose. Now, you've just been started on immediate release Metformin and hopefully a prescriber explain to you how to slowly build up your dose to the prescribed dose, and this is to help reduce the chances of you developing side effects. And in the world of pharmacy, this building up, we call it dose titrating.
How to build up your dose
There is a general guide on how to build up your dose of immediate release metformin to the prescribed dose. Now, in this example, let's say the final dose of immediate release metformin for type two diabetes was three times a day with main meals. So we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which you'll be taking it with.
But we don't want to jump straight into three times a day as you're much more likely to have side effects, which we mentioned earlier. So build up your dose weekly to the final prescribed dose. So for my example, to begin with, take 500 milligrams of immediate release Metformin daily with your biggest meal, which is dinner for most people. After a week or two if you're getting on fine with no significant side effects, increase to 500 milligrams twice a day with main meals. So for most people, that would be breakfast and dinner.
And after another week or two if you're getting on fine with no significant side effects, increase to 500 milligrams three times a day with main meals, so breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Please remember, this is a general guide and your dose may be different. So always speak to your pharmacist or doctor about this before you do it. So what we are basically doing is building up the dose of immediate release metformin by 500 milligrams every one to two weeks until we reach the final dose prescribed by your doctor.
And if after a dose increase, you start getting side effects, which don't go after a week or two, then reduce the dose back down to what you were getting on well with, then speak to your doctor. Definitely don't stop taking your medicines until you speak to your doctor.
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