I've lived with T1D for most of my life, for over 40 years. I generally have taken the ups and downs with diabetes "management" in stride. Until a few months ago.
Sometime in July I noticed the my usual time in range of %82 dropped to %70. It wasn't really a surprise due to daily struggles to herd the cat that is diabetes management. For two weeks straight it seemed as though the insulin I was taking wasn't doing anything. I changed my insulin pump sites frequently, made sure I was using a new bottle of insulin - you know, all the stuff we do when we can't figure out what's going on. None if it mattered.
Many T1Ds I know who have had it for a long time, have been taking Metformin. It's something I've thought about over the last few years, but kept it on the back burner as I didn't really want to take another medication unless I had to. But the struggles of July made me give it another thought.
Thankfully I already had an appointment set up with my endocrinologist, for which I was grateful. I told her my struggles, and neither of us were surprised to see that my A1C at that visit was 6.9. You might think, "wow, that's great!" But my A1C has been between 6.0 and 6.2 for the last 4 years. I didn't want to keep taking more and more inulin to wrangle things. I wanted the insulin i was taking to work better! So, I asked my endo about Metformin and she agreed to give it a try. My endo filled the prescription immediately, and I picked it up that day. However, I didn't start taking it for a few weeks due to fear of side effects (stomach issues). Lucky for me the side effects have been mild. I've now been taking Metformin for 3 weeks and it has already made a difference. My average total daily dose of insulin has decreased by 5 units a day on average. My time in range has gone up to 92%. Between the Metformin and my MiniMed 670G I am finally feeling so much better about my diabetes, and feeling better as a whole. As always, your diabetes and experience may vary!