Healthy seniors suckered into longevity study with risky diabetes med

For countless seniors, it’s become like dashing off a letter to Santa Claus.

Dr. Nir Barzilai is being flooded daily with letters and phone calls from seniors who are practically begging to be part of his new clinical trial.

And it’s all because Dr. Barzilai and his colleagues are claiming they may have found the fountain of youth — a magic pill that could help you live to 120 and beyond.

But this pill isn’t magic — it’s a potentially dangerous diabetes med that I’ve warned you about many times before.

And the seniors who make the cut for Dr. Barzilai’s study could become overnight guinea pigs in a cruel experiment…

On that could leave them sicker and in worse health than ever before.

As the worm turns

Honestly, when I first found out about this insane plan to find the fountain of youth in a Big Pharma pill, I hoped it would never make it this far.

First, it’s hard to understand why perfectly healthy people would start up on a powerful and risky diabetes drug like metformin.

And that’s especially true when you realize that much of the research on metformin and longevity involved counting wrinkles on worms that were given the drug.

That’s right, worms — like the kind you’d throw on the end of a fishing hook.

But with billions of dollars at stake, the plan to pump seniors full of metformin and see if they live any longer is full steam ahead.

This study is going to be held at 14 senior centers across the U.S. Doctors there will study 3,000 people between the ages of 65 and 79 for six years, with half getting the metformin and the other half receiving a placebo.

After that, researchers will sit around and see who dies first. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

But there have been so many big promises made about metformin that lead researcher Dr. Barzilai practically has a line out the door of seniors wanting to sign up.

But, unfortunately, I’m afraid a lot of these folks are going to end up getting a cold, hard dose of reality as far as metformin is concerned.

First, let’s face it — metformin has been around for decades and is one of the most widely-prescribed diabetes meds around. If we were all going to be blowing out 100 candles on our birthday cakes, it probably would have happened by now.

Instead, people with diabetes live, on average, 10 fewer years.

Worse still, some of the side effects of metformin can actually wreck your health. For example:

• Metformin can cause a potentially fatal condition called lactic acidosis, in which too much lactic acid builds up in the blood. That condition is a killer in over 50 percent of those who develop it.
• Studies have shown that metformin can deplete two critical nutrients — vitamin B12 and folate.
• Even the more common side effects of this drug are nothing to take lightly. How about diarrhea, fever, chills, painful urination and insomnia? That will sure make you feel younger than your years!

One of Dr. Barzilai’s fans who is applying as a volunteer for his study wrote him saying how she supports his work and that we need “to think out of the box.”

But unfortunately, taking a seriously risky med to try and turn back the clock might just end up putting more people in a box.

Sources:
“Fountain of youth? Drug trial has seniors scrambling to prove they’re worthy” Jennifer Levitz, April 24, 2016, The Wall Street Journal, wsj.com