Metformin: Optimal dosage, interactions, and efficacy. Exploring natural alternatives for diabetes management

Abstract

The foundation of functional food science is to improve health and wellness by validating foods that affect one’s physical, behavioral, cognitive, psychological, or physiological function. Functional food science  provides insight into foods that can be considered as “natural or processed foods that contain known or unknown biologically active compounds, which, in defined, effective, and non-toxic amounts, provide a clinically proven and documented health benefit for the prevention, management, or treatment of chronic diseases.” This definition of functional foods is translatable to oral therapeutics, which can be defined as drugs taken orally that contain biochemically active compounds that combat diseases. Oral drug therapies have revolutionized modern medicine and patient health outcomes by ensuring accessible and effective treatments. Well-known drugs are established by their discrete drug usage indications based on clinical research that mimics real-world usage. These drug parameters act as a guideline for medication administration and patient education. 

The Functional Food Center has introduced a novel system for validating functional foods. In a similar manner to Functional Food Center’s multi-step classification of functional food, a comprehensive evaluation of oral therapeutic drugs can be formulated. When evaluating a drug, these criteria substantiate the reasonable usage and continuation of oral therapies. Metformin is one of the top ten oral drugs used in the United States. This review evaluates metformin under these guidelines and reports on its adherence or nuance to these criteria. Metformin has blood glucose-lowering properties that effectively treat chronic diseases, namely type 2 diabetes. As a first-line defense in hyperglycemic control, metformin is used to suppress hepatic gluconeogenesis, among other mechanisms of  cell signaling in insulin uptake. Focusing on the glucogenic breakdown properties of metformin, this review introduces fifteen key parameters of medicine performance and considerations for patient use.

Novelty: This review uniquely applies a functional food science framework to evaluate metformin, a widely used oral therapeutic for type 2 diabetes. By adapting the Functional Food Center's multi-step classification process, this work introduces fifteen key parameters for assessing medication performance and patient use, offering a novel perspective on optimizing oral drug therapies beyond traditional clinical research.