How to Slow Aging Now: What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

Most articles that find themselves under such a headline are not based in good science. Products promising long life and physical transformation usually generate profit and disappointment in equal parts. The eternal success of such sales represents a triumph of hope over experience, a very large category in the human playbook.

The following story however is grounded in good data that has not yet trickled down the slow and meandering path from research laboratory to clinical specialist to mainstream medicine to its ultimate target: you.

The anti-aging medicine is metformin, a drug that has been prescribed for Type 2 diabetes since the 1960s. This is the type of diabetes caused by obesity and lack of physical activity. Some 95 percent of all diabetes in the United States is Type 2. Metformin increases insulin sensitivity, decreases glucose production in the liver, increases glucose uptake in muscle and induces weight loss in large part by reducing body fat. It does this with remarkable efficacy, low risk of hypoglycemia and a surprisingly clean side effect profile. Not bad, eh? And we haven’t gotten to the good stuff yet.

Why would a drug for diabetes have the ability to increase life span and prevent age-related disease?