I may as well give the whole story ... I was diagnosed with PCOS a few years ago by a doctor I saw about bad acne, but (I now realise!) didn't really have much of an idea of what it was about. She sent me on my way telling me to watch my weight, and that was that.

Everything was fine for a couple of years until my weight started increasing despite there being no lifestyle changes. I then started feeling unwell and very quickly became worse to the point of it being highly debilitating - I had severe and constant fatigue, terrible trouble sleeping and waking up, kept getting a recurrent virus, lots of aches and pains and my weight increase sped up even further - I put on something like 40kg in 18 months. I was convinced I had ME or chronic fatigue.

After what felt like a hundred different tests eventually my current doctor sent me to an endocrinologist to see if any of this could be related to me having PCOS. He instantly knew that the problem was insulin resistance connected directly to PCOS. A blood test backed this up and he promptly put me on metformin, slowly increasing the dosage to 3 x 500mg tablets a day.

That was almost 12 months ago and I now feel so much better - the fatigue really isn't an issue anymore, I'm sleeping better, my periods are fairly normal (but they weren't too bad before), and my weight has stopped going up. This is all great news, however, my acne is still quite bad and hair growth on my face and legs has actually increased. And while I lost some weight several months into taking metformin and haven't regained it, I certainly haven't lost any more and I know I need to.

I was doing the Low GI thing for a while without any real changes - I actually lost weight when I stopped worrying about it and started eating what I wanted! But now I'm seriously considering the low carb approach, although I know my endocrinologist isn't overly keen on it (so I'm not planning to talk to him about it until I've had a go at it myself).

So, finally, my question really is about whether it is dangerous to take metformin and to limit carbs to 20gm a day. I am also taking chromium and am about to start taking gymnema sylvestre - both of which help with insulin resistance, from what I understand. Could the combination of the medication, the supplements and low carbing be dangerous? How will I know if my insulin levels get too low and I therefore need to up the carbs I'm having? I'm not keen to stop taking metformin given the success I've had with it to date.

Any information and input would be great! Thanks.

Hi Sparkley,

I noticed another post here about being on metformin (glucophage) and doing induction. It seems there are varying results.

I can tell you that until I combined 1000 mg of metformin, Atkins induction (20 gms a day of carbs), AND exercise, I could not lose weight. The second week of doing this was a bit rough for me but I'm through that now and feeling great.

I would suggest to anyone thinking of doing this to go down first to 40 gms a day for a week or two, then 0 gms a day, then 20. Stop anywhere in there if you start feeling sick and don't go lower for a while. I was eating moderately low carb before I started induction on Atkins and I think that helped a lot.

I've also noticed that the higher the dose of metformin, the more problems with induction people *seem* to have.

Squid