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I see a lot of praise for Metformin on the comments here. I did a quick search and it seems that the only long term side effect listed is B12 deficiency. I also saw a comment talking about lactic acidosis in the liver.

Are there any other known short and long term side effects? Did anyone have a bad experience while taking it?

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My mother is taking it (for diabetes) and one of her doctors suspects it may be the cause of some long term diarrhea issues she has been having. But that is still to be determined. My mother is also having liver issues, and I had not heard about the lactic acidosis problem before. I will pass that along.

I'm on metformin for diabetes as well, and diarrhea issues are the biggest concern my doctor has. I can't tolerate too high of doses (when we tried I ended up laying in bed for an entire weekend because I felt so terrible), so I'm hopefully going to Ozempic or similar soon, but stomach upset and associated issues are the biggest reason to move onto another medication (or a lower dose of metformin combined with something like glyburide).

I had various bowel problems while on it, which were slightly unusual and hard to relate back to taking metformin, but they all cleared up when I stopped taking it.

It's a very well-known drug, and a lot of patients have taken it for a long time. Side-effects are rare.

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