Metformin's benefits for healthy, active individuals are uncertain because exercise can mimic its effects, such as activating AMPK and providing muscle benefits.

“I'm not convinced about the how much benefit for someone like me who exercises especially right I mean the best effective metformin and it's still--it's anti-diabetic effect and you and I both know you weights you run you're active you sort of mimic the effects of metformin in many ways activates the NPK you get the muscle benefits and so why should I take that”

“my personal views on it just based on clinical observation is that in the person i described earlier the lean insulin sensitive vigorously exercising individual it may actually not provide benefit”

“as you know there's a a body of literature suggesting that metformin May enhance exercise performance pardon me May impede exercise performance um and again the problem with metformin is for the You know despite the fact that this Drug's been around it's almost as old as God um it seems to have so many points of action that it's very difficult to know what it's doing or how much of its net outcome which is you know reducing hepatic gluc output can be attributed to what”

“we don't know for instance what it might do to muscle function the you know the best data on that it's not good for muscle function but again that comes from uh early work”