Can Metformin Make You Live Forever?

New headlines are claiming that this common diabetes drug can make women live longer, but the data is very unconvincing.

Pictured: Not metformin. It was hard to find a good free stock photo of a specific drug. This is acetaminophen or paracetamol depending on where you live in the world. Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash

As a species, we are obsessed with living forever. And if forever doesn’t work, we at least want to live for a very, very long time. Longevity has become a huge industry worth billions of dollars. Society’s elite is now awash with people taking on an increasingly complex cocktail of supplements, drugs — some legal, some less so — and convoluted exercise/diet regimes to try and live longer lives.

One of the most talked-about pills in the longevity world is called metformin. Metformin is a drug that was originally developed to lower blood sugars in people with diabetes, and it’s great at doing that. It’s usually the first medical treatment that anyone with diabetes gets, because the drug is excellent at what it does and has few side-effects unless you have serious kidney issues.

And, according to new headlines, it can make you live longer. A new study is out that appears to show that this humble diabetes drug may be able to make older women live to exceptionally old ages.