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Permalink Reply by PaulaO on March 3, 2011 at 1:59pm

I'd not heard of it so I looked it up.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000314/

http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/Blog/Tara-Dairman/symlin_may_...

In reading the information, I would NOT recommend this just for weight loss. Yeah, it's a decent side effect but, really, there's other things to do to lose weight that carries less risks. If your diabetes would be better controlled using this medication, go for it. But if you have good control, why change?

Permalink Reply by rachel on March 3, 2011 at 2:01pm

This is so timely!!! I just met with a new endo and she suggested the same thing. The sample pen is in my fridge, but I haven't started yet. Here's what she told me: Symlin works to help lose weight 2 ways, 1) decreasing the amount of insulin you take by making the effect of the insulin you do take stronger (so you need less) and 2) by suppressing your appetite (sometimes causing mild nausea as you adapt to it, but it supposedly goes away).

Here's my problem, they say to only take it with meals of 30g of carb or more... but I rarely eat 30g at one sitting. Breakfast maybe, but not really lunch or dinner. Also - caloric intake isn't really a problem for me (I stay around 1500-1800 with weights and cardio), so I'm not sure I need an appetite suppressant. I don't know though, maybe if I drop down to 1000-1200 calories for a while it will do the trick.

I did ask my doctor what would happen if I took symlin alone - without bolusing insulin - at a lower carb meal... She said that while it's "off label" to do that, some people have found that they can eat lower carb & take symlin without insulin and their sugars do fine... Perhaps it just increases the effectiveness of the basal insulin for a few hours and that does the trick. I'm really just not sure what to do.

I really do want to try symlin, and I really want to lose some weight, so I'm interested to hear what others have to say and/or suggest.

Thanks for starting this thread!
Rachel