I am about to break one of the biggest stories in recent medical history, right here in the Pickens County Courier, and I’m not kidding.

Here’s the big news: Metformin, a drug commonly used to treat diabetes, can significantly ease if not cure the pain and misery of fibromyalgia.

Now, if you don’t know what fibromyalgia is, this may mean very little to you. But if you’re like me and live with someone who suffers from this debilitating disease, believe me, this is huge. And there are a lot of people — most of them women — who struggle with this malady right here in Pickens County, and I hope I’m getting the word out to some people who can benefit from it.

Before you start thinking I’m just extrapolating some unscientific observation about my wife, Kathy, the fibro patient in my life, let me point out that she’s only been taking Metformin for a couple of days, and it’s too early to tell how much effect this is going to have on her.

The reason I have great hope that this is going to work is because a study was published on May 6 about research done at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in which researchers “were able to dramatically reduce the pain of fibromyalgia patients with medication that targeted insulin resistance,” according to a press release from the university. That medication is Metformin.

So how am I, a lowly semi-retired journalist in the backwoods of South Carolina, able to

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