What Does It Feel Like to Take Jardiance?
Key takeaways:
Jardiance (empagliflozin) is a once-daily pill approved by the FDA to treat Type 2 diabetes and heart failure.
Those who take it say it can be effective in stabilizing blood sugar levels and preventing heart problems.
Women who take it tell GoodRx the benefits outweigh the side effects, which include yeast infections.
It seems Jardiance (empagliflozin) is everywhere these days.
When watching TV, it’s hard to escape the catchy pharmaceutical commercial pitching it. The segment features singer and vocal coach Deanna “Bomb Chica” Colón performing a light-hearted jingle while gleeful dancers move behind her. She sings, “I have Type 2 diabetes, but I manage it well. It’s a little pill with a big story to tell.”
The takeover started when Jardiance was approved by the FDA in 2014 as a treatment for adults with Type 2 diabetes. In 2021, the FDA approved the use of Jardiance to treat heart failure. And in June 2023, it OK’d the medication as a treatment for children 10 years or older who have Type 2 diabetes and need help with blood glucose (sugar) management. And although Jardiance is not approved for weight loss, some providers are prescribing it off-label for that purpose.
GoodRx talked to three women who take Jardiance. One of them has Type 2 diabetes. Another began taking the medication when she was diagnosed with prediabetes. And the third takes it for its heart benefits. Here are their stories.
Keeping her blood glucose in check
As she approached her 60th birthday, Carol Gee thought she’d dodged the diabetes bullet — avoiding a health condition that had affected multiple family members.
Then came that weekend in 2009, when she found herself overly tired, voraciously thirsty, and constantly needing to visit the bathroom. Knowing “something wasn’t quite right,” her husband took her to the emergency room, where a test revealed her blood glucose level was 900.
“That was my introduction to Type 2 diabetes. I spent 4 days in the hospital with an IV in each arm, as they tried to lower my blood sugar,” recalls Carol, who is now 73 and retired about a decade ago after 22 years working at Emory University. “The nurses said, ‘You’re lucky you’re not in a diabetic coma — or worse.’”
With the gift of hindsight, Carol wishes her medical team had caught her condition before it became life-threatening. Two years before she ended up in the emergency room, a routine blood test showed her glucose level was high. But since she also had high blood pressure, her doctor assumed the two were linked and only prescribed her medication to lower her blood pressure.
Since her hospitalization, Carol has managed her condition with daily NovoLog (insulin aspart) and Lantus (insulin glargine) injections. But about 6 months ago, her blood glucose suddenly “went a little crazy,” likely because she hadn’t changed her eating habits or medications in years. Her endocrinologist then added a Jardiance pill to her daily routine.
Her blood glucose readings immediately stabilized. In fact, “it’s better than it’s been in quite a while,” she says, noting she’d had a reading of 125 that morning and 119 a day earlier.
But there’s one side effect she has to deal with in exchange: yeast infections.
“I hadn’t had one in 10 or 12 years,” Carol says. “But when you have a yeast infection, you have a sense of when it’s coming. When I feel a little something, I’m proactive. I always keep Monistat [miconazole] in the cabinet.”
Getting serious about following her doctor’s orders
Five years ago, when Suzie Owens’ doctor told her she had prediabetes and recommended she begin taking medication to manage it, including metformin, Suzie was caught off guard.
“I was in denial,” says Suzie, a 60-year-old data specialist at the University of Maryland. “If she hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known. I had no problems.”
Suzie’s doctor set her up with a nutritionist, but she “blew that off,” she says. While she would fill her prescriptions, she didn’t take her medications as directed, often forgetting if she’d taken them at all. And, as a result, she’d often have an upset stomach when she did.
“I needed 2 days for [my upset stomach] to pass,” she says. “If I’d just taken it right, I wouldn’t have had the stomach issues. I did more damage to myself by not taking [the medication as directed], and I ended up feeling worse.”
She got serious about her health 2 years ago when she tipped the scales at 300 lbs and her glucose levels were consistently in the 200s. “That’s when I realized I needed to get with the program and start treating myself better,” she says.
With her doctor’s guidance, she developed a routine: She takes Rybelsus (semaglutide) every morning as soon as she wakes up, then follows that with metformin, glipizide, Jardiance, and lisinopril (Zestril). In the evenings, she takes additional doses of metformin and glipizide.
Since she’s been taking this pharmaceutical combination, she’s lost more than 100 lbs, and her glucose levels have returned to what they were before her diagnosis. She’s become more active, gradually extending her walks with her husband, Kevin, and dog, Cody.
The medications dull her appetite, and when she does need a snack, she’s more likely to choose a carrot over cookies. “But I’ll dip that carrot in ranch dressing,” she says.
As for negative side effects, Suzie says she’s more susceptible to yeast infections than she was before, but that she’s OK with that. “I’d rather itch than feel like I’m dying on the inside,” she says.
She says she’s also more likely to get a urinary tract infection if she goes off-program. “The most important thing, and I cannot stress enough, is to take your medication as directed,” she says.
Heart failure made her life take a detour
For years, Lori Ann Wood struggled to catch her breath after climbing stairs or walking on an incline. But she had low cholesterol and low blood pressure readings. She wasn’t overweight, and she’d never smoked. So she assumed her fatigue was a side effect of aging or a sign she needed to be more physically active.
“It never occurred to me that there was something not right with me,” says Lori Ann, a 58-year-old writer who lives in Bentonville, Arkansas. “My parents were smokers, so I assumed [my lungs] had some secondary smoke damage. I just ignored it.”
In November 2015, Lori Ann felt so drained that she assumed she had the flu. She went to urgent care and was given an inhaler on her first visit, and then a prescription for antibiotics when she returned. But when she visited her primary care physician soon after her second urgent care visit, he ordered an X-ray. The scan revealed that she had an enlarged heart. And further tests showed her ejection fraction (EF) — the percentage of blood pumped by the heart’s left ventricle — was life-threateningly low
“I went straight to the ICU,” she says. “The doctors thought my test results were a mistake because I walked in on my own.”
The diagnosis was heart failure. Lori Ann was amazed at the news. She remembers reading through a symptoms list with one of her three children and remarking that she’d never experienced most of them, including a persistent, dry cough. Her daughter looked at her in surprise.
“She said, ‘When we lose you in a store, that’s how we find you. We wait for you to cough,’” Lori Ann says. “These things that I never strung together because they seemed so small — it caught up with me all at once.”
Lori Ann had a defibrillator-pacemaker combo implanted in 2016. She began taking a medication combination that included torsemide, furosemide (Lasix), and a beta blocker called metoprolol. In December 2022, her care team added another medication to the list: Jardiance.
“My doctor at the Cleveland Clinic said they’re moving everyone with a certain kind of heart failure to Jardiance because it’s been shown to decrease hospitalization and death,” she says. “Six months later, I think it’s done a really good job of keeping the fluid off of my heart.”
Lori Ann likes Jardiance because it’s only one pill a day. In the beginning, she had a little trouble with dehydration, and her mouth felt dry. And she had to learn that taking the pill in the morning made sense, because “it makes you go to the bathroom a lot,” she says.
Since starting Jardiance, Lori Ann hasn’t had to take any extra diuretics, something she had to do in the past if she felt like she was retaining fluid or her weight increased. She still has a cough, but that’s mostly at night when she’s lying in bed without her head raised.
Lori Ann changed her lifestyle after her heart problems were uncovered. She used to teach college business courses, standing for 2 to 3 hours at a time. She realized that, even if she couldn’t do that anymore, she could sit and type. So she began writing, which is how her 2023 nonfiction book about how her life took a detour came to be.
She eats a low-sodium diet, adding lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, or herbs to her meals to do the flavor work salt used to do. She sleeps more, sometimes as much as 12 hours in one stretch. And she stays indoors when outside temperatures slip below 40 degrees or climb up over 80. “Meaning, there are about 4 days in Northwest Arkansas when I can be outside,” she jokes.
“You have to learn to adapt, even if, like me, your medications have made you a high-functioning heart failure patient,” Lori Ann says.
“When I was first diagnosed, my doctor told me, ‘You’re going to be aware every day that you have heart failure. You’ll have good days and bad days,’” she adds. “I always remind myself of that. I used to have bad days and think that I was going downhill or I was a failure at managing this disease. Now, I just think this is one of those bad days she talked about.”
What does the pharmacist say?
Christina Aungst, PharmD
Pharmacy Editor
Jardiance (empagliflozin) is a once-daily, oral medication that’s FDA approved to treat Type 2 diabetes and heart failure. It belongs to a class of medications called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors. And it’s been growing in popularity since its heart benefits were discovered.
Jardiance works by removing extra glucose (sugar) from your bloodstream through your urine, which is how it treats diabetes. It also helps remove extra sodium from the blood, which is one of several ways it’s thought to help manage heart failure. One downside of these actions is that it makes you pee more often, especially when you first start taking it.
Jardiance starts lowering blood glucose levels as soon as you start taking it. But it’s not a first-choice treatment for many people with Type 2 diabetes. It’s often an add-on treatment that’s combined with other diabetes medications, like metformin, particularly for people who have heart disease or a high risk of developing it.
When it comes to treating heart failure, Jardiance can be prescribed even if you don’t have diabetes. It’s now among the first-choice treatment options for certain types of heart failure. However, it’s not intended to replace other treatments, such as diuretics (“water pills”) and beta blockers. So it would likely be added to your list of heart failure medications to help further reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.
Jardiance is well-tolerated, and serious side effects from the medication are rare. Commonly, people (both female and male) experience yeast and urinary tract infections more often than usual. But for many, the benefits of taking Jardiance outweigh the risks of these infections.
Why trust our experts?
Was this page helpful?
Related Articles
Browse medications
View AllResearch prescriptions and over-the-counter medications from A to Z, compare drug prices, and start saving.