Glucose Goddess on GLUCOSE MONITORS: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly | Episode 10 of 18

so after eating some foods you might see a single Spike and after eating different foods or a different person might see a be a basic is that how you say it basic basic anyway basic two-phase curve what does this [Music] mean Hello angels and welcome to the glucose goddess show today today I want to discuss glucose monitors continuous glucose monitors so this is something that I haven't really talked about in depth yet so I'm excited to get into it and tell you exactly what I think about them whether I think you should wear one or

not if you do wear one what are the big things to look out for so I'm going to share with you everything that I know let's do it first question we need to answer is do I think everybody should be wearing a continuous glucose monitor so when I first started wearing one this was about 5 years ago um and by the way for those who don't know a continuous glucose monitor is a little device that you wear usually on the back of your arm um and it measures in real time your blood sugar levels and

it sends the data to your phone so on your phone you can then see exactly more or less with some variation what what your glucose levels are doing so you can see oh I just ate a sandwich and then you can see the spike in glucose levels you can see the dip you get continuous data on the inside of your body now for me wearing a CGM they're called cgms by the way that's the that's the short way of saying them continuous glucose monitors or cgms so in 2019 when I first wore a CGM it

really changed my life and it is the reason that I got into the world of glucose and the reason I discovered that I was getting glucose spikes that were impacting my mental health so I started wearing one I started using the data from it to create graphs on Instagram to educate people about nutrition science now the thing we have to remember is that these devices were originally intended and created for people who have type 1 diabetes who need to monitor their glucose levels in real time because it's a life or death kind of situation for

them having access to this information allows them to dose their medication their insulin correctly which helps keep them healthy and alive and helps them manage their blood sugar levels so I don't have diabetes right so when I first wore one it was in the context of a study that was going on in the company I was working at and it was just a sort of experiment because it was in Silicon Valley in San Francisco and people were always testing Tech products so fast forward I then used the data from my glucose monitor in order to

educate people online about the science of glucose and nutrition today a lot of people who do not have diabetes wear them um whether it's for you know performance whether it's to figure out what foods work for them or not whether it's to figure out just how what their eating is impacting their energy levels their inflammation their hor hormones Etc we're going to go into the pros and cons but at the very core of it all I wanted to be super clear that I currently do not recommend that everybody wear one I think there's a lot

of upside and it can be super motivating it can show you what's going on inside of your body in real time and honestly it's a pretty incredible tool to start to connect what you're eating with what's actually happening inside of your body but there are also downsides so first of all they're a medical device intended for people with a medical conditions so you know the data can be a bit difficult to interpret if you don't have enough context um in some people can cause stress or fixation because you're getting constant data all the time so

if you're somebody who has had a history of disordered eating for example it's probably not a very good idea to be tracking your levels constantly because it can potentially become a bit obsessive and finally all the hacks that I share all the really easy things you can do in your life to steady your glucose levels and start feeling really amazing they don't require you to wear a glucose monitor to track what they're doing because just by feeling into your energy levels your Cravings how your brain is doing you can get a pretty good sense that

your glucose levels are flattening and you're helping your body even if you don't have the real-time data hey really quickly if you can't always do my food hacks and you want to eat the carbs that you love with less impact on your glucose levels I created a capsule just for that it's called anti-spike formula you take two before a meal it cuts the glucose Spike of carbs by up to 40% 100% made out of plants and tested by over 25 clinical trials link is in the description okay back to the episode so that's just to

be very clear I don't recommend everybody wears one but of course it's a trend that's gaining a lot of traction personally I don't really wear one anymore maybe you know once every six months but I don't feel like I need the constant feedback and I feel like now I understand the signs of glucose and nutrition enough that it's not really necessary however I still want to do a deep dive because I know that many of you are interested in these so I want to make sure you have all of information and education so that you

know what you're doing if you want to wear one a first important thing to note is that a continuous glucose monitor actually doesn't measure the blood glucose values in your blood it's measuring your glucose levels an interstitial fluid usually in the back of your arm so the fluid between your cells the little flexible bit of the continuous glucose monitor that stays underneath your skin it's measuring glucose levels in in the fluid between your cells and so these are pretty good proxy for your blood sugar levels but they're not the same first of all they're a

bit delayed by about 20 minutes so you don't get real real time data you get kind of delayed data and then second they could be a little bit inaccurate so especially if you don't have diabetes your variations are going to be quite small so I recommend you don't Focus so much on the absolute number and rather look at the patterns so the spikes and the dips and which which spikes are B bigger than others to give you an example last time I wore a glucose monitor um it told me that my fasting glucose level was

105 which means I had pre-diabetes I was super shocked um and then I went to the doctors to actually do a proper blood draw and verify this and lo and behold My fasting glucose level was 87 so the CGM the continuous glucose monitor had given me a very wrong absolute number and you know it's Error prone there's stuff going on there so always always always if you want a real number go to the doctor's office get a proper blood draw and use the CGM only to look at the variations and the patterns so if you're

somebody who does not have diabetes what would be the reasons you might want to wear a glucose monitor I think the main one is motivation and accountability because when you see on your phone how quickly your body is impacted by where you're eating and when you eat some sugar for example it creates a big spike that's pretty motiv motivating to change your eating habits so I think that's one of the main ones for me the motivation and accountability and also if you're a curious person and you just want to see how is my current diet

actually affecting my body it's a really interesting thing to look at and for example you could get a glucose monitor once for two weeks and then that could teach you probably enough to not ever need to wear one ever again and importantly if you wear a glucose monitor you have to understand that the objective is not for your glucose levels to be a perfect flat straight line because some variation is normal you want to avoid big big big spikes spikes that are above let's say 30 milligrams per deciliter in Delta but achieving perfectly flat glucose

levels is not the objective and it can actually be a little bit unhealthy because there are sort of some devious ways that you could achieve that for instance alcohol keeps your glucose levels really really steady so if you drink a lot of alcohol your glucose levels are going to be really flat because alcohol interacts with your liver and prevents your liver from properly releasing new glucose into your bloodstream another thing that you might see that might shock you is that when you exercise you might see a big spike and so you might think okay does

that mean exercise is bad for me well no there's lots of these kinds of patterns that can be a little bit confusing so for the exercise thing in particular the reason you might see a spike during exercise and the reason that these spikes are not bad is because when we exercise we need a lot of energy for our muscles and your body is going to release some extra glucose in your bloodstream to feed your working muscles so in this case the spike is not harmful so I want to make sure you have some education and

information so you don't draw some wrong conclusions another one is that if you add a bunch of fat to a meal let's say you're having pasta and you add I don't know like some ridiculous amount of butter to it the fat is going to slow down how quickly that pasta is going to turn to glucose and lead to a glucose Spike so technically you'll be flattening your glucose curves and avoiding a spike but that would be a pretty unhealthy thing to do so there's caveats and there's things that I don't want you to misinterpret when

you're looking at your glucose monitor data so before we get into those a bit more um a common question I get is where can I actually find a glucose monitor so the one that is on the market that is the cheapest and usually the easiest one to access is called and I have no affiliation with this company it's called the Abbot freestyle Libre it's pretty cheap especially in Europe you can get over the counter for about30 euros you know so $35 uh you can just go to the pharmacy and ask for one now in a

lot of countries especially in the US uh continuous glucose monitors you need a prescription for them and that's why you're seeing all these different companies pop up and package for you at a pretty high cost the opportunity to receive a glucose monitor at your house so they have doctors in a house in the company that are going to write prescriptions for you and these are off Lael prescriptions because technically glucose monitors are for people who have diabetes so you're going to pay to get this prescription so that you can access the glucose monitor so that's

why these companies charge a lot of money usually you know from $200 to $400 for access to a glucose monitor that you can get in Europe for 30 bucks over the counter so you have to understand that diff difference and also a lot of these companies actually use that exact same device the freestyle Libre and then they build an app on top of it that is prettier has more insights interprets the data better so it kind of depends what you're looking for if you want a full service experience where you get a pretty app and

you can track stuff and you have disposable income that you can spend on this you know you could go for one of the companies that's offering a more complete experience if you just want to test a glucose monitor for 2 weeks as cheaply as possible and you live in Europe I would just get one at the pharmacy and save yourself a bunch of money I also have an app on the App Store that costs $5 that you can get that's going to take in the data from your continuous glucose monitor from the very basic app

that it comes with and then plot some pretty graphs for you and help you kind of see more clearly what's going on and generally when somebody wears a glucose monitor what I hear a lot is that they needed to read my first book glucose revolution in order to make sense of it all so you can get a cheap glucas monitor at the pharmacy and then buy my book that will give you all the information that you need to start using the data in a useful way so my book is glucose Revolution and by the way

this is not a plug like I truly believe that if you want to not stress out too much and if you want to understand what's going on if you do wear a glucose monitor as a person without diabetes and so without a doctor or education around you my first book is really really really really helpful to get all the context that you need to make the best of your experience so cheaply in Europe you can use one of these companies as well that costs quite a bit of money to get access to glucose monitors I'm

always looking out for you and looking out for the cheapest option to do stuff so you know what I do is I get the glucose monitors at the pharmacy for 30 bucks that's just the situation there's other CGM companies other than Abbott there's Dexcom Metron Etc but those are more expensive devices and usually on prescription also I put a link in the description of this episode to my app the $5 one that allows you to take the data and make it pretty you don't need it by the way like at all it's just that if

you want to create graphs that look like this like the ones that I use on my Instagram my app will do that for you so if you want to use your data and then create some nice social media content or just be able to compare things a bit easier you can use that very cheap app that I made that is based entirely on the tool that I first designed and engineered five years ago when I started this whole Adventure because I wanted a way to visualize the glucose data in an easier prettier more approachable manner

than just the data that came from the very basic freestyle lib app oh there's one important thing so when you set up a glucose monitor if you're getting the one at the pharmacy for example it's going to ask you for your target range and generally if you don't have diabetes your target range should be between 70 milligrams per deciliter and about 140 milligrams per deciliter so if you are in milles per liter that's 3.9 to 7.8 by the way all this information I'm putting it in a very short PDF document uh so you can see

it all in one place it is in the description of this episode so I know it's a lot to remember it's all in a document for you now here are a few patterns that I want to cover because you might see them on your glucose monitor data so I want to make sure that you understand what they are so first thing to look out for is steep versus steady spikes so you might see on your glucose monitor one Spike that is very Steep and then comes down really quickly and you might see other spikes that

look more like sort of flat mountains so they go up quite slowly but they stay up for a long time and then they come back down so if you're wondering which one is worse for your health it is the very steep one the the one with the most variability and that drops the fastest that is the worst for your health and we know this because it's the variability caused by glucose spikes that is damaging the most the cells in your blood vessels and one great study recapping this is called oscillating glucose is more delerious to

endothelial function and oxidative stress than mean glucose in normal and type 2 diabetic patients so you're always looking for steadier and smoother even if the Baseline is a bit higher versus a very steep Spike drop Spike drop Spike drop pattern generally smoother lower more chilled kind of pattern is better and I put some examples of this in the PDF by the way if you want to see what it actually looks like and here are a couple here from my own data and so I put a bunch of screenshots in the PDF so you can have

a quick look at what my data looks like ooh another very common pattern you might see during the night some low readings you might see some readings that go into the red uh you might get an alert you might freak out a little bit and ask yourself oh my God am I okay or something wrong so low glucose levels at night into what the app will tell you is like the too low range also very common there's a few reasons for this first of all you might be sleeping on your glucose monitor and this can

actually Flatline the data completely so it can go down to zero which don't worry you're not really flatlining with your glucose level it's just an artifact of that technology and that device and you sleeping on it it's cutting the signal as and second thing is that yes at night it's quite normal that glucose levels drop because at night you don't need that much glucose anymore but unless you have particular symptoms so you know maybe you you're waking up with nausea sweaty heart palpitations Etc if you don't have those and of course check with your doctor

I've seen this pattern in many many many people who were completely asymptomatic so it seems that it can just be kind of a false low reading as I mentioned there is some error in the absolute values that the cgms read so personally I don't worry too much when I see Lou vales at night I kind of discard them unless if I actually had symptoms then I would go to the doctor and see what's up but generally I just discard them another nighttime pattern that is very common is so you eat a big meal and then

you go to bed and then in the morning you wake up and you scan your glucose Monitor and you see that during the night your glucose was going totally crazy like massive roller coasters for hours and hours and hours so what does that actually mean well depending on the dinner that you had you can see this sort of multiphase Spike during the night it could be because your meal contains some fat and so you see two different moments of glucose disposal into the blood it can be just because it was a very heavy meal so

it took a long time to digest if you've had had a lot of spikes and dips during the night generally your sleep is not going to be as restful that's why I always try it's I can't always do it but I always try to have my dinner three hours or more before I go to bed so that I give my body some time to digest before I go to sleep and that leads to much more restful sleep because a big glucose roller coaster at night it's quite challenging for your body to handle and it's definitely

going to affect how rested you are and the qu quality and depth of your sleep another pattern that is common is to see a glucose Spike first thing in the morning when you wake up so you haven't eaten anything but you see that your glucose is rising just as you're waking up and you might wonder what the heck is that like I didn't secretly eat a piece of candy in bed as soon as my alarm went off that is called the dawn phenomenon the dawn effect and when you wake up to give your body access

to energy your liver is going to release a little bit of glucose into your bloodstream this is completely normal and it's just imagine it's like a little shot of energy to help you wake up so this is nothing to worry about it's very very common I get it most people get it the height of the spike is going to depend on lots of different factors but if you see this don't worry it's just your body waking up one key thing if you're into like lots of Wellness stuff and if you're doing vitamin C IVs and

you're wearing a glucose monitor you might see a crazy crazy crazy crazy Spike like this one this this is just because the vitamin C is interacting with the chemical reaction of your glucose monitor it does not mean that your glucose levels are going through the roof it's just because of the vitamin C interacting with the sensor on your glucose monitor so this is one of those spikes that you can completely ignore it's just an artifact don't worry about it final pattern I want to cover is basic curves so after eating some foods you might see

a single Spike and after eating different foods or a different person might see a be a basic is that how you say it basic basic anyway basic two-phase curve what does this mean why is the case that sometimes you will see this double Spike let's call it a double Spike curve it's way easier to say you might see a double Spike curve so some early studies are pointing to the fact that if you see this it actually potentially means that you have better metabolic health so that your glucose and insulin levels are healthier than if

you see one big spike to be honest like I've seen this pattern many times in myself but many other times I have just a single Spike I think it mostly depends on what's in the meal so if you have a meal that contains fat usually it's more likely that you will see this double Spike especially after something like pizza after Pizza I always get a double Spike what might be causing this is the fact that when we're eating and digesting food insulin is released in two phases in the body the first release is quite fast

and early on the second release is a bit later and is more sustained stained so this could be the reason you see this pattern again unless the spike is really really high seeing this pattern is pretty normal it's really hard to interpret individual you know single Spike double Spike triple Spike and compare them and make and draw conclusions because there's so many variables going on when you're testing foods and wearing a glucose monitor like your activity level your stress level your hydration your muscle mass what time you recycle it is if you're a female temperature

and on and on and on and on so ultimately I would say if you're wearing a glucose monitor the main thing to focus on is just to make sure that you're trying to keep your glucose as steady as possible without forcing yourself to do a very flat line because that's not the objective so in the PDF that I've also linked in the description of this episode I have my two-e testing plan which is what I generally recommend if you were a glucose monitor and you want to get the most out of it so you'll see

week one I have a specific recommendation and then week two as well about how you can test your eating habits and how you can try to get the most out of the experience so ultimately have a read at my book honestly if you want to wear a glucose monitor so that you have the education and the information to Not freak out and to know what matters and what doesn't matter and really I think glucose monitors are great motivation and accountability tool if you want to test them out rather than something we should become overly obsessed

with because it can be it can be quite stressful to look at the data all the time so if you're somebody who knows that they get a bit stressed out and a bit Focus too much on numbers and data about their body is probably not for you but if you're curious I hope this video was helpful gave you some beginning insights into what to look at and what you need to know and again the PDF in the description of this video has everything I just mentioned and way more in my twoe testing plan so let

me know how it goes sending you lots of love and thank you for being [Music] here