It’s easier than ever to track our step counts, calorie intake, and sleep cycles. Now the trend of personal data for blood sugar levels has arrived.
Biotech companies like Zoe, Signos and Nutrisense are marketing continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs—disposable devices with a small, needle-like sensor—to people without diabetes who want to know how their body processes food.
CGMs offer an edge in personal health optimization, but are these devices really useful tools for understanding and improving health, or are they just the latest trend among the concerned?
How do continuous glucose meters work?
Instead of measuring the sugar level in the blood directly, as one might do with a finger prick test, CGM devices measure the sugar in the interstitial fluid surrounding the cells. As a result, their readings can lag real-time blood sugar levels by five to 20 minutes, which could be a problem for people with diabetes who need to respond to sudden changes, but is typically less problematic for people without diabetes.
CGM companies typically offer subscriptions. For example, a three-month subscription to Nutrisense costs € $299 per month, while Signos offers a similar plan for $229. Subscribers receive two CGMs per month; These devices are attached to the outer arm and secured with a waterproof bandage and remain functional for 14 days. In addition to the hardware, users get access to a companion app that fluctuates their blood sugar levels in near real-time. Some companies also offer personalized nutrition and exercise information intended to help users achieve their health goals.
How do blood sugar levels relate to our health?
People with diabetes need to monitor their blood sugar levels because their bodies have difficulty producing or using insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that helps cells absorb sugar from the bloodstream. For people with diabetes, controlling blood sugar levels through a vigilant routine of diet, physical activity and insulin injections is crucial to minimizing the risk of serious complications, including heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and blindness.
CGM marketing often suggests that even if someone does not have diabetes and has relatively consistent blood sugar levels, further stabilizing those levels can improve overall health and facilitate weight loss.
Signos’s website urges: “Avoid glucose spikes as much as possible.”
“Your body has to keep glucose under tight control. If the balance tilts in either direction, that could be bad news,” it said after on Zoë’s site.
Although a glucose spike after a large dessert or high-carb lunch can lead to some immediate effects, such as fatigue or difficulty concentrating, occasional spikes are not a cause for concern for most. However, it is true that uncontrolled, frequent, high blood sugar spikes can cumulatively contribute to the development of insulin resistance in anyone. When blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas is forced to produce more insulin. Long periods – usually years – of sustained spikes can ultimately compromise our body’s ability to use insulin effectively and can also slow down insulin production. This can result in pre-diabetes, a reversible condition in which blood sugar levels rise above normal. Without intervention, these recurring spikes can gradually lead to type 2 diabetes.
What is the benefit of monitoring blood sugar levels for healthy health? people without diabetes?
A 2018 Stanford University study of healthy individuals using CGMs, found that glucose dysregulation, characterized by excessively high glucose spikes, is more common in healthy people without diabetes than previously thought. “We’ve seen that some people who think they are healthy misregulate their glucose levels – sometimes with the same severity as people with diabetes – and they have no idea,” writes Michael Snyder, professor and chair of genetics at Stanford and senior author of the study. If your CGM shows that your body is not controlling your blood sugar levels well, that information may be relevant to your health.
But doctors and scientists don’t all agree that CGMs can help make really healthy people even healthier. Robert H Shmerling of Harvard Health has done that written that there is currently no unbiased published research linking the use of CGM by people without diabetes to better health outcomes or weight loss, and that more research needs to be done to prove the value of these devices. Endocrinologists participation that healthy people are unlikely to see significant changes in their blood sugar levels because their bodies process sugar efficiently, making these monitors more useful for satisfying personal curiosity than for meaningfully improving health.
Nevertheless, some may find it worthwhile to use a CGM to observe how conventional health knowledge applies to their bodies in real time. Seeing your blood sugar levels rise after eating a piece of chocolate cake may have more impact than reading about how cake affects your body, said McGill University endocrinologist Kaberi Dasgupta. “Companies are using this self-monitoring to help people personally reach the conclusion that the literature has reached: physical activity and eating whole foods are good for our overall health,” she said.
But for people without diabetes who tend to stay within a healthy range (usually less than 140 mg of sugar per deciliter of blood, after meals), this kind of information can amount to splitting hairs. “As long as you keep your sugars mostly below a certain threshold, you don’t have to worry about variations in that,” says Nitai Gelber, an Ontario family physician. “Your blood sugar level may rise to (140 mg/dl) for no reason after a meal. There is no need to try to flatten your levels further if your body is already doing great.”
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Can CGMs help people with pre-diabetes?es or the insulin resistant?
Toronto resident Justin Richard, 52, posts TikTok content about using a CGM to monitor his body’s response to different foods. Richard said that throughout his 40s he noticed he was losing energy and feeling generally unwell, with a tingling sensation in his hands and feet. Knowing he had a family history of diabetes, and a bit of a “junk food addiction,” he went to his doctor, but was told there was nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, Richard suspected he was insulin resistant because the condition causes neuropathic symptoms such as tingling.
“Year after year it just got worse,” Richard said. A 2019 study found that significant gaps in physicians’ knowledge of pre-diabetes diagnoses and treatment plans can cause some patients to slip through the cracks. Pre-diabetes can also be symptom-free.quietcondition; 80% of people with pre-diabetes do not know they have it.
Richard started using a CGM more than a year ago to monitor his blood sugar levels so he doesn’t “automatically develop type 2 diabetes” due to a lack of medical intervention, which happened to his mother, he said. He has not yet been diagnosed with prediabetes by a doctor. He has noticed that he feels better and more energetic when he can keep his blood sugar levels within a healthy range.
“Consciousness keeps me under control,” he says. “When I eat something and my blood sugar levels rise, it reminds me, ‘Hey, you could really be harming yourself by eating these types of foods in the long run.’ Diabetes doesn’t happen overnight. It’s been decades in the making.”
Are there any disadvantages to using a CGM if you don’t have diabetes?
CGMs are expensive, and they may not give users many nutritional insights that they couldn’t find for free elsewhere.
Dasgupta warns that CGM users who don’t work with a doctor to interpret their data may overlook how other factors such as stress and sleep quality affect their blood sugar levels.
Additionally, using CGMs can cause users to focus too much on balancing their blood sugar levels. “If you do that kind of self-testing, there is certainly a risk that you become obsessed with it,” says Dasgupta. For example, a user may worry about the normal fluctuations in blood sugar levels after a meal, or fixate on the way their body reacts to certain foods, even within a healthy range.
While not a disadvantage in itself, the increase in CGM use among people without diabetes is unlikely to meaningfully stem rising diabetes rates. Researchers think just under half a billion people are live with diabetes worldwide, and this number is expected to increase by 25% by 2030 and 51% by 2045. Diabetes is most common in countries with higher incomes, but in those countries people with lower incomes suffer from diabetes. higher rates of the disease, which could mean CGMs could be inaccessible to those who need them most.