This might be of some interest to those who are into CGMs (or are thinking about it)…
Full disclosure: Having pricked my finger repeatedly with spot glucose tests for the better part of a year, I’ve gleaned more than enough n=1 data such that a CGM doesn’t offer much additional benefit for me personally. But I still find the topic to be interesting.
I’ve been kind of frustrated bout the CGM thing, cos I really, really, really want one, but my insurance doesn’t cover them and although I do invest money in my health, the current cost of these devices is just simply beyond my means.
I think I may have found a good compromise tho: I’m going to buy 4 of them per year, which will give me 2 weeks of monitoring per quarter. I plan to give them a run for their money each time - noting down all my meals and physical activity etc. And I will think about which things I want to “test” beforehand and make sure I get those things into the 2 weeks.
Then, I’ll have 10 weeks to work with whatever the results/ data shows me and will use that time to make adjustments and to think about what I want to test in the next 2 week CMG phase.
I’m really happy with this… It means I get to regularly have the benefits of a CGM but without the cost of buying 2 per month, which is truly prohibitive for me.
Luckily, my health is such that I don’t need to know my constant blood glucose curve 365 days per year. Having data for 60 days per year should provide me with everything I need to know, at an affordable rate.
That person doesn’t seem to be anywhere near a diabetic. She got the highest reading of 136, after banana bread. I got in the 150+ when eating Thanksgiving, but that is of course having few carbs beforehand.
Agreed. That struck me as the angle of the essay - that’s likely how it got sold to the editor in the first place.
Another problem with this,which I’m sure would go over the heads of everyone but the cognoscenti, is that blood sugar is only part of the problem. I followed this psychiatrist on Twitter, and she gave everyone CGMs. She had one of her patients take a Kraft test (both blood sugar and insulin tested after getting a drink of glucose). His blood sugar control was unbelievable. But that’s because his insulin was out of control.
Another problem is that there’s really no clear guidance. I saw an article about these where they said that most people only had higher blood sugar of <140 for about 4 hours a day. Ah, if your blood sugar is near 140 for 4 hours a day, I think that’s a problem, not good news.
This was Thanksgiving for me. We ate around 1pm, then dessert sometime after, leading to the two peaks above 140:
About 70 minutes above 140, and that’s with all kinds of carbs.
By the way, I have no idea why there are so many lows. Are those real? Like this:
On Friday, I worked all day on my house, so I can see perhaps getting a lower glucose, but all day long?
Anyway, I’m for trying to understand what’s happening. I feel CGMs are part of that tool, and some countries can have access to CKMs (continuous keton monitors). The combination of these would be cool to have, even if for a few weeks.
My concern is the usual tin foil hat worry. Giving people these devices sounds like progress, but it is not so they can have better understanding, or take better care of their own health needs. Heaven forbid. That is pretty clear from the lack of guidance. My belief is that you will soon see a wave of advice and very restrictive limits that encourage management through more prescriptions.
Bob
I am with you. I think CGMs are helpful directionally for the mass market, BUT (and it’s a big but) seeing your blood glucose under control can be massively misleading, for 2 reasons:
So, CGMs are useful to see what different foods do to you as an individual, BUT the results are so easily misinterpreted, I worry that most people will develop a false sense of security.
That is true. You really need both glucose and insulin, but the pin-prick insulin meters aren’t here yet. I thought they were under testing, but haven’t seen anything about them lately.
I agree with you about the fruit. Saw someone going low carb and they were still going to eat fruit. I didn’t say “but you likely have fatty liver, which is caused by fructose, so by eating fruit, you’re not allowing your liver to heal as well as if you ate no fruit.”
I do think that if you’re going to eat carbs, and have any issues with vegetables, fruit is probably better than veggies. But if you’re just starting low carb/keto, it’s best to avoid fruit for many reasons.Take a while off, then see if you can add it in later.
I feel I was summoned… Never can resist the topic of fruit…
That’s fine, eating much fruit is the problem.
As much as I am in love with fruits, I can’t consider them health food at all, way too much sugar, a big amount of it is fructose and we know it’s not so great… I trust my SO can handle it (he eats fruit all the time when he actually eat so 2-3 times a day) but even he doesn’t go wild with fruit. It’s super easy to eat 1kg fruit in one sitting all alone, I did that plenty of times in the past, I wonder about it sometimes… Well I was young with good genetics and anyway, we know the body has some great skills but still, I wouldn’t do it now even if my body wouldn’t give me a stop sign after a fragment of it (I feel great, merely feel I had enough. well as much as is vaguely acceptable as my body doesn’t need any fruit and I usually eat it in tiny amounts or not at all).
IOt bothers me that fruit is hailed as not just oh so healthy but essential for everyone to eat it GALORE. And often. I think I saw official guides about eating fruit 5 times a day somewhere…? But at least 3 is very common. It’s not even remotely healthy for some of us eating FOOD so often! It’s scary what is around vegs and fruits. When nutrition emerges as a topic, people start to talk about lots of vegs and fruits… Even if the problem is eating too much carbs (grains). Vegs aren’t “carbs”, they are some miracle health food, apparently…
Using fruits as a proper dish for a whole meal is something I keep being baffled about too…
Fruit is nature’s (and humankind’s) candy. Some are better than others but I wouldn’t eat them as proper food… I am a human, not a fruit eating monkey or something, it’s not my proper food. It’s like carrot for a bunny, nice little sweet candy, maybe fine in moderation, definitely not in big amounts… Even if humans are very resilient (I mean, they survive lots of things, it’s another matter what damage it does but it’s not super quick) and often eat much worse things.
When I was a newbie ketoer, I needed fruits. I am better now. At least in winter…
Not sure I fully agree … perhaps I’m misunderstanding your larger point? …
If fructose is bad for insulin response and liver, then it’s bad.
OTOH, if someone has issues with vegetables (all vegetables?), then they have whatever those issues are. But eating fructose doesn’t resolve that issue either.
(When it comes to veggies, as forum regulars we know there are those above-ground low-carb leafy green ones vs those high carb roots/tubers. Each probably deserves its own category although we tend to lump them all together in today’s diet vernacular.)
I think if you have a healthy liver and eat fruit, you’d be okay. When I was younger, I ate “crab apples” from a tree, and I ate a TON of those when they were in season. I was quite muscular and relatively ripped (never got to the the washboard abs though). For a 16 year old who is exercising a ton and lifting, a bunch of fruit is probably not a bad thing, and at that time, I ate fruit when it was in season. Or at least I don’t remember having fruit in the winter.
Contrast that with the older me, with a liver worn down from high carb and alcohol intake. Fruit is probably a bad thing.
Listened to a podcast about a guy from the Sami tribe, where they ate mainly reindeer. Even they ate fruit in the late summer though, the berries common to that upper-north part of Sweden. Considering they eat fruit in a very short window in the late summer, and at no other time, fruit probably isn’t a bad thing.
I don’t believe fruit is an enemy for everyone, but can be for some. How do we measure whether it is an enemy or not? I don’t know.
What does it matter if we eat fruit in winter or not? I understand eating it in season is natural (even if it’s winter, of course 
I easily find fruits now though not very much but at least they are very sweet unlike most of the wild fruit I find in summer and there is absolutely none in spring) but natural for a wild animal or very ancient human who didn’t even dry some fruit is one thing, I only care about what is good for me. I don’t want to argue right now, I am just curious why it matters. We modern humans obviously don’t care about fattening up for winter (not like I can imagine the wild fruits here helping a big animal like a human with that… except maybe making them hungrier…?) as we have food all year round and we want to keep our healthy amount of body fat.
@ctviggen Fully agree… it’s all about context. When we’re young, our bodies can typically accept things we could never tolerate in our old(er) age. And fruit (in season) is a perfectly appropriate menu item for most omnivores … it’s the 365 days/yr grocery store aisle that invites incessant “out-of-season” issues in today’s modern world.
If I were bulking up fat for the winter, fruit would be my first choice.
Hmm, well I ordered my CGM and just put it on… After it did its initial adjustment phase, it told me that my blood glucose level was 70 and warned me that it was “getting low”.
In the 15 minutes since then, it’s progressively dropped lower and lower and is now at 60 with the CGM’s app warning me that this is “very low” with a bright red warning sign…
Hmm…
I realised that my blood glucose would probably be “low” but I didn’t expect the CGM to start throwing “warnings” my way straight away… Sigh… too much drama…
I was watching a video about Keto yesterday where they said that very low blood glucose levels are fine on a Keto diet because your body has plenty of fuel available as Ketones, so the body isn’t in alarm mode with low glucose levels… (unlike the CGM)
Hmm… had some food, it went up to 95… Just now I was at 53 tho and feeling completely normal… Not feeling “hypoglycaemic” at all… Weird tho, to see numbers like that…
I think you nailed it. We’re not made to eat as many carbs as there are in out diets now. When we’re young its no problem, most people can easily handle it.
When we’re older we can’t handle it but there’s no alerts or alarms. People don’t know so they keep eating the same and their health slowly deteriorates. Then they get direction from authorities which is the “balanced diet” nonsense which includes grains, breads, fruits, “modest portions” of desserts…and they end up on medications which only slows the decline.
The quoted “normal” numbers are for carb burners. Us fat/ketone burners will have lower BG in general… the body will make what it wants when it wants to support the body’s glucose requirements (if there is not enough from ingested carbs). The only “low-BG” situation that should concern you is one where you start feeling bad. If you have no symptoms, your BG level, whatever it is, is just fine.
Exactly. It’s a matter of supply-driven vs demand-driven serum glucose.
Keto’ers are fans of supply-driven glucose.
Gluconeogenesis rules.
I’ve been thinking of getting one too, I`m particularly interested to see what happens at night
