CNN does a personal perspective piece on CGMs

(icky) #21

Just woke up… Can’t read the exact number, but looking at the graph I was just minimally over 40 at one point at night…Hmm… I’m fine, I think… but 40 does seem low…

This is the 2nd CGM I’ve had, and yeah, I’m interested to see what happens at night too, because I’ve always slept really weirdly all my life and wondered whether I was going hypoglycaemic at night.

Now, with Keto, I’m not sure how to interpret a value of 40 at night…

Maybe I should try and find the data from the old one…

The device’s cut off for “low” is 70, so anything red is under 70.
Didn’t get above 100 at all in the last 12 hours.

grafik
grafik.jpg1068×530 63 KB

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #22

You think young people can handle high carb. Looking back at my life I wonder when the damage was being done. My insulin resistance, fatty liver, struggling pancreas etc etc didn’t happen overnight.
Wish I’d known soooner, probably like some of you guys, I followed a (crap) ‘balanced’ diet

#23

Probably many of us feels like that. Even I and I ate high-carb until 35 and never saw any problem from it (beyond feeling stuffed on the worst days). I am pretty healthy (it’s not perfect but I don’t need medicine or a doctor or anything. maybe a stronger core. and my eyes aren’t good but my insides seem to work well enough), I just lost too many teeth during my sugar eating times… :frowning: But my body clearly feels much better at extreme low plant carbs so yeah, I ate very very much not optimal in my younger years. At least my food was nutritious as I ate my bad extras on top of good food…

Thanks, folks, to share your numbers, I can’t even measure ketones but I like seeing such info, even if it isn’t mine :slight_smile: I am fine without the latter, I just eat in a way that my body loves and hope for the best! :wink:

(Jane) #24

I wore one a couple of years ago and it checked it against my pin-prick glucose monitor and it tracked my external monitor but the CGM was always about 20 points below. I got the constant warnings also, especially during the night and it was annoying.

(Joey) #25

@sugar-addict Can’t speak to the absolute values, but the relative spike around awakening time sure looks like a “dawn effect” glucose rise … that’s the renewed energy sensation that probably woke you up.

(icky) #26

Yes, that’s what I figured too. :+1:

Oh, that’s a good point… I lost my pin-prick glucose monitor, so I might go and get my levels tested at the pharmacy or the Dr’s office to see how that compares with the CGM’s results. I did start thinking “Maybe this thing is broken somehow…?”

(Tracy) #27

Hi @sugar-addict,can I ask how does it work as I’ve seen various ones. So you attach the device to your arm ( for two weeks?). Does it then automatically send readings to an app on your phone with constant numbers, or do you have to specifically check at certain times to download or how does it work. I’ve seen some CGM mention a “wand” and only catches in two-hour increments through the day.
Thanks

(icky) #28

Hi, I’m using Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre 3. I downloaded the app for it to my phone and it’s connected to the CGM via Bluetooth. I can check the values on my phone at any time and it updates every 1 or 2 seconds or so… So it’s basically “live”. In the graph above, you can see that there’s a gap in the graph at about 4 am… That’s not meant to happen… It means the sensor is having an issue of some sort… My phone was next to me, so I don’t think it was an issue with the phone connection. If I go outside with the CGM on my arm and leave the phone indoors, my impression is that the CGM has some sort of memory and keeps track of my glucose levels and then, when it reconnects to my phone, it uploads the data from when I was outside…

(Edith) #29

I’m not sure that is true any more if you look at how many overweight children there are now. As pointed out by Robert Lustig (if I recall correctly), foods are so ultra processed and full of chemicals these days that even young people can’t handle them.

(Joey) #30

Apparently it’s a dietary arms race. We are manufacturing edibles that are increasingly effective at destroying health at ever younger ages. :bomb:

(Jane) #31

Kepp in mind it doesn’t measure blood glucose levels. It is measuring the glucose in your interstitial fluids (clear fluid under your skin) so even though it usually tracks, it is a different reading.

(Tracy) #32

So does it use a different measurement scale, or the same one as blood glucose but readings will be different

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #33

hahaha :joy: … I thought this funny then stopped laughing when I realised it’s probably true :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Actually I have two concerns, 1st one is obviously the expense and the 2nd is a permanent lance inside me. I’m not a cyborg… though did enjoy the latter Voyager episodes with 7 of 9.

(Bob M) #34

I’m not sure I’d blame everything on chemicals. For a while there, I believed the idea that saturated fat caused fat cells to be insulin resistant, so they would send a signal that they were full. This was supposed to cause us to stop eating.

So, I made desserts and croissants that were full of the best organic, European wheat I could get along with the best butter, regular sugar. A small list completely controlled by me. For good measure, I added butter on top of the dessert and croissant.

The result? I ate and ate and ate… No off switch whatsoever. I gained weight so fast on that diet that it freaked my wife out.

There were no known chemicals in what I made.

I think another possibility is that the food environment is so polluted that there’s constant eating going on. My daughter is going to a 3 hour group therapy session, daily. How many snack times do they have in 3 hours? Two.

And that’s not unusual. Kids today eat ALL THE TIME. They eat in libraries, in church, in class, all the freaking time. And if there’s ever a party or celebration, it’s junk food. You’ll be lucky if there’s fruit.

The idea that fruit loops with dyes that are not approved in Europe but are approved in the US are killing us is ludicrous. Would I rather not have the dyes? Absolutely, and some or many children are especially reactive to them. But it’s the sugar and environment that’s way more of a problem.

(Jane) #35

^^^ THIS

I think this is one element in the obesity in children. As a kid I rarely had a snack! When I got home from school I changed into my play clothes (dresses only for girls back in the 60’s/70’s) and went outside to play until dinner time. No snack needed.

Three meals a day with no sugar in any meal. Sweets were a holiday/birthday treat.

Lots of bacon/eggs for breakfast rotated with oatmeal and cream of wheat (no box cereals). Dinner was meat and vegetables (some carby). No bread or sweet tea for us at dinner. I didn’t like peas or corn so potatoes were my main carby veggie. Every meal was at home or at school and no junk food on the school lunch menu. We ate out on very rare occasions.

It was a rare exception to have an overweight kid in my classes growing up.

(icky) #36

Hmm… So I went to the pharmacy to get my blood glucose tested and it was 16 points above the CGM. The pharmacy’s regular finger prick glucose test showed 113 and the CGM said 97.

16 points seems like a pretty wild deviation to me… Is that something you just have to accept with CGMs or is it a dodgy sensor and worth getting a refund?

(Joey) #37

Two thoughts…
1 - Did you need to calibrate your CGM (e.g., with test solution)?
2 - As I seem to recall, home measurement devices are typically subject to a 10-15% measurement error allowance. If so, the difference would seem to fall at the outer limits of that kind of error. Still - a consistently lower measure might be something other than random measurement noise.

Here are some considerations…

https://library.teladochealth.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406924179987-7-Reasons-You-May-Be-Getting-an-Inaccurate-Blood-Sugar-Reading

#38

I agree. Well sure, the chemicals don’t help either but just eating “proper”, too carby food all the time can do a ton of bad. I always ate mostly homemade, nutritious food (oh I had sugary bought sweets too but the major part of my sweet desserts was homemade and basically everything else) but it wasn’t ideal, to put it lightly.

Oh, that’s good. My childhood wasn’t that great, well when it was a school day. Breakfast make me ravenous so I had a smaller meal at 10. And sweets were part of a proper meal for me (so, lunch and dinner). Sigh.

They weren’t even around when I was a kid :smiley: Then I tasted some out of curiosity… Dropped the idea immediately. STILL can’t imagine how anyone can consider it food. The filled cocoa crunchies were nice as sweets once in a blue moon though. Strictly without any liquid, ew, why would I ruin the perfect crunch? :smiley:

(icky) #39

No, I didn’t have to calibrate the CGM…

And I don’t think the error issues in the link apply, because I specifically went to the pharmacy and had them do it so I’d be sure it was done “properly”

(Joey) #40

@sugar-addict If I’m reading this study’s results correctly, the “mean absolute relative difference” between each of these various studies of the Freestyle Navigator I CGM (a popular model) and a base lab reference reading typically runs from around from around 12% to 15%. Put differently, the average difference (note: not even the largest difference) vs. a contemporaneous reference lab reading falls within this range of deviation…

image
image.png956×606 57.9 KB

Study source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4667347/

The implication, to my reading of this is, this: given a 100 mg/dl glucose lab reading, the CGM would report - on average - a reading of 85 to 115 (at 15% MARD). And this is only on average — could be less or more than even this range.

The technology used in most commercially available CGMs is likely similar, and therefore the accuracy range is also likely similar across models currently being marketed.

Hope this info helps.

If I were using a CGM, I’d be looking for my individual changes over time in response to activities, food choices, sleep habits, stress, etc. The absolute glucose readings are not as meaningful as learning about oneself from the excursions. :vulcan_salute: