As the obsession with adopting a healthy lifestyle that allows one to be a centenarian grows, anyone lives pending control of aspects of health previously reserved for elite athletes or those with a medical condition.
Focused on measuring the steps you take per day? Ugh, that’s something very 2018. Now what matters is knowing your VO2 max, which measures the performance of your heart during exercise. Monitoring your heart rate or sleep cycles is also something you should keep track of. But if there is a trendy metric is knowing what your blood sugar levels are.
Hollywood stars, influencers, elite athletes and longevity gurus have long praised the benefits of wearing a glucose monitoring sensors constantly. Proponents claim it has benefits on weight, physical performance, concentration and metabolic health.
Continuous glucose monitors, what is that?
Continuous glucose monitors (CGM) marked a before and after for diabetics. These sensors are small devices that are painlessly placed on the back of the arm or abdomen. They constantly measure the concentration of glucose but not in the blood, but in the interstitial fluid, between the cells. Through a transmitter, the sensor data is sent to a receiver that can be an app on your mobile.
Before that, the alternative was glucose readers that required a lancet cut on the finger to obtain a blood sample. While this is more precise it is also clearly more uncomfortable.
So it is not surprising that the CGM market for diabetes patients is already worth billions of dollars a year. Value that could be driven by a growing interest from people without the disease who are eager to know how each food they put in their mouth affects them.
Biotechnology companies such as Zoe either Nutrisense are some of the brands that are marketing these monitors as a trend and status complement among lifestyle lovers. healthy. One of the first was the alternative created by the pharmaceutical company Abbott in 2015. Its device Freestyle Freea small plastic disc with a fine filament that is inserted under the skin, revolutionized the sector.
In people with diabetes they have clear advantages: it avoids puncture, offers real-time control of glucose levels and sends alerts in case of hypo or hyperglycemia. But what sense does it have in healthy people?
The glucose revolution
Glucose has become the new gluten, compared an article in the beginning of the year The Wall Street Journal. “A medical sensitivity that became a nutritional obsession for the masses.”
Controlling blood sugar is important in diabetics, since they have problems producing or using insulin, a hormone generated by the pancreas that helps cells absorb sugar from the bloodstream.
In the long run, high blood sugar levels can contribute to insulin malfunction, even in healthy people and thus in prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. This is why health experts view glucose spikes with suspicion. The problem is that instead of just giving up donuts and soda, people are making glucose measurements one more neuropathy in an increasingly anxious healthy lifestyle.
Under the shelter of this new obsession, gurus such as Justin Richardwho on his Instagram account shows his more than a million and a half followers how each of the things he eats affects insulin, from guacamole with cheese to an activia.
Jessie Inchauspé, better known online as Glucose Goddess, has built an entire empire with her advice to minimize glucose spikes. More than 4 million followers, covers in fashion magazines, books best sellersupplements ($65 a bottle) and an online course that costs almost $2,500.
His method is intended to control glucose, which will provide more concentration, energy and a better metabolism and weight, he says. Their hacks Basics include eating in a specific order that benefits glucose control or taking a tablespoon of vinegar 20 minutes before a meal to reduce the spike by up to 30%.
Inchauspé, a biochemist by training who is not diabetic, began using a continuous glucose monitor as part of a trial she enrolled in. She found relationship between your spikes and your mental health problems, such as anxiety or confusion. Created an app to record data from your CGM and display it. In 2019, she began sharing her finds on Instagram.
“I see myself as a person who encourages behavior change,” she describes in The Wall Street Journal.
The latest to join this trend, elite athletes. Some Olympic athletes are using them to track blood glucose levels in order to analyze and boost their performance, he reported. Reuters.
Should you join the trend?
Nutritionist Beatriz Larrea considers that glucose monitors “are a great tool to combat the causes of insulin resistance, which in turn prevents the appearance of type 2 diabetes.” As she describes in The Objectiveshe herself wore one without being diabetic to control how food affected her. “The same food can cause very different effects in people,” point.
A 2018 study from Stanford University used CGM precisely to measure how blood glucose evolved in healthy people.
“We saw that some people who think they are healthy are actually misregulating glucose (sometimes as severely as people with diabetes) and they have no idea,” said Michael Snyder, professor of genetics at Stanford and lead author. of the study.
“We never know how people will react to different foodsso using a CGM can help guide them in their choices,” says Vijaya Surampudi, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine in the Division of Human Nutrition at UCLA Health.
“Everyone says oatmeal is great, but some people eat it and their blood sugar spikes over 200,” he says. “With a sensor, they can identify that and recognize that oats may not be the best food for them.” However, he also believes that this can trigger obsessive behavior or degenerate into eating problems.
Not all doctors and scientists agree that CGMs can help people become even healthier. Robert H. Shmerling, from Harvard Health, believes that there is little published research that supports the benefits of this use.
“The best study I could find didn’t find anything particularly surprising: Among 153 people who didn’t have diabetes, about 96% of the time blood sugar levels were normal or close to normal. In fact, many of the abnormal levels were considered implausible or an error.”
Health journalist Mary Chris Jaklevic wrote in JAMA that healthy people are unlikely to see significant changes in their blood sugar levels, because their bodies process sugar efficiently, “which makes these monitors are more useful to satisfy personal curiosity that to significantly improve health.