What’s a CGM and would it benefit me?
By: Patrick Wells
What is a a CGM?
A CGM, or Continuous Glucose Monitor is a piece of hardware. (originally used as a medical device). The device embeds a piece of filament under the skin to measure your body’s interstitial fluid. Reading your body’s glucose levels. As opposed to pricking your finger to draw blood and measure glucose on a test strip. A CGM device is primarily used by PWD’s (People with Diabetes). The CGM allows them to avoid the regular testing of their blood to determine their need to inject insulin. This is a quick & rough summary. Diabetes is a disease in which the body depends upon additional/external injections of insulin to offset glucose. Which naturally happens for non-PWD’s.
Bio-Hackers or Fitness enthusiasts
In more recent years, there’s been a growing community of Bio-Hackers or Fitness enthusiasts and companies (UltraHuman, SuperSapiens, Levels, etc.) that would prescribe a CGM to be used for people without diabetes; using this additional data point to help direct people towards optimal health and performance goals.
There are even now over the counter options to be purchased (Dexcom’s Stelo and Abbott’s Lingo), making the ability to monitor glucose levels available without a prescription and their respective Mobile Apps that read the sensor and provide insights.
Is knowing my glucose levels beneficial?
With all the background information above, the question remains – is knowing my glucose levels beneficial? While it is perhaps difficult to give a clear “Yes” or “No”, there is knowledge to be gained from glucose as an additional data point. At the bare minimum, if you aren’t able to easily categorize food into Carbs, Proteins, or Fats (with carbs generally leading to a glucose increase, or “spike”).
A CGM can be beneficial in helping you truly see your body’s glucose response to food. How that food that you are ingesting and aim for glucose stability, or control which would avoids spikes or crashes.
While I’m not going to dive into nutritional advice. The ability to know more about the effect of what you are eating can be very important in maintaining good nutritional habits! So, if you are interested in learning more, adding a CGM (usually a 2 week duration is standard) is a low cost option to better “see” what impact food is having on your glucose levels.
About the author: I work for Abbott Diabetes Care. Which is the company that produces the FreeStyle Libre sensors. As well as the Lingo device/app. I’ve used Lingo and also will wear some FreeStyle Libre sensors. To explain from time to time how my eating is effecting my glucose. I am happy to discuss more if you see me at OC. In addition, I am available at my email address Patrick@ocgymbend.com
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