Continuous Glucose Monitoring — The First Four Weeks

Highest glucose levels when stressed!

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These are cool results. Thanks for posting.

I noticed you cite chris kesser in your article. What do you make of his work?

@Justin_Lawler - Your Blood Glucose was not affected/ did not vary a lot by food consumption or variation in food consumed and maybe some time later when digested?

I think he’s pretty good - not sure I’m onboard with 100% he says but I think he speeks a lot of truth. Especially with things like cholesterol. I’m not a doctor however - so all I can do is cross-check his facts. But he will always link all statements onto sites like PubMed for everything.

He is, of course, a little heavy on the marketing/affiliate links, which can turn people off.

I’d be a bigger fan of Mark Hyman.

What’s your opinion yourself?

@xbliss Depends on the food. Fast carbs hit the blood in minutes. I took a spoonful of honey once and it spiked from 5.5 -> 8.5 within 15 minutes.

Slow carbs take longer. Also if I’m moving about it can be very stable - but then when I sit down, even 2 hours later, it can spike then.

Gonna dig in deeper in a food post later.

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@Justin_Lawler I recall his yelp reviews were pretty bad when I checked about a year ago. Personally, I think he genuinly wants to help but I find a lot of what he posts to be based on small studies. Its not clear to me that he understands deeply the nature of the papers he cites. I defineitly don’t but the few that I do, I didn’t get that feeling. The problem with these small studies, in my opinion, is that they are very underpowered, the placebo effect is greatly underestimated, and there is possibly a large phenotype bias (which could be placebo effect). Overall, I personally don’t look to the writings to help myself.

I see many folks similar to Mr. Kesser promoting these “alternative” or “pop therepies.” From my view, they all follow a similar pattern:

  1. Symptom checklist overlaps with many conditions including anxiety and depression symptoms.
  2. Symptoms are evaluated based on how a person feels. People google when they feel down or anxious so the search is emotion driven. Patients are rarely encouraged to track their emotions daily AND report what their data. Personally, I would start here first.
  3. The “cures” are well defined but impossible to implmentent. For example, gluten is often touted as being a source of anxiety and stomach ailments. I’ve seen websites recommend 60 days of going gluten free and see if their symptoms improve. No mention of actually tracking symptoms (meaning writing them down daily). So you go gluten free for a week and then have a day where you feel down, so you assume you must have had gluten in something. You find nothing and conclude industry uses hidden gluten in their food and then proceed to write your congressman.
  4. Tests or suppliments are recommended.

I think there is a little bit of truth in all of these studies but I really wonder how much is driven by the placebo effect.

My 2 cents.

@IsaacGerg - thanks for this feedback. I’m always interested in hearing the full story. I didn’t know about the small studies. And of course I’m not a medical doctor. Just someone who reads up on this stuff and does self-experiments.

He’s very much trying to fit everything into the ‘paleo’ model alright, and there might be good insights there, but I doubt it can explain everything. And the whole anti-gluten angle has almost totally gone mainstream right now. Again, probably a good deal of truth in it, but Chris is definitely milking it.

For me, I feel much better without gluten. But if I’m eating gluten, I’m also eating starchy foods, sending my blood glucose all over the place. That’s not going to do me any good either.

Interesting response. Should have some Honey and then try different levels of activity…
Walk, Workout etc… and see if the Effort Balances out the extra Glucose?..

Walking really reduces the glucose spikes post meal. Even a standing desk seems to help.

Ben Greenfield talks about doing air squats after a high-carb meal. Might try that also.

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Second post in the series - metabolism & sleep.

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More than anyone else just saying I’d like to see Correlation of “Sugar Stimulus” i.e. Glucose increase visavis “Pre Consumption & Post Consumption” Activity effects on overall curve.

I think it would be interesting to see how the body SPREADS out Energy Intake and Outgive over time.

Hi Justin, thank you so much for your post about sleep. I got my Abbot CGM two days ago and was shocked to learn that according to it I was severely hypoglycemic a couple of times during the first night (at the one point down to 2.2 mmol/l – 40 mg/dl) – every time during/after REM-sleep.

I had same symptoms as you describe in your post and woke up when my blood sugar was up again and woke up groggy and headache. Like you, I had eaten a low-carb meal before going to bed (and 4 hours before I went to bed).

The second night (last night) I prepared by eating a large oatmeal made with fat free milk, almond butter and oat meal. Again my blood sugar dropped during/after each REM-sleep cycle, but this time the lowest it went was 3.0 mmol/l (about 53 mg/dl).

Last night I ate about 3 hours before going to bed – tonight I’m going to eat about an hour before going to bed to see if it would keep my nightly blood sugar a bit higher.

Of course I have only two nights worth of data, but the “night of the lizards” feeling from the severly hypoglycemic night has been pretty common for me and I’ve been wondering what causes it. I don’t drink alcohol, take good care of my sleep hygiene, am at normal weight, don’t have sleep apnea etc. which would have explained it.

I’m also known for being very still at my sleep – to the point of my bed partners commenting on it. I use Dreem 2 headband to track my sleep and according to it I get on average 2 hours of deep sleep and 2+ hours of REM sleep per night.

I haven’t been able to find any literature about non-diabetic subjects experiencing such a low blood sugar during the night without any apparent reason. I take my medications in the morning (methylphenidate for ADHD and estrogen for menopause) and their levels are at the lowest/non-existent during the night.

During the day my blood glucose is mostly around 5 mmol/l (90 mg/dl) and at the most up to 6.5 mmol/l (around 115 mg/dl), though I’ve seen it dip to 3.9-4.4 (70-80 mg/dl) during the first 15-30 mins of exercise (brisk walking).

If you happen to remember any studies or personal observations that could help me figure out why my blood sugar is goes so low during the night, that would be very helpful.

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Keep in mind is the position of the sensor could trigger these kinds of events as well. When I put the sensor in a bad location and roll around when I sleep, my glucose will fall into hypoglycemia levels and sometimes even drop to zero lol. When I position the sensor perfectly, the hypoglycemia spikes disappear.

The bad locations could be either too close to my body (which gets crushed between my arm and my chest), or too far on the outside of my arm (which gets crushed when I sleep on my side).

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Yes, I did take that into account and compared my movements and body position to the results — there’s no correlation. I’m known as an exceptionally “still sleeper”. That is, I move relatively little throughout the night. I also didn’t sleep on the side where the sensor is.

In the meantime I’ve learned that the blood sugar in my tissues (that my CGM measures) changes about 10-20 minute later than in blood and that the number that the sensor gives MAY be lower than the measurement I could get from my blood (10-20 mins earlier). Though those reports of lower number are based on the older model, and this newer model should be more accurate.

But the general trend should be right.

I do think it is likely that my blood sugar is on average 2-3 mmol/l lower during the night than the day, but it is possible that I’m not quite as hypoglycemic as I thought, though my symptoms do match hypoglycemia.

I’ll probably get a new sensor (same brand/model) after this one to get a full month of measurements and borrow somewhere a blood test glucose monitor to calibrate the measurements to find out how hypoglycemic I actually get during the night.

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Okay, I just found this post. My ADHD-mind has to wait a little longer to jump into conclusions. :grinning:

https://www.diabettech.com/cgm/comparing-the-libre2-and-dexcom-g6-as-rt-cgm-using-wearenotwaiting-software/

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