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FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

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Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#81
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back, there were a number of startups that essentially resold prescriptions of the ABT/DXCM CGM and provided personalized meal/exercise-response analytics on top. Seems like traction has been tough going, though. Dialing back from "anyone with potential metabolic issues" -- what's a realistic market? Something like high-level athletes and/or bio-hacker enthusiasts are the only folks who seem to care. On t…

Lactate actually comes for free with blood glucose when you measure it with a chemical sensor, it's just not something that's usually asked for. I definitely think it would be considered a form of doping to use it in competition, but I think recovery is where it would make more impact anyways. You also wouldn't want to use it before a race, as you'd run the risk of reduced pancreatic function. AGC will find its main…

I definitely think it would be considered a form of doping to use it in competition

Already banned:

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/uci-bans-supersapiens

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lactate actually comes for free with blood glucose when you measure it with a chemical sensor, it's just not something that's usually asked for. I definitely think it would be considered a form of doping to use it in competition, but I think recovery is where it would make more impact anyways. You also wouldn't want to use it before a race, as you'd run the risk of reduced pancreatic function. AGC will find its main…

There doesn't seem to be a continuous lactate sensor on the market. Lactic acid production and/or clearance are definitely useful data w.r.t. exercise (many training regimens talk about lactate thresholds) and also useful in in-patient settings. No disagreement about AGC in the hospital -- there is a lot of lab/titration work in current clinical workflows for monitoring patient glucose levels.

Lactate's available in the internal engineering data of these sensors, just not something that anyone has wanted to spend the time or money to qualify with the FDA. It essentially comes "for free" due to the chemical reaction the sensor uses.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#83
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ‘only’ measure glucose levels. As the article says, this is the first approved device that monitors both ketone and glucose levels.

Ketones don't come from nowhere, they come from your body breaking muscles down in a last ditch effort to control sugars after they are dangerously elevated for extended periods of time, I'm talking 500+ over weeks. It's sort of like adding a "your car has been completely out of gas for one week" monitor to your "gas tank level" monitor.

Um, no ? Ketones come from fat burning, not muscle.

In T1D with no insulin, muscle break down from gluconesis will increase blood sugar in the blood even more. The absence of insulin also makes ketone production unrestricted, so you end up in ketoacidosis.

Muscle is used when you don't have fat, or when you eat completely nothing (burn both fat & muscle).

Like I've gained ~10KG of muscle while on keto diet. Blood sugar at 70-100 depending on scenario. Usually on the lower end.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ketones have some dieting and weight loss applications, so I guess you could do better real time tracking of how you're digesting carbs and when it's okay to eat? maybe

They are specifically relevant to trying to enter a fasted state. The presence or absence of ketones in your blood can tell you whether or not (say) that coffee you just drank took you out of the fasted state (that you were in for not eating overnight). Whether or not you are in a fasted state matters not just for weight loss, but also for things like longevity (when you are in a fasted state your body cleans up dead…

whether or not (say) that coffee you just drank took you out of the fasted state

A cup of coffee has zero carbohydrates, trace lipids, and about half a gram of protein. That's not going to pull anyone out of a fasting state.

Now, if you're talking about a cup of flavoured milk, that's a different question...

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#85
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lactate actually comes for free with blood glucose when you measure it with a chemical sensor, it's just not something that's usually asked for. I definitely think it would be considered a form of doping to use it in competition, but I think recovery is where it would make more impact anyways. You also wouldn't want to use it before a race, as you'd run the risk of reduced pancreatic function. AGC will find its main…

There doesn't seem to be a continuous lactate sensor on the market. Lactic acid production and/or clearance are definitely useful data w.r.t. exercise (many training regimens talk about lactate thresholds) and also useful in in-patient settings. No disagreement about AGC in the hospital -- there is a lot of lab/titration work in current clinical workflows for monitoring patient glucose levels.

There doesn't seem to be a continuous lactate sensor on the market.

They exist, a simple search will turn up a variety (how well they work is a different question). But see my sibling comment, they're banned from cycling competition.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventive medicine is a bit one. If your fitness watch could measure blood glucose, I think it would be a ton more impactful in terms of health outcomes.

In what way? Nondiabetic folks self regular glucose just fine on their own.

That's what I thought too, until I got my last bloodwork results and started wearing one of the OTC continuous glucose monitors.

That device helped a lot to switch diet habits.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#87
post #48

Automated glucose control will be the next frontier in so many areas of healthcare. I'm still skeptical that anyone will be able to noninvasively and accurately sense blood sugar, but I'm glad people (especially kids with T1) will have one more tool to help them. I hope they can figure out the reimbursement side to get it into the most hands possible!

> Automated glucose control will be the next frontier in so many areas of healthcare. What areas do you have in mind outside of diabetes management?

Blood glucose levels affect lots of health functions. Diabetes represents an extreme end of the spectrum where the body's ability to regulate these fluctuations fails, but just because your body can get your levels in control eventually doesn't mean you won't suffer from the negative effects of it needing to do so.

Maintaining consistent glucose levels improves mental health, weight management, sleep quality, muscle recovery, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular health, and may even slow aging. There isn't much clinical data at the moment on how to use blood glucose measurements to control glucose levels outside of people with diabetes (there are lots of things that impact it besides just sugar intake), but there are definitely major theoretical benefits if it can be worked out.

Also, just reducing the incidence of diabetes would be no small accomplishment. About 3.5% of global disability adjusted life-years (DALYs) are due to diabetes. As of 2021 it was the 7th largest contributor of global DALYs.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#88
Ketones are only going to be present if you are exceptionally bad (very high carb diet) or exceptionally good (very low carb diet) at managing your blood sugar. It's not going to be terribly useful for your average diabetic who has fairly good control over their blood sugars.

Re: FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diabetic ketoacidosis only happens in T1D, or when you have something extremely wrong going on metabolically (like failing organs, etc). Normally it should never happen. It happens at ketones like ~10+ mmol, and it's ~impossible to go more than ~6 for a healthy human even eating 100% fat and fasting for a week+ and doing marathons or whatever all at the same time. The keto diet, can actually help in T1D, by keeping b…

It can happen in people with uncontrolled T2D as well. My cofounder is a pediatric ICU doctor who has treated hundreds of DKA patients. Also there wasn't really a relationship of the keto diet to the rest of my post, just using it to contextualize a technical term with one that might be more familiar.

> It can happen in people with uncontrolled T2D as well. My cofounder is a pediatric ICU doctor who has treated hundreds of DKA patients.

Yes, but you have to work really hard for many years to achieve this!

While on T1D it happens by default if you don't inject insulin.

> while the new system also measures ketones, of keto diet fame, which are leading indicators of a really dangerous situation called diabetic ketoacidosis

It was being said like ketones are bad, because they are known for this scenario, but should be noted that it only happens in these few scenarios, like in uncontrolled diabetes or organ failure or smth.

In most other cases they should be good. But won't happen randomly unless you're explicitly doing keto.

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