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Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

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Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#111

Post by lytefm »

I've been working in this space for seven years, this isn't new. There have been big studies from the UK in 2020 [1] and Israel in 2015 [2] about this.

Some of my learnings:

- Don't start your day with a large amount carbs. Have some insulin in your blood before eating that big bowl of oatmeal. Or just go for some yougurt with nuts and seeds.

- The classical order of a three course meal (salad first, then main dish, then dessert) is pretty good in terms of preventing glucose spikes.

- Going for a walk after a meal is great for bringing glucose levels down.

- Eat at least 2h before going to sleep. Having high glucose levels disrupts sleep.

- Alcohol lowers the glucose response of a meal, but is still bad unfortunately.

- Diet Coke works. No spike vs loads of sugar with a real coke.

- Stress can spike glucose like crazy, e.g. being in an interview or during takeoff.

- If you really want to know how you react to some food, keep the circumstances (time of day, sleep, physical activity, stress) similar. There's too much influence beyond just the meal.

I bet that everyone who is wearing a premium smartwatch or an Oura ring now will be using a CGM now and then in the next years.

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32528151/ [2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26590418/

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#113

Post by robertlagrant »

happyopossum wrote: post #82
Taikonerd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the idea behind the "Zoe" service: https://zoe.com/en-us 1. You wear a CGM for 2 weeks, and log everything you eat. 2. At the end, you get a personalized report about how different foods that you ate affect you, personally. And they can extrapolate to other foods that you didn't eat during the testing period. 3. Zoe's model gets better and better the more people sign up, and the more data they get.

This is the type of thing that the linked studies refute - there are either too many external variables to control, or our bodies glucose response is far more complex than we currently understand. Or both - both of the above seem possibly true at the same time. Either way, if something as simple as eating a few bites of bacon before you eat your toast can change your glucose response, manually logging your meals for…

> Either way, if something as simple as eating a few bites of bacon before you eat your toast can change your glucose response, manually logging your meals for Zoe isn’t gonna provide enough data for any reliable extrapolations

I'm not sure - the fact that it does vary from person to person, doesn't mean there aren't groups of people for whom it behaves more predictably, which could be clinically useful.

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#114

Post by whycome »

I like the idea that the proliferation of LLMs become frameworks for understanding that can help advance a field or help curious thinkers come up with novel hypotheses. If the body is something like a trained model, it’s not crazy to think that it will respond to something like fake sugar (eg aspartame) with biological processes that would only be expected for real sugar.

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#115

Post by endoblast »

endoblast wrote: post #17

One factor that scientific food experiments don't seem to include is gluttony . Presumably because it is subjective (though nonetheless real for that). Yet if people are motivated by the amount of comfort and/or pleasure they obtain from eating their favourite foods this may have an effect on their physiological response.

I realise the word 'gluttony' is off-putting (for atheists for instance) but I don't know a better one. Perhaps 'over-excitement'?

The symptoms of excitement are of course similar to the fight-or-flight response. Raised heart rate for one. Butterflies in the stomach indicate release of adrenaline, which in turn raises blood glucose -- not from the food being eaten but from the body's stores. So there's a link right there.

How excited you are about a given food will depend not only upon the foodstuff itself but also on your personal taste and personal history. If you have taken pleasure in its consumption many times in the past this may affect your present level of excitement.

'Arousal' is another word that just sprang to mind.

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#116

Post by whycome »

tharkun__ wrote: post #86
jodrellblank wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " So, you have a lot of people commenting here that this is obvious common sense " You have this about everything, everywhere. It's a pet peeve how much stuff people will attribute to "common sense" so they can do the internet "I'm superior" thing. "Wear sunscreen, it's just common sense". No it isn't. We evolved on Earth under the sun, we feel good when going out in the sun, it's bright and beautiful. Rubbing petr…

You are using one particular "definition" of the phrase common sense. It does appear when I search as well. But so do others. knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument. As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or knowledge of basic facts that any adult human being ought to possess. Now…

Most? 50.1%?

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#117

Post by whycome »

jodrellblank wrote: post #43
csours wrote: post #8

Some assumptions are so obvious no one bothers to state them, or even remember them. Assumption: Medical professionals are trained to use Evidence Based Medicine (EBM). One might assume that EBM means something specific, and I'm sure it does, but that specific thing is different for different people. One thing that EBM sometimes means is: common sense is no substitute for evidence. There are uncountable times that co…

> " So, you have a lot of people commenting here that this is obvious common sense " You have this about everything, everywhere. It's a pet peeve how much stuff people will attribute to "common sense" so they can do the internet "I'm superior" thing. "Wear sunscreen, it's just common sense". No it isn't. We evolved on Earth under the sun, we feel good when going out in the sun, it's bright and beautiful. Rubbing petr…

> "Wear sunscreen, it's just common sense"

And this isn’t even universally true. It’s tied to skin color. Sunscreen won’t do much for someone with extremely dark skin. In medical lit, “common” often refers to “white persons.”

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#118

Post by zamadatix »

e40 wrote: post #65
blindriver wrote: post #19

I've been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and wear a CGM. I find that my blood glucose spikes much later than what is suggested. For example, I might eat a meal and my blood glucose doesn't spike until after 2 hours. When it spikes, I see the body react with insulin and it drives my blood sugar levels down, so I'm not sure if I actually do have T2D or if this is just how my body works. Another thing I've noticed is th…

Usually T2D is diagnosed based on a fasting glucose test. I also recently worse a CGM because I was borderline T2D and wanted to know how various foods impacted my levels. My peak was about 2 hours after the meal, so about 1.5 hours and change, given the lag of the CGM. I also found that sweets not only spiked my values but did so over a 6-12 hour period! That was shocking. I have not had dessert for 107 days because…

Popcorn (even plain air popped) is more carbs as a percentage of mass (~70%) than eating a bag of Hershey Kisses (60%) so it's no surprise. I've always found starches to be the bigger culprit of my spikes than sweets since it's relatively easy to overlook and much easier to consume a large quantity without thinking about it.

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#119

Post by turnsout »

Leaving aside the science, this paper draws the wrong conclusion. Just because many factors influence BG response does not mean CGMs are somehow invalid as a tool for personalized nutrition. Quite the opposite. A good nutritionist does not work in a vacuum. They know the holistic nature of BG and will tailor their recommendations to the patient based on lifestyle. (I worked on a holistic diabetes management platform)

Re: Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals

#120

Post by jadeisokay »

i'm a type one diabetic. this is uh, not news to me. i can eat the same thing every single day at the same time and see different numbers after every meal. stress, hydration, heat/cold, fatigue, if the wind is blowing, so many other things affect blood sugar.
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