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FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

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Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#141

Post by throwup238 »

pie420 wrote: post #104
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that for healthy individuals, spiking blood glucose levels is not a problem. Did you get in to any of the research on that? Glucose is a problem for diabetics because they can’t regulate it, but healthy people can. At least this is loosely what I have heard, somewhat third hand. Any information is appreciated.

Not a doctor, but from what I have seen, there is a healthy amount of spiking from eating normal foods, but our modern diets are so sugar and carb heavy that the glucose spikes are way outside the range that our bodies evolved to handle. Hunter gatherers would maybe eat some berries here (much smaller and less sweet than modern berries) and there. The modern human eating pizza, tons of bread, ice cream, soda, etc. cr…

> Hunter gatherers would maybe eat some berries here (much smaller and less sweet than modern berries) and there.

Archaic humans had access to plenty of wild fruit that were high in sugar and tubers that were high in complex carbs. They even had access to concentrated forms of sugar like sugarcane and honey.

They obviously didn't have refined sugars in everything they eat like we do but that they had access to limited sugar in the form of berries is a persistent myth. They would have been exposed to large glucose spikes regularly whenever they came upon a new tree that was in season while migrating.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#142

Post by anorwell »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #74
smt88 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the needle in the CGM bothers you, don't let it. It's a quick, painless jab with a tiny needle at the beginning and then the needle comes out. The part that stays in your body is just a flexible filament made of plastic. I did this experiment as well, and the main thing it did was completely stop me from snacking. My habits got better because I could see how my BG could never return to baseline if I allowed myself…

My understanding is that for healthy individuals, spiking blood glucose levels is not a problem. Did you get in to any of the research on that? Glucose is a problem for diabetics because they can’t regulate it, but healthy people can. At least this is loosely what I have heard, somewhat third hand. Any information is appreciated.

The longevity people think that blood glucose levels are an important predictor for rate of (biological) aging. See e.g. https://www.lifespan.io/topic/blood-glucose-is-a-biomarker-o...

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#143

Post by sdo72 »

epistasis wrote: post #133
sdo72 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I would recommend the opposite unless you are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Using this may make people think eating high GI food causes diabetes.

Prevention of diabetes or even of pre-diabetes is well worth the experiment. At least for folks in the US, where metabolic syndrome is hanging over the head of a huuuuuge percentage of the population. Hiding information from people because they might misinterpret it is not a successful medical strategy, the better strategy is to educate, see if the information will be welcome, then provide the information in the cont…

I think your approach is that giving more data to individuals so that they can be informed and make better decision about life choices. However, if we look at reality, the data is already there, without experimenting we can already get a ton of data. Then the question is have people made better decisions about their life choices. I think the answer is No.

And thus I doubt very much that with this device or devices like this, the diabetic population will be reduced. In fact, I believe it to be the opposite.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#144

Post by queuebert »

eurleif wrote: post #107
queuebert wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False positives in medicine can cause unnecessary interventions that carry their own risks. Believe it or not, there is an optimum level of ignorance for maximum health.

If having more information leads to worse outcomes, that's fundamentally a problem with how you're responding to the information, not with having the information.

If you knew which signals were false positives, they'd be true negatives.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#145

Post by autoexec »

It'd be pretty interesting to see that kind of data, but it looks like this product violates my policy on not buying hardware that requires a cell phone app to use, and my policy on keeping as much of my medical information as far away from my mobile device as possible. I'm not sure exactly who the app itself sells/leaks the data being collected to, but even having that kind of data on the device would make me uncomfortable.

A quick read of their privacy policy suggests that the mobile app is full of personalized ads and they use your data for "direct marketing" as well as "research". They offer your data to third parties for both "marketing" and "analytics" reasons. They'll send your data overseas whenever it suits them, even to places where your data will not have the same protections, and they'll keep the data they collect forever unless you submit a request for them to delete it and they are actually required to do so by law.

Since I'm only mildly curious to see what the numbers would look like, I'm fine with waiting until someone puts one on the market that saves its data to storage that can later be copied over to an offline PC.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#147

Post by spc476 »

galago wrote: post #110
haswell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the fun, how did it go? Find anything surprising or insightful in the process? It sounds like an experiment I’d like to do for the purpose of optimizing my daily habits and establishing a better mental model for how my eating habits impact me throughout the day. But I really dislike needles.

Freestyle Libre 3 only has a plastic filament and the plastic applicator pushes it in without pain. Very different than metal lancets (stick test). I can't feel it at all when its in the back of my arm. If I were worried about sweating too much and it not sticking I would get one of the third party over-patches that create a lager adhesive area. I might do that in the Summer.

My girlfriend uses the Libre 3 and I was wondering how it worked with just that plastic filament. She doesn't feel it at all when I apply it. We found that if she washes the area with soap and then just relaxes her arm and lets it hang freely, I apply it to the back upper arm, it just stays on and doesn't get in the way.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#148

Post by jseliger »

philsnow wrote: post #30

I dove into CGMs a little bit about a year ago, mostly just for fun. Yes, I paid money to some online prescription mill for CGMs (Abbott Freestyle Libre 3, IIRC), and then put one in my arm (the applicator is a short syringe section that has the monitor tube threaded into it, so the tube stays in your arm and your skin under the monitor remains broken) for a couple weeks. Just to see how various foods would affect my…

Before I got cancer, I had one through Levels, and it was informative. Dessert is much worse than I'd thought. Rice, too, including brown rice. I remember eating some biryani and a small bit of naan at an Indian restaurant and thinking that I'd been pretty healthy, only to see a spike of like 80.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#149

Post by queuebert »

gtirloni wrote: post #126
queuebert wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False positives in medicine can cause unnecessary interventions that carry their own risks. Believe it or not, there is an optimum level of ignorance for maximum health.

The unnecessary interventions are done by licensed doctors? Why?

Doctors make mistakes. Procedures carry inherent risks, such as infection, allergies, blood clots, etc. Even driving to the doctor to discuss your blood glucose carries a risk of car accident. All of these are low probability events, but non-zero.

Re: FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

#150

Post by cadr »

coldpie wrote: post #3

I'm T1D (insulin-dependent). I used a Dexcom for a couple years a while ago, back around the G3 through G5 era or so. I ended up stopping using it because my diabetes is very well managed, and I found it didn't make a huge difference to my management. With my insurance, each new sensor every week cost about $50, and would fail in various annoying ways: sometimes it would just stop working in the middle of the week, o…

I just started with the G6 (still using it), and when I started I'd have that sometimes. Whatever they changed in the past year or so, it has gotten waaaaay better. (They would always replace them if they failed early, but was still a huge pain.) I'm exited to move to the G7 (mainly because of the shorter warmup time).

Also, pairing it with the Omnipod 5 is just next level. Closed loop. Never having to inject in public. No tubes.

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