241–250 of 439 posts
It's worth mentioning that in Canada, you do not require a prescription to get a CGM. However only the Abbot Freestyle Libre series is available here. It cost ~$100 and last 2 weeks. I've found it to be mostly accurate. Placing it on the back of the arm was always a problem for me, it was constantly getting knocked/pulled, and otherwise disturbed. I had to buy adhesive patches that covered the entire unit. I later di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fasting is problematic to the medical industry because it is zero cost. No, fasting is problematic because people don't like it. Health conscious people don't understand how much resistance the average patient has to advice about lifestyle modifications, or how difficult it is to get patients to adhere to recommended lifestyle changes. A good example is sleep apnea and CPAP machines: In theory, a CPAP machine shoul…
It's also rare for a doctor to tell a person they are too fat and to lose weight. The assumption (and most cost effective solution) is that patients just want a prescription for something and be sent on their way. US healthcare is crisis focused, not health focused.
I don't think this is true. Doctors do tell patients if they are overweight, and they do encourage them to make lifestyle changes including losing weight.
Even as an experiment, I'd say most people should get one just to understand their bodies, and their specific responses to certain foods, once in a while.
Top athletes have been using them for exercise to make sure their blood sugar remains in the correct ranges.
But Diabetics are using them to help identify how particular foods impact their blood sugar levels (obviously). The reason being is that whilst some foods might be considered high/low in sugar, each of us reacts differently in how we absorb those foods or drinks. So a bagel you eat might not spike your blood sugar like someone else, or conversely it does. You can then correlate that spike or reduction in blood glucose with how you're feeling throughout the day, how your blood sugar levels impact exercise.
Also it allows you to see how combinations of foods and the order that you eat them in impacts blood sugar. If you eat a chunk of white rice without any fibre you might find it spikes, if you each a bunch of vegetables in the bowl before hand you might find it doesn't rise as high or give you a steadier release of blood sugar.
I'd use one for a few months just to see how foods impact my blood sugar and how I can make different choices. It's one thing to interpret a label, but it's another to see it's impact on your body in real time.
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…
At least for me the readings that it shows are not accurate (when verified with old style finger pricking glucose monitoring machine). These CGMs are good for knowing the general variability of glucose level in your blood based on your diet exercise etc; I don’t trust the absolute numbers from CGM like Freestyle Libre - haven’t used any other one though yet.
That means a lancet poke can be quite different from a meter like the freestyle, and both can be quite different from the level in your veins that a lab would get. So if your level is 200 one device can read 240 and the other 160 and both can be considered “correct”.
I found that the freestyle libre 2 and libre light are characteristically low while the FS 3 is characteristically high. So I use them for the shape of the curve, and that is useful.
I would recommend anyone to experiment with this. I did, and found out I was more glucose sensitive than I expected. This led me to get more broad labs done, with which I was able to find additional treatable issues that are likely the cause. If I hadn't done this, I would have found out via symptoms years later, after irreversible damage had already been done. You are your only medical advocate, no one else is going…
Read up on what's normal, though. I tried a CGM twice. I triggered the hypoglycemia (blood sugar too low) alarm multiple times, but felt completely fine. After some research I discovered it's actually not uncommon for healthy people to have occasional dips below the preset hypoglycemia threshold, but as long as you're not having symptoms then there's no cause for concern. I also talked to a doctor who complained that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 limite…
Not to mention humans 150 years ago who ate plenty of bread and still didn't have the problems we have with obesity and diabetes. Or even 50 years ago...
I recently had an unusual health event that resulted in me passing out. My wife, who is a physician, thought it might be hypoglycemia, since i'm at high risk for diabetes. She found a super friendly endocrinologist who put me on a CGM for two weeks. I never hit the hypoglycemia range during those two weeks, so it didn't really explain what my issue... but honestly the data was SUPER interesting. Just observing the va…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No calibration is required for Dex G6/G7. I think you can optionally calibrate the G6 but I never have nor have I ever had to. I am going to be biased: I both work on and use the t:slim X2. It is well worth it, especially if covered by your insurance. CIQ took me from ~70 to 85%, sometimes 90% time in range; my understanding is that it's the best closed loop algorithm out there currently. Regardless of which pump you…
Thanks! Hearing (I'm assuming) a fellow T1 using and working on a TSlim is quite a good recommendation haha. It's good to hear that calibration isn't really required. My "concern" (or rather, apprehension) with the TSlim/G6 setup (which fortunately should be fully covered by Dutch insurance) is that I'm aware I can do a DIY loop using the omnipod dash and with a libre/g6 (using a 3rd party app like diabox & nightscou…
It ended up being fairly inconvenient. My setup was a pi zero with a radio bonnet running on my desk; it would connect to the internet to pull CGM data, and deliver boluses accordingly.
I think the main issue was that I wasn't babysitting it enough to know if it was working or not. It was hard to see/understand bolus decisions it was making unless I checked iob, and it absolutely destroyed the battery life of my pump; I used a AAA once every couple days when I was near my desk, nevermind the battery on the rig (I had it plugged into the wall).
Overall, the system that you actually use the most, that is the most reliable, is the most effective system, even if it's a little bit suboptimal. In my case, CIQ is probably a bit less aggressive than the openAPS system; but importantly, it is truly "set and forget." I never have to worry if it's enabled or when, or how, it's just always working, 24/7. With a condition like ours, consistency is the best predictor of performance. That makes it the clear winner imho, unless you really like to tinker with things and you want to be very active with your loop.
The other thing is that the software (openAPS) was Javascript and Bash on a Linux system. Those architecture choices just make me nervous. Too many bad things that could happen. I'm not saying it's impossible for open source software to be reliable, certainly not, but the complexity of their system was just too large of a surface area to fully test. There are extremely significant cybersecurity risks using those older pumps also. It's basically root access to the bolus button.
Walking was by far the most effective way to keep blood sugar down after a meal.
Most of what I ate didn't cause a problem. However tend avoid sugar and carbs. The worst offender was a PB&J sandwich. That was surprising.