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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

#311

If you find this field interesting, Know Labs is working on a non-invasive continuous glucose monitor using RF spectroscopy: https://www.knowlabs.co

Non invasive would be a golden goose. I don’t think I want to have something sticking into my skin for weeks on end.

This is a promising non invasive glucose sensor namely GlucoRx Wearable BioXensor using microwave technique [1]. For the technical background how the sensor work and the clinical trials results please check this paper (paper also available from their university website) [2].

[1] Meet the inventor: Professor Adrian Porch from Cardiff University:

https://www.med-technews.com/medtech-insights/latest-medtech...

[2] Microwave Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Sensor: Human Clinical Trial Results:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8058721

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

#312

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…

how is having low blood sugar a sign of pre-diabetes? I get frequent bouts of hypoglycemia.

At some point a person's body may become resistant to insulin and start to need more insulin to have normal functioning (pre-diabetes), sometimes this causes large variation in glucose levels, though not as drastic as taking a medication. Eventually your body would adapt to it when you reach the diabetes phase.

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

#313

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.

Another reason they are sometimes different is because there is a lag in the CGM data. It's estimated the lag is about 12 minutes.

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

#314

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…

What is the connection between being at risk of diabetes and hypoglycemia? Wouldn’t a pre-diabetic be very protected from hypoglycemia?

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

#315
This is great news for the healthcare system because it is going to drive down costs for people with diabetes who really need these things. Well done Dexcom!

This OTC model limits the measurements to every 15 mins instead of every 5 for the prescription version; this will limit its ability to be integrated into open source automated insulin delivery systems. Not sure why they made this choice as the hardware looks the same as the Dexcom G7. In theory they could be doing it to increase battery life or allow for cheaper batteries to be used in the consumer version.

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

#316

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…

What is the connection between being at risk of diabetes and hypoglycemia? Wouldn’t a pre-diabetic be very protected from hypoglycemia?

No, diabetes is fundamentally a lack of ability to control your blood sugar. This means you get lots of highs but also lots of lows. It's a common misconception that diabetes just means your blood sugar is always high; rather, your sugar is high because your body no longer controls it actively.

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

#317
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of food intake/non-intake habits aside from the obvious culprits surprised you?

Long-term they will likely make no changes because human desire, habits and behaviors are rarely unknown to us. The parent comment mentioned feeling tired after consuming something with a lot of sugar, was that really a mystery prior to using CGM? I doubt it. Sure it's interesting to correlate to your perceived wellness (or lack thereof) with a wearable spitting out data but after the novelty of this discovery wears…

My view: I’m busy, I have a lot of things I’m trying to figure out. For example, All of my free time should be spent getting better at AI programming. Seemingly infinite horizon.

I could carefully track a half dozen signals to correlate consumption to effect, but if the effect is “I’m tired and don’t have much willpower”, that’s hard to remember to track. I just haven’t built up that habit; heck I’m having a hard time keeping up the habit of light exercise.

I have a cousin who was diagnosed with some stage of diabetes; got a continuous blood sugar monitor; ended up losing a ton of weight. I’m definitely in the market for this—something to make it easier for me. It’s undoubtedly healthier for me than mainlining wygovey, which is another option on the table.

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

#319
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more akin to a finger prick than a needle. Might still be a bit psychologically challenging but I've done it and it's really not bad at all.

I'm not even diabetic but they always pre-check your blood during blood / plasma donating. I would say it doesn't even register as a pinprick and feels more like the percussive slap of a tiny elastic band.

Ha, I would say quite the opposite, that the finger prick is my least favourite part of giving blood— it's ironic that taking a few drops could be that much worse than the big honking needle which draws an entire pint, but I guess fingertips just have a lot of nerve endings.

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the connection between being at risk of diabetes and hypoglycemia? Wouldn’t a pre-diabetic be very protected from hypoglycemia?

No, diabetes is fundamentally a lack of ability to control your blood sugar. This means you get lots of highs but also lots of lows. It's a common misconception that diabetes just means your blood sugar is always high; rather, your sugar is high because your body no longer controls it actively.

Diabetes mellitus is an insulin problem- either a lack of insulin (Type 1) or insufficient response to insulin (Type 2). Insulin is responsible for lowering blood glucose. The hormones responsible for raising blood glucose (cortisol, IGF-1, glucagon, epinephrine) still function normally.

My understanding was hypoglycemia only occurs in diabetes in the presence of medications used to lower blood glucose (insulin formulations, sulfonylureas, etc.) and not because of diabetes itself, which when untreated invariably leads to hyperglycemia.

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