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Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

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Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#41

Post by Jarmsy »

utopcell wrote: post #3

The author has done a lot of work, but the title of this article is very misleading. There's no monitoring happening on the watch, it's just used to display the results that are collected by another device.

Agreed, I would have preferred a title like 'receiving glucose readings on watch'. I already have my readings being sent from my Libre sensor to my phone, but thought this was going to be a story about true non invasive monitoring (many companies have been supposedly developing tech to read glucose from the skin surface, though afaik none actually work yet)

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#42

Post by iamacyborg »

hn-swe-lv1 wrote: post #11

Rockley Photonics is partnered with Apple and medical device makers, developing a spectrophotometer on a chip for devices like the Apple Watch and other medical wristbands. Their sensors can measure multiple biomarkers in the blood in addition to glucose, like alcohol, hydration, core body temperature, lactate. They are presenting at the Baird investment conference Monday morning. https://www.yahoo.com/now/rockley-ph…

Given how inaccurate watch based spo2 measurements still are, I wouldn’t hold my breath at this happening any time soon.

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#43

Post by iamacyborg »

j7ake wrote: post #23

Where does one buy these glucose monitors ? Do you need to get it prescribed by doctors ? Or can healthy people get one too ?

Easiest route for non diabetics is to buy one the sports based cgm sensors offered by the likes of supersapiens. They’re not cheap, however.

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#44

Post by Beltiras »

yauneyz wrote: post #32

I'm actually part of a research team working on using a wrist mounted spectrometer to actually measure glucose continuously and non-invasively. Turns out it's a really really hard problem.

If you crack it is there anything preventing using the same tech to get a whole host of measurements like vitamin levels or other blood components? I'm imagining you are going down the same path as oxygen saturation meters except it's way easier measuring elemental content than complex molecules. What's the hardest problem, if I may ask?

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#45

Post by jawngee »

hooande wrote: post #40
jawngee wrote: post #7

My son does something similar. In Vietnam, only the Freestyle Libre 1 is available, so we got the aftermarket MiaoMiao transmitter for it. The transmitter talks to an iPhone running xDripForiOS ( https://github.com/JohanDegraeve/xdripswift ) which, in turn, pushes the CGM data to nightscout ( https://nightscout.github.io ). We can then follow that data on nightscout using xdrip on our own phones. It's been a real lif…

I HATE the Freestyle Libre. The concept of continuous glucose monitoring is life saving, but this particular product is very very bad. The hardware design is awful. I've received 9 of them and 5 have broken before their expiration date, for a variety of reasons. Two of them broke immediately at first application. Glucose monitors in general are expensive ($100+ retail) products that are meant to be disposable every t…

We've found them to be pretty reliable here. They tend to lose accuracy for extreme highs and lows, but when it's within 80-250 it's pretty spot on with our blood meter.

xDrip also has a feature that will calibrate the libre with pokes which increases the accuracy.

We never bolus off the libre's readings though, but it's fantastic for trends and seeing spikes and crashes in real-time. For example, I can see that my son is high af between 8am to 11am (post breakfast spike), so I've tweaked his basal rate a few times so that he's always in range now during that time period with no crashing afterwards.

I mean, I would love a dexcom over the libre any day of the week, but I'll take what I can get here in Vietnam.

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#46

Post by samwillis »

yauneyz wrote: post #32

I'm actually part of a research team working on using a wrist mounted spectrometer to actually measure glucose continuously and non-invasively. Turns out it's a really really hard problem.

Oh exciting! That’s a billion dollar invention if you crack it.

Do you mind sharing who the team is? Do they have any literature available?

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#47

Post by lytefm »

udit99 wrote: post #31
cbames89 wrote: post #13

I was looking into this the other week, I couldn't find a CGM supplier in the US that would sell dtc. I don't need it for any medical reasons. Im just interested in the data. Anyone know of a supplier?

Veri/Levels as others mentioned if you dont mind paying $$ and want the fancy data viz and UI ...or just sign up for a free (15$ really) trial of the freestyle libre here: https://www.freestyle.abbott/us-en/myfreestyle.html . It'll ask you if you're a diabetic and you just click yes

Nice about Veri is also that you can get your data exported as CSV from the app!

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#48

Post by safog »

chx wrote: post #39

I had some ideas on how unreliable all nutrition research is but nothing prepared for the flood of bad advice once I was diagnosed with diabetes T2. I now trust one thing and one thing alone and that's my Dexcom G6. If it shows a spike eating the same meal twice , that meal is off the list. That easy. I deleted normal flour, potatoes and rice from my life and per three month blood checks I do not even count as predia…

Is there a way to get this device without a prescription? I tried phone apps that use the FreeStyle Libre and make it into a CGM (e.g., https://www.levelshealth.com/).

They're great but also super expensive.

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#49

Post by safog »

udit99 wrote: post #31
cbames89 wrote: post #13

I was looking into this the other week, I couldn't find a CGM supplier in the US that would sell dtc. I don't need it for any medical reasons. Im just interested in the data. Anyone know of a supplier?

Veri/Levels as others mentioned if you dont mind paying $$ and want the fancy data viz and UI ...or just sign up for a free (15$ really) trial of the freestyle libre here: https://www.freestyle.abbott/us-en/myfreestyle.html . It'll ask you if you're a diabetic and you just click yes

Are there any apps that can read the NFC data from the FreeStyle libre? I don't want to deal with yet another device that you need to use to read data + upload.

Re: Continuous glucose monitoring on the Apple Watch

#50

Post by safog »

boringg wrote: post #5

Sounds cool if i didn't have to have micro needles in my arm. Anyone wear one of these things? I figure it useful for a month then after that you have a sense on what impacts your glucose…

Yep I used levels health for a month and it was extremely useful.

Beyond that, I mostly eat the same stuff all the time so I know what it's going to do to my glucose even without the CGM telling me about it.

I still would like to give it another few months to narrow down all the other environmental factors - sleep, exercise, stress, alcohol etc. and see how my blood glucose reacts.

Needle in the skin is a non-issue. You won't feel it at all. It's like keeping a bandaid on for a month.

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