The Power of Glucose Data for Optimal Health

SHOW NOTES

Strap on your seatbelts as we take on a journey through the bloodstream with the wonders of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs)— a revelation in health tech that's ignited my curiosity and may just spark yours too. 

Imagine having a window into the ebb and flow of your blood sugar levels, right at your fingertips, in real time. That's the daily reality I've embraced with my CGM, a device that's not just for diabetics but anyone curious about the body's response to food and lifestyle choices.

The landscape of glucose monitoring is vast and intricate, but I've navigated the terrain to bring you the lowdown on some heavy hitters like the Freestyle Libre II and the Dexcom G7. Whether you're tuning in from Canada or the U.S., you'll gather the info on everything from costs to prescription quirks. 

But there's more to this tech than meets the eye—beyond the numbers and graphs lies the ability to decode your body's cryptic messages on how it handles that slice of pizza versus a kale salad. It's these nuances that have transformed not just my relationship with food, but also how I sculpt my body and energy levels.

Now, before you race to get your hands on a CGM, let's pump the brakes and consider a few road signs. These tools are potent, but they're not one-size-fits-all, and jumping in unprepared can leave you lost in a sea of data. I'll share my roadmap for when and how to integrate a CGM into your health regimen, ensuring you're well-equipped to make the most of this technology. 

TRANSCRIPT

Today, I'm sharing my experience using a continuous glucose monitor and helping you decide if you need to use one as well. Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Gentlemen, welcome back to man in the Arena.

I'm so excited for today's episode because I'm sharing my experience using a CGM, and if you've listened to this podcast before, you know there's two things that I'm really passionate about, and that's technology and health. So when these two things converge, I get really excited. Without too much preamble, though, I'm just going to jump in and share what you can expect from this episode today. Number one I'm going to tell you what the heck a CGM is, in case you might not know. Then I'm going to share with you why I bought one and why I'm using one. Then I want to explain why you might want to use one and, lastly, just some things to be mindful of, some best practices if, in case, you decide to use a CGM on your own. So my goal today is to provide you with another tool that you can use as part of your health and weight loss journey that not only provides you with more insights to your behaviors, but it also provides another layer of accountability, and that's what I love most about tech. When you use it the right way, it gives you better insights, it holds you accountable, but you also have to be careful that if you don't use tech the right way and it creates more stress and it doesn't serve you, then either you need to manage your mind around that or you just need to not use that tech to begin with.

So, whether that's a sleep tracker or a CGM or a water bottle that tracks your hydration, all of these devices give you data and they hold you accountable without any kind of guesswork or any kind of rationalization. So the numbers simply do not lie. And when I played football, every practice and game was recorded on video and the saying was that I in the sky does not lie. As players, we were held accountable on every play, and the hard truth of these devices is they give you real, hard data and if you don't want to be accountable, you'll find a reason not to use it, and if you're serious about it, then you're going to watch this data like a hawk. So, with that, what the heck is a CGM?

So a CGM is a continuous glucose monitor, and it's a device that tracks your glucose, which is the sugar levels in your blood, in real time throughout the day and night. Okay, it typically works by having this small sensor inserted under the skin, usually in the back of your arm or abdomen, and this measures the glucose in your interstitial fluid and sort of this the fluid between your cells. And these measurements are then sent wirelessly to your smartphone, and usually there's an app that you use to kind of track this each time you look at your blood sugar. Okay, now, the reason why CGMs are so invaluable is mainly if you have diabetes, or they're type one or type two. You get detailed information about your blood glucose throughout the day and you can see sort of how your blood glucose is responding to certain factors like food, exercise and the medication you're taking. Okay, so you're going to get this continuous feedback that helps you manage your diabetes more effectively. All right, primarily, we want to prevent high blood glucose, which is hyperglycemia, and we want to prevent low blood sugar or glucose, which is hypoglycemia. All right.

Now, in Canada, there's two main brands, right? The main brand that I used is called Abbott, or it's made by Abbott, and it's called the Freestyle Libre II. Now there's other versions as well. I think they have a new one called the Freestyle Libre III, but the one that you can get in Canada is the Freestyle Libre II, and it's made with a very simple, very basic app. It doesn't give you a lot of detail, but it gives you enough. The other one that you can look at getting is what's called the Dexcom G7, and this is just another option that you have available to you Now. The Freestyle Libre II. It's going to last 14 days and it retails for about $120. The G7 only lasts 10 days. It's smaller, it's a little bit more advanced, apparently, maybe a little bit more accurate, but it retails for $99. So you just have to decide which one you're going to go with. Neither one is good or better or whatever. You just have to decide which one will work for you.

If you're in Canada, you can get these devices without a prescription over the counter from any pharmacy. If you're in the US, you can get these devices. You can get these exact devices. However, you need a prescription from your doctor. If you can't get a prescription from your doctor, there are certain companies ie Levels Health, nutracellants and some other ones where they basically give you the prescription. They give you the device, but you have to use their app as a result. The downside of that is it's significantly more expensive to do that, because they offer additional services like counseling, nutritional advice and all those sort of things. They give you more insights and more data than the app and the device would just give you on its own. Those are your options. That's what you have available to you With the device alone. In Canada, you just have that basic app. There's no counseling. That's something else I wanted you to remember. This is really important, especially when we get near the end of the episode today. I'll tell you why that's important. If you don't have diabetes, if you don't have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, these devices can be really helpful as well. I'll get to the reasons why that is in a minute.

Before we do that, something I want you to keep in mind is how we measure blood glucose In Canada. We measure it differently than we do in the United States. In Canada, we are measuring your blood glucose in millimoles per liter. M-m-o-l per liter In the United States. It's milligrams per deciliter and that's M-G per D-L in the United States. These are some numbers that you want to keep in mind. Normal blood glucose levels for people without diabetes. There's two types. Basically, there's a fasted blood sugar, where you don't eat for anywhere between 8 to 12 hours and you get a blood test and your blood sugar should be, if you're in the United States, under 100 M-Gs per D-L. If you're in Canada, that's around 5.6 M-M-O-L per liter, the numbers you want to keep in mind fasted blood sugar under 100 in the States, under 5.6 in Canada.

The next number or measurement that you can take, and they'll take, is what's called the post-prandial blood sugar. This is basically two hours after eating. When you're measuring your blood sugar using a CGM. This is the number that's most important. You want to see how quickly your body adapts, using insulin to get that blood sugar into the cells so you don't have the sugar hanging around, the glucose hanging around in your cells in your blood. The number for the US is under 140, and in Canada it's under 7.8. Those are normal blood glucose levels for people without diabetes. If you have pre-diabetes, your fasted blood sugar is anywhere between 100 to 125 in the States, or 5.6 to 6.9, and your post-prandial blood sugar after you eat. In the States it's 140 to 199, and then in Canada it's 7.8 to 11. If you have diabetes, again, these numbers are higher. Your fasted blood sugar is over 126 on two separate tests and then your post-prandial blood sugar is 200. If you're in Canada, those numbers are 7 and 11, respectively. I know I went through those numbers pretty quickly there. Just make sure you check the show notes. I'll put these numbers in there again as well so that you can see them, see the access to them, and just make sure you know where you might fall.

Now, why did I buy a continuous glucose monitor? I don't have diabetes, I'm a relatively healthy young man, and here's why I decided to buy one Number one. I wanted to get a better understanding of how my body responds to different foods. When you monitor your blood glucose, you gain insights into how carbohydrates whether they're processed or they're refined sugars or even just more fibers carbohydrates, how that impacts your diet. And, of course, this is really important because the older we get, especially we wanna be able to manage our blood sugar. It's a really important factor in our health. So just understanding how different foods impact my blood sugar, that was number one.

Number two weight management. So not necessarily weight management, more body composition. I like my ideal weight and at this point I'm trying to change my body composition to lose a little bit of body fat and increase my muscle mass, so by avoiding foods that lead to high levels of glucose in my blood and subsequent insulin levels, this is just helping me get a better understanding as to how all that occurs. And, of course, when that happens, we also see a much better management of our appetite and reduced cravings. Right, when we're not eating sugary foods or foods that lead to these spikes in our blood glucose, we have way less cravings, and that's something that's important to me, because I noticed that when I do eat those foods, I do have a lot more cravings and I just tend to overeat what I don't want to. Okay.

Another reason why I decided to do this is doing the program, as a lot of you guys know, and I want to see improvement in my fitness level and if you use a CGM, you can really utilize that to optimize your performance in your workouts, because we know that certain workouts will lead to higher blood sugar levels. If I'm doing a HIIT workout, for example, or I'm doing circuit training, then I'm going to see my blood sugar increase and, as a result, maybe I want to ingest different types of nutrients before and after my workout. Same with when I'm doing a zone two I'm going to see a lower blood sugar as blood sugar levels as a result. Okay, and just the last reason why I decided to do this was my overall optimization of my personal health. Right, this includes my sleep, my stress levels. Again, diet and exercise. I've already talked about. But I wanted to see how all of these things are impacted on a holistic level, and so the CGM is just one other way that I can get data and learn more about my body and the things that I'm doing.

 Okay, now here's what's really important to remember. A lot of the data that you can get from a CGM can be very complicated, right? Interpreting the data is something that you either want to do through the app, like if you're in the States, where they have counseling, and if you're not in the States, you're working with a healthcare professional to help you interpret that data or a health coach someone like myself, so that's something to keep in mind, all right. So why should you get one? If you're thinking about oh, this is really cool, I can really learn a lot about my body and how I eat and all the different variables that have impact my blood sugar levels, and here's why. Okay, but first, before I kind of explain why, just let me say I'm not associated with any of these companies, right? I don't get any kickbacks or anything, so just make your own decisions, decide for yourself. This is just my own opinions on some of this stuff, but ultimately you should be deciding for yourself, okay. 

First of all, any of the above reasons I mentioned before are great reasons why, if you're trying to lose weight, if you're trying to optimize your health, trying to improve your fitness levels and your performance, the CGMs are great. But outside of that, another reason why you might want to consider buying a CGM and using a CGM is that these devices offer a more advanced strategy to weight loss. We know that insulin this is the hormone that helps regulate our blood sugar is greatly affecting our cravings and our appetite, and a lot of us just don't realize how much certain foods will spike our blood sugar, and then that leads to further eating and overeating. So that's one of the main reasons why I think you should consider using a CGM. Is it just going to give you better insights and better understanding as to how your body's functioning? Okay, so from an advanced weight loss strategy standpoint, you're going to be able to see how does something like walking after a meal versus not walking after a meal affect my blood sugar. You might also see something like the order in which you eat your food, ie, you eat protein first, then carbs, or vice versa. How does that impact your blood sugar and your weight loss? Using certain hacks I call them hacks, but they're not necessarily hacks but some people will drink apple cider vinegar before a meal and this has been shown to reduce blood sugar spikes when we eat. Okay, so you might test something like that and learn something about your body that, hey, when I drink some apple cider vinegar, that is actually really helpful for me in terms of losing weight or managing my appetite. Okay, you might notice how stress or poor sleep affect your blood sugar. Of course, exercise as well. And then another thing is if you're fasting, you're doing intermittent fast, you're doing prolonged fasts, even longer extended fasts. You might see just how much that's impacting your blood sugar. Okay, so, from an advanced weight loss strategy standpoint, these can be devices can be really helpful in helping you determine what works for you, okay. The last thing is from a why you might want to consider buying one of these is, as I mentioned earlier, is the accountability. And there's a lot of challenges out there where you can join a group and they mail you one of these devices and what they do is they say, well, if you're trying to lose weight, then cap your blood sugar your daily high to, say, 130 mg per dl or 7.2 mmol per liter per day, right, so the highest spike you should ever have should stay under that. And what that does? It forces you to sort of say, well, I'm not eating certain foods because I know that that's going to impact my weight loss and I got to stay underneath these numbers, right. So again, that's just a way that you can have an advanced weight loss strategy is is making sure you don't have huge spikes each day in your blood sugar. Okay Now. So your blood sugar informação on those are paid reaching anytimearım multicolour оров or foreigncando.

Why should you avoid getting a continuous glucose monitor? This is a really important question to ask, and the first thing I'll say is that they're expensive. Unless you have some kind of coverage medical insurance or something along those lines, you're paying out of pocket anywhere from $200 to $400 per month. These things don't last long. They last two weeks and then you have to replace them. So that's the first reason why you wouldn't want to do this. Is that just too costly? The second reason why you wouldn't want to do this is if you don't have someone to help you interpret the data right Now.

As a health coach, I've used these devices with my clients before.

I'm using one now. I've used one before and I help them understand what their numbers mean. And so, if you're gonna spend the money, use the apps. If you're in the US, or if you're in Canada, work with a healthcare provider or a health coach who's gonna help you educate and interpret the data. But if you don't have access to any of that, I advise you against just buying it and then testing it out that way. Okay.

 Now the last reason why you would want to avoid using a continuous glucose monitor is if you haven't quite mastered the other weight loss tools, so in other words, if you're still not really making a protocol on a consistent basis. If you're not using the hunger scale, if you're not able to process urges and emotions, and you are continuously using food for comfort, this is just gonna be something else that adds more to your plate. That is not gonna be helpful. So I would say avoid using a continuous glucose monitor until you have full capacity and you have full breadth of being able to use all of the weight loss tools at your disposal. Okay Now, with all this being said, if you do decide to use a continuous glucose monitor, there's some best practices that you'll want to keep in mind. There's some things that you can do to make sure you get the most out of it. Now here's one.

Three years ago, I decided to do something similar. I used a continuous glucose monitor, but I didn't have a well thought out plan going into it. What I did was I just kind of put it on my arm and synced it with my phone and I just tested all the different types of foods that I thought would spike my blood sugar. So I ate candy, I had different chocolate and ice cream and, lo and behold, yeah, I saw my blood sugar rise and all of those sort of things, but it was a very inconsistent experience and experiment, so I didn't really gain any new insights. All I learned was oh yeah, when I eat sugary food, my blood sugar goes up.

Okay, if you're gonna do this, make sure that you have a well thought out plan. And so, for example, this time around I decided that I'm gonna have a much more thought out plan, and this time around, what I decided to do was I'm gonna eat how I normally eat. I'm not necessarily trying to test different foods. What I wanna do is eat normally how I eat, plan my meals and then try to stay as consistent as possible, and that means not having any real restrictions, but also not snacking, not eating outside my window. Again, like I said, still making a protocol, and because of that, I'm getting much better data. I'm understanding what really helps keep my blood sugar nice and stable Right now, and when I do see a spike, it's much easier to determine what caused that and Going forward to try to avoid that in the future.

Okay, and so my goal with this time around was to keep my blood sugar within the four to seven range, or the 72 to 126 range, and of course, I've gone over seven a couple times, but not by much, and so that's been really helpful. And I've already noticed some really key insights. For example, when I do zone 2 cardio, my blood sugar does not spike, which is a good thing. When I'm doing weight training circuits and hits, I'm actually seeing my blood sugar go up, which was to be expected. Okay, now I'm focusing much more on proteins, fruits, veggies, fiber, healthy fats, and what I plan to do, as I put on another device, is now I'll start to test a few other things, like high GI Fruits, like grapes, bananas, some other treats that I indulge in, and just to see what happens when I Indulge in those kind of things. Okay, so overall, it's been a really positive experience for me. It's really affirming the good habits that I'm living with each day.

And again, if you're gonna consider this, just make sure you work with someone who can help you interpret this tech, this data, make sure you have a good plan and then just don't you know go into it and try to test a bunch of different foods, like a free-for-all, all right. So if you are deciding or thinking about using your own continuous glucose monitor, please connect with me. I can steer you in the right direction, whether you live in Canada or United States, I can give you some contacts to who you can work with. Again, no affiliation, just what I've learned throughout my years doing research on this, and I'm happy to help you out because I think the data can be so powerful in terms of Keeping you accountable and giving you new insights you might not have known from before. Okay, that's all I have for you today on today's episode.

Again, thank you so much for listening and showing up to the arena. Keep showing up, guys. Keep doing this work so you can look better, feel better and be better. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to the spear method, calm and discover how I can help you get started On your path. Better health and weight loss.