Glucomate: an app for people who record, track, and monitor their blood glucose
zachsim.one
zachsim.one
There are several more in this space, at least if you are using a Dexcom CGM:
https://www.dexcom.com/en-us/partnerships/health-apps.
If you are wondering about commercialization, you can get into (US, can't speak for other countries!) regulatory weeds pretty quickly, especially if your commercial plan involves informing clinicians.
Disclaimer: IANAL but have substantial experience with anally-extracted objections to naming (and other things)
{something}mate is like {something}ly is like {something}r is like {something}io.
They're all just words with a little flourish at the end, who's to say you "own" a word with a flourish? Just seems dumb.
So naming collisions can happen as long as they are in separate domains.
If your brand is too close to another, are you causing confusion?
If you went to the store and saw on the shelf:
- NutriBlend (Parent Co NutriCo)
- NutriActive (Parent Co NutriCo)
- NutriSport (Parent Co Athletic Treats Inc)
Could you think that NutriSport was a product of NutriCo? If so, thats the part the governments care about. They want people to be able to trust in commerce, to maximize tax revenue.
As for insights gained... pretty much everything "they" say is true. The order of how you eat foods matter. Fibers, protein, fat, alcohol and movement all lower glucose levels.
You can just talk to your primary care doctor and tell them you're interested in getting one to screen for prediabetes, or to help you with weight loss. There's a good chance it won't be covered by insurance if you are not diabetic or taking insulin, but as long as you have the prescription you can pay out of pocket.
Heck, you can even get medical-grade Freestyle Libre CGMs without a prescription, if you know where to look -- see https://agelessrx.com/cgm-sensor/ for one example, or https://beyondtype2.org/cgms-without-insurance/ for another.
https://medium.com/@marisnaylor/continuous-glucose-monitor-c...
It's worth noting that this varies. The G6 that I have _generally_ doesn't hurt. But...
- Sometimes it hurts "somewhat" (like someone punched me, but in a small area) and that pain goes away over the course of a day or so. This tends to correspond with there being a fair amount of blood leakage when attaching it (it sometimes pools underneath the sensor).
- Sometimes it just... itches. This is worse than the pain. It tends to last several days, sometimes the entire 10 days. It's rare, but it's super annoying when it happens.
I will point out that I LOVE my glucose monitor. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say it changed my life when I got it. I'm safer now; I'm old enough that I'm resistant to the signs of low blood sugar, and I've had instances of standing up from a chair and just collapsing because my blood was low (pre-monitor). And I've learned SO much about how my body reacts to various foods; I'm better equipped to eat smartly now.
Also these devices have a bias and a drift and are useful for trending, not for exact results all the time. However to monitor how blood sugar trends semi-quantitatively and identify which foods cause how much spike etc, more than sufficient.
A lot of people are very allergic to freestyle's adhesive. The above is the common way to deal with it. Like there is a whole facebook group filled with thousands of people on the topic.
Of course health insurance isn't allowed to consider such data, and it's unlikely to be of much value to life insurance (because it has no provenance).
> Insurers contend that they use the information to spot health issues in their clients — and flag them so they get services they need. And companies like LexisNexis say the data shouldn't be used to set prices. But as a research scientist from one company told me: "I can't say it hasn't happened." (https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurers-are-vacuu...)
ED I think it was xdrip https://xdrip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Both apps would not get the ux design award :)
But are very functional and fast to use once one got adjusted.
Xdrip can read libre 2 eu - not libre 3 afaik
nice, whats the name of the app?
The app for Libre 3 is called Juggluco. But really I haven't tested it, so this is just from reading about it.
I believe they are 200$ without insurance and you have to buy refills every two weeks.
I have mine by prescription, so I get them through Walgreens and my insurance covers the majority of the cost. So, this isn't a problem for me. But you can get them relatively cheaply.
Levels ships the Dexcom G6 currently (they have another option to get the Libre) if you aren't T1 or T2. It's not even while labeled, when you join levels your shipment comes in a Levels box but everything inside is in Dexcom packaging. You are even required to use the Dexcom app in conjunction with the Levels app (which can get really annoying because the Dexcom app, understandably assuming you are diabetic, emits LOUD alerts that you can't disable through your phone if your blood glucose reading would be problematic for someone that is diabetic.)
But these devices are not really built for non-diabetics. There is a constant barrage of alerts as my blood sugar regularly dips into hypoglycemic levels. I feel fine but the device purposefuly does not have any way to disable the alarm.
Hypoglycemic means your body is dependant on sugar, can't get sugar and has adverse reaction to it.
My body can't get sugar, true, but is not dependant on it (fat adapted) and I have no reaction to it.
As I have not eaten any carbs for about two months any notion of hypoglycemia due to not eating sugar is a bit meaningless.
I know people who get much, much lower blood sugar levels and feel fine. The levels they get would (below 40? below 30?) would be lethal to "normal" person, if sugar addiction can be called normal at all. But they all feel fine and are probably healthier than most.
I put CGM on my arm to learn how my blood sugar levels look when on my diet and then what happens when I switch carbs back on -- I expect my body to "freak out" a little bit and then stabilise within couple of days and that's what I would like to see in a bit clearer detail using my CGM.
As to driving the prices down... nah, I am not making a dent. These devices are too expensive to use regularly even for me (software devs salary). I will just put a couple of them to learn a bit about myself and then stop when I got what I needed.
There is couple things I learned. When you are on a strict ketogenic diet your blood sugar pretty much stays the same throughout the day. Even if I eat one huge meal for entire day, my sugar after the meal is pretty much the same as before the meal or within 10mg/dL. My exercise and circadian rhythm affect sugar more than meals.
Given this I wonder if it is possible at least for some people with diabetes to skip carbs completely and live carb-free but also insulin-free life.
Another thing I learned is that as I started my first keto month, your blood sugar starts dropping, then goes back up after about two weeks. Coincidentally, I also felt pretty poorly for those two weeks and my running performance dropped dramatically until my body adapted. The second time I started keto (after two months of break from it) I have seen nothing of the sort. Actually, I feel (but don't have good enough record to be sure) my blood sugar got a bit higher. But I have only been doing regular sugar measurements when I was in keto so I don't have data for sure.
If my blood sugar goes up, to some degree, exercise and water can help - but they're not replacements for insulin. The suggestion that diabetics may not really need insulin is both ignorant and dangerous. You are not a doctor. People of hn, please go to your doctor for medical advice instead of hackernews comments.
> Given this I wonder if it is possible at least for some people with diabetes...
I am fully aware that diabetes is a dangerous, life threatening condition and that you can't do the same things that are totally fine for a healthy person.
And while I do not agree with some of the treatments for diabetes, it is just my own opinion and everybody is responsible for their own health and in doubt they should follow their health professional's advice.
Now... given the above disclaimer so that nobody confuses what I am about to write as an actual medial advice... I have just lost 1/3rd of my body weight and feeling absolutely fantastic by doing exactly the opposite to what health professionals are saying. I also observe a lot of people struggling to get any lasting effects by following the popular, official advice. I am angry and feeling powerless to the inertia of the health establishment and forces that do not really want people to get healthy but would rather avoid change that would disrupt their jobs, keep pushing medication that could be easily avoided for most of the people.
I have learned that so many "professionals" do not really understand what they are talking about. And it should not be a surprise, when you go to multiple "professionals" for advice and they give you opposite advice.
Just yesterday I had to visit an ophthalmologist to remove a foreign object from my eye (a piece of eyelash that got stuck for the past week). I had to spend at least 20 minutes to hear his ranting about how improper glasses I wear and how this is going to damage my vision. About a year ago I red (here on HN) that you can actually reduce your shortsightedness by slowly reducing the strength of your glasses which I have been doing successfully for the past year. I went from -3 diopters to -2 diopter glasses. I am currently seeing perfectly with -2.25 diopter glasses and I am using slightly lower strength for most of the day except for driving a car. Some of the stuff he said is that "This has been proven not to work by a study X", and "This is going to my shortsightedness to only deepen" (when exactly opposite has been happening) and that "If there are any result this is only my imagination" and "If I am seeing well at -2.25 it must be because my previous prescription of -3 diopters was wrong".
I am grateful that I am intelligent person that can read and make my own opinions but I am dismayed that people who can't do the same have to rely on those fucking idiots for their health.
Other countries, such as Australia, you can just buy them for normal capitalism prices (IIRC like USD 200$ and you own it).
So it very much depends where you are.
Between things like this and the price of insulin the US is really trying to kill off its diabetics. Not great when nearly half of Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic.
I posted this to HN because I've had T1D for 30 years (since I was 8) and been a heavy tech enthusiast for nearly that amount of time. It's not often that I see those worlds collide and thought others would be interested not only in the app itself, but part of the personal story behind the developer.
To address some of the comments about the app's functionality ands why it's compelling, here's why I like it and am giving it a shot:
- I use a CGM (Dexcom G6) which reports info to HealthKit (although on a 3-hour delay, don't get me started)
- I'm an Apple Watch user who tracks both sleep and workouts
- This app provides a simple way to retroactively see what my BG was doing during both sleep and workouts. Yes, you can get this information through other solutions or by time matching against a more detailed graph, but this app provides a much easier, lightweight way to do it IMO.
- I've played with solutions like nightscout, but found them overall to be tricky to set up and maintain and don't think they are good solutions for the average person. I'll probably take another look as a weekend project since it's been a while.
- Glooko, Tidepool (which I'm familiar with) and many other apps have excellent reports, but IMO are still fairly heavyweight for what I am looking to get.
Overall, I think that this is a great start for an app and is made by a solo, indie, T1D developer who is actively soliciting feedback.
I support them in those pursuits :-)
https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1649061705115115521?s=...
The data lives here:
(for reference https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...)
But... this just kinda rubs me the wrong way. It's discussed and presented as if it's the first/only thing in its class- admittedly it doesn't do this in any overglorified or oversensationalized way, but just... in sheer ignorance of large, giants in the field who have done far more than this project for far longer.
The literal only thing this project purports to do is provide analysis for glucose data, and only from one very proprietary source, healthkit. Clarity and Glooko have been around forever, and they're stable, corporate products. But even disregarding the 'official' stuff, NightScout's reports are insanely powerful, https://nightscout.github.io/nightscout/reports/ and have been around for ages, and it and the existence of Loopkit constitute massive existing t1d/developer communities
It's a pretty app, and probably more userfriendly than nightscout to nontechnical folk, but why not just say that if that's your selling point? Why just ignore everything and pretend like you're the only thing that exists?
It feels dishonest and impersonal- borderline corporate, except I almost guarantee any corporate project that exists solely as a stand-in replacement to an existing product would be comparing themselves to every available baseline they could. It's like there's this broad community that already exists, and this project just... pretends they don't exist? I don't get how someone who's remotely tangential to the T1D community could either overlook that, or intentionally refrain from discussion about it.
It's not really a super egregious thing, so I don't know why I seem to care so much, but the whole vibe of this 'project' just feels odd to me.
Have you considered making an Android version of Glucomate? I haven't looked into HealthKit itself but I'm working on another app that has privacy-sensitive concerns. When considering whether to make an Android version of my app, I realize that as little as I know about building privacy-respecting apps for ios devices, Android seems like at least an order of magnitude harder.
Beyond which platform it's on, the article describes some of the developer's experiences as a long-time diabetic and which gaps he saw in the market etc so may still be interesting to people who are not iOS users, but I get what you're saying.
As a T2D, I don't have a CGM but if I ever do need one I'll definitely check this out if it's still around by then. Looks amazing.
> During that time, I've heard various things about a cure for type 1 diabetes. Funnily enough, it's always 5-10 years away. I won't get my hopes up, but what I do know is that over the last couple of decades, despite there not being a cure, the technology available to treat and manage the disease has improved dramatically.
The 5-10 years away comment hit quite close to home and it's sad that it's a reality for a lot of people.
https://www.minimallooper.com/post/how-to-setup-freestyle-li...
0: https://www.ambrosiasys.com/product/waterproof-nightrider-bl...
> It's an app for people who record, track, and monitor their blood glucose and use HealthKit to do it.
They have hardware that writes to HealthKit with a few hours delay. So this app allows users access this HealthKit data.