What's the easiest/cheapest way to obtain a continuous glucose monitor for someone curious about how blood glucose level correlates with subjective well-being and diet/exercise behaviors, but without a medical need for it?
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.
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.
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...)
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.
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.
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.)
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.