What Continuous Glucose Monitoring Can Do For Your Metabolic Health

Glucose Monitoring on arm

Continuous glucose monitoring will improve your health when used right. It’s one of the latest tools we’re using to help people understand their bodies and make smart, healthy food choices.

What Is Continuous Glucose Monitoring?
Continuous glucose monitoring, or CGM, is a way to monitor glucose readings throughout the day. Most systems take readings every 5 minutes, giving doctors and patients an accurate view of the level of sugars in a person’s body.

Initially developed for diabetics, CGM has great applications in many medical interventions. It’s being used to help with weight loss, metabolic diseases, cancer treatments, and developmental illnesses. Some doctors recommend it for people who show signs of pre-diabetes to help them understand how food reacts in the body.

CGM utilizes a small glucometer attached to a person’s skin, usually the back of the arm. In recent years, these types of monitors have become smaller and less obtrusive. In addition, they can connect to a person’s cell phone through specific apps to record the data.

Taking a reading every five minutes shows several essential pieces of information. First and most importantly are the highs and lows a person experiences with blood sugar. Although this number is necessary, it’s not very useful without several other pieces of data, many of which are recorded by the apps. These include food intake, exercise, sleep, stress, and relaxation.

Only combined with a person’s whole lifestyle can we really start to see what sugar is doing in the body and what is causing blood sugar fluctuations.

But, why? Diabetes control was the original goal, and lower sugar levels help weight loss. But, high blood sugar levels do so many other negative things in the body:

  • Increase the risk of depression and anxiety
  • Encourages cancer and tumor growth
  • Lowers your energy levels, but keeps you awake and nervous at night
  • Decreases concentration, increases ADHD (especially in kids)
  • Dulls your skin, makes hair thin and brittle
  • Increases blood pressure and heart disease
  • Increases inflammation, aches, pain, and stiffness throughout your body

Keeping your blood sugar in the normal, healthy range and avoiding spikes and drops help minimize these problems. And since you don’t feel your blood sugar go up or down until it’s at an extreme level, having this monitoring can give you insight into your body chemistry that may be life-changing.

Why Is CGM Important To Weight Loss?

The emerging area of use for CGM is weight loss and metabolic health. Tracking blood glucose can help show how fast food is digested and utilized by the body. In addition, it can help people make better food choices by substituting foods with high spikes to foods with minimal spikes or simply adding protein and fats to a meal to offset the increase in blood sugars.

But there are many more surprises people find when monitoring their blood sugars. For example, many medications can cause a spike in insulin or blood sugar, which can cause sugar cravings and unexplained hunger. So watching your blood sugar change as your medicine is absorbed can give you meaningful feedback on what that medication is doing in your body.

You can also see how exercise, sleep, stress, and relaxation affect your body. For example, exercise can use up your blood sugars but release stored glucose into your blood hours later. Knowing what your body does can help you choose a healthy after-exercise snack.

Your blood sugars fluctuate significantly during sleep, particularly in the early morning. Both stress and relaxation can cause your body to release blood sugars in unusual ways. For some people, sleep and stress can cause a massive release in blood sugar.

 

And one of the ways we use that at Weighless MD is to help optimize meal planning. If you digest a little bit better in the morning, having a more filling and nutritious breakfast can give you longer-lasting energy and provide better weight loss. Watching your blood sugar utilization can give you that information.

Who Is CGM For?

For diabetics, CGM can be an invaluable tool to help understand what food does to their bodies. A growing number of professionals are also using it for weight loss and for improving their metabolic health.

CGM also has potential for use with cardiovascular patients, helping people understand how sugar relates to heart pain or fluttering. It could also help people with kidney disease, liver disease, cancer, and digestive issues, as these have a solid connection to sugar imbalances.

One exciting aspect of CGM is helping menopausal women. During menopause, a woman’s hormones fluctuate considerably, as does her ability to process nutrients such as sugars. Therefore, it can help her understand some of the underlying causes of hot flashes, mood swings, and weight gain.

There is a word of caution about using CGM. It is important to understand the importance of blood sugar management and how it affects your health. CGM could pose a risk for addiction or obsessive disorders for people who become fixated about tracking and counting numbers. CGM is a tool, not something to become dependent on or manipulate.

I’ve been utilizing CGM to better understand how my blood sugars align with my habits so that my metabolic health is optimized. I wanted to better understand why some days I feel tired and irritable while others I have more energy than I can handle! Another area of interest is inflammation. Blood sugar dysregulation over time causes inflammation in the body. I have autoimmune Hashimoto’s that is significantly affected by my choices so I will do what I can to feel great every day.

If you’re interested in learning more, just call my office to schedule a free session to talk more about this and your weight loss goals.

Keyword: Continuous glucose monitoring

Metatag; Continuous glucose monitoring can help weight loss when used correctly. CGM is a tool that lets you understand what sugars are doing in your body and what foods can cause that number to spike.

 

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