Discover The Hidden Link – Shocking CGM Results After 2 Weeks
A few weeks ago, I bought a CGM (Continuous Glucose Meter) as a health experiment.
I wanted to find out if my sugar levels, insulin levels and most importantly — if my body was functioning normally.
Normally, if you eat something, your sugar levels go up, depending on how much sugar there is in the food.
Next, your body has to regulate that sugar, and make it go down again.
After monitoring my levels and experimenting for 2 weeks, I found out a bunch of interesting stuff!
Before you continue…
First read part 1: here I already explained a lot and talked about my first few days:
A little bit of biology / chemistry
Our bodies regulate the sugar in our bodies with 2 hormones:
- Insulin
- Glucagon
Both of these hormones are produced in the pancreas, the organ which is the key to everything.
Scenario 1: You eat.
If the sugar level in your blood increases, for example after eating, your pancrease will release insulin.
Insulin helps your cells to pick up this glucose (sugar) from your blood, and use it as energy OR (!!!) store is a reserve.
As a result, your sugar levels drop, back to normal levels.
Scenario 2: You DO NOT eat.
If the sugar level in your blood goes down after not eating for a while for example, your pancreas produces glucagon.
Glucagon tells your liver “Hey, release some sugar into the blood stream dude!”
Result: Your blood sugar level increases again to normal levels.
So where are the problems?
Well, if one of these 2 processes do not function like they should, you’re obviously in trouble.
But what could cause this?
If you’ve read my other article, you should know the answer. But for the lazy readers, here are some of the main reasons again:
- Not enough physical exercise
- Too much sugary foods & drinks
- Eating too often (+5 meals per day)
Generally, we can say that an unhealthy lifestyle, over time, can lead to these problems.
Needless to say, you don’t want this.
Diabetes Type 1 vs Type 2
I quickly want to tell you about the differences between these 2:
- With Type 1, your pancreas just doesn’t produce insulin anymore — at all.
- With Type 2, your body can NOT USE the insulin well (due to resistance — which is your body getting used to soooo much sugar) OR the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin anymore to regulate the amount of glucose in your blood.
Most people get Type 2.
Okay let’s discuss some of my personal results.
Fasting and the impact on my sugar levels
I tried fasting for 24 hours.
I was curious what would happen:
- Would my sugar levels drop below “the safe zone”?
- Would I get serious dips?
Nope. Nothing special happened. Everything was quite stable as you can see:
The little spikes you see are maybe due to some physical activity or rise in stress levels.
Yes: not only food impacts your glucose levels!
What happens in my body when I’m fasting then?
I mean… I’m not eating, then where does my body get the sugar from to maintain this “stable level”?
Answer: Your body is smart and it adapts by searching for alternative energy sources.
This happens in different phases (or via different sources):
- Source 1: Glycogen in the liver.
- Source 2: Other sources, like lactate, glycerol (fat), and amino acids (part of protein).
- Source 3: Body produces ketones. During this process, fat gets transformed into ketones, and ketones can get used by almost anything and an alternative energy source.
This last “method” is a well known fasting method called Keto-diet. I’m not a fan of diets, because diets is something you do for a short period, and 90% of the people just relapse after a while.
Instead, you should focus on creating healthy habits and transforming into a healthy lifestyle.
What happened when I ate crap?
As you can probably expect, the results were not good.
I enjoyed myself on cookies, ice cream, pancakes, fries etc etc.. Any crap I could find for a whole day.
The results, compared to my “Fasting” period:
I found this quite surprising to be honest — I expected it to be WAY worse.
You know, at some point I ate cooked carrots and parsnip with white rice and chicken.
“Healthy stuff!”, you’d say, right?
While in fact IT IS quite healthy, these 2 vegetables are very high on the glycaemic index and they caused BIG SPIKES!
So, it’s important to realize that not every spike is actually bad.
What happened when I ate normally?
I noticed that some foods barely spoke my glucose levels:
- Toast + avocado + egg + salmon + salad
- Salad + cheese + nuts
- Chicken + quinoa / bulgur
- Steak, salads
- …
It also made a huge difference in what I ate first.
If I first ate my salad and later for example pasta, the spikes were not so big than if I would first eat my pasta and then my salad.
Huge difference.
I noticed that oatmeal caused quite some big spikes. At first I was worried because I absolutely love the oatmeal I made.
But later I found out what the cause of the spikes was: I added pure, fresh honey. And honey is pure sugar, but a good form of sugar.
So spike → Yes. But unhealthy? Not really. Just don’t eat it all the time.
I had a small medical surgery
I got injected with some painkillers, and I was tracking my levels at the same time.
Look what happened:
Shocking, right?
Just look at those spikes, they nearly reached 200!! This is really not good. So medicine… if you can avoid it, I’d avoid it.
Luckily, they quickly went down again — which is good, and which indicates that my pancreas works as it should.
Phew, what a relief.
MOOD & Energy
Quite important as well.
I’ve noticed that whenever I had a big spike, my mood and energy levels changed.
On the days I tested eating some crap, I was just… grumpy. Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to do anything. Just go away and let me watch my YouTube Video.
You know the feeling probably, right? You’ve eaten a huge meal, and like 1 hour after that meal you start feeling a bit tired. You could take a nap. Your focus and concentration are gone.
Sounds familiar?
This is because: Mood & energy usually follow spikes.
If you’ve got this problem → Get a monitor, start measuring and adjust your eating pattern.
But what if I ate healthy or if I fasted?
When I ate healthy, I had ENERGY, and I was just feeling food. Focused. Clear mind.
But fasting… well.. I wasn’t quite happy when I fasted.
I mean, I was hungry. And I love eating… who doesn’t? So in the beginning it’s really hard. And annoying. But yeah, it gets easier.
And well, at least I had energy. Lots and lots of energy.
This is normal, because your body goes into some sort of “hunting mode” — into some state of “increased alertness”. It wants food and every cell in your body is focused on that.
Survival.
Quite interesting.
Conclusion After My 2 Weeks
I’ll keep it short: I think that everyone should wear one. Not forever, but at least for 2 weeks like I did.
You can see — within minutes — which impact different kinds of food have on your body.
And yes, every person is different. Of course there can be some general trends and general health guidelines, but if you REALLY want to know, you need to measure it.
Your microbiome in your gut is different from anyone else’s. There is no one size fits all. You have to learn YOU. You need to learn what works and what is best for YOU.
- Your goal should be to have as little spikes as possible.
- Learn which foods can you eat without spiking your glucose
For example, when I eat a steak my blood sugar goes down. But yours might go up.
We could dramatically change the health of the world if everyone would wear one of those.
Thanks for reading!
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Did you know? I also write on Medium about different passive income streams like Print on Demand, YouTube Automation, investing tips, healthy habits and just keeping yourself motivated to keep going every day!
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