Many people living with diabetes use continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to trace their blood sugar levels. These small devices, often attached to your upper arm or the back of your stomach, send data to an app in your phone. This means that you can see in near real time how your blood sugar levels rise or fall depending on what you eat or how energetic you've been.
The advantages for people living with diabetes are obvious, as failure to maintain blood sugar levels balanced might be dangerous. But these devices are being promoted as health aids to a wider community, including health-conscious non-diabetics and elite athletes.
But our own research found that using these expensive devices provided little profit to healthy athletes without diabetes. And there it’s Very little research To support their use in healthy energetic individuals with normal glucose control.
That said, there are several areas that warrant further research.
Do these devices profit athletes without diabetes?
If your blood sugar levels drop below the conventional range (called hypoglycemia) during endurance exercise, your athletic performance is affected.
So it's easy to see why it seems logical to trace blood glucose in real time during endurance exercise. Many people assume that this figure can signal when it's time to eat more carbohydrates during or after exercise. Carbohydrates help maintain your blood sugar levels, fueling your body to make sure it has enough energy to finish the session.
However, glucose regulation during exercise is incredibly complex. It is affected by many aspects akin to how much and what you eat or drink, recovery and stress. Even exercise can sometimes raise your blood sugar readings. Results from the current the study Is Reported mixed up Results When exploring fueling practices (meaning what they eat and drink).
Despite enthusiastic marketing and athlete testimonials concerning the use of continuous glucose monitors, our research concluded that there’s insufficient clear evidence to support using continuous glucose monitors as a tool to optimize athlete fueling practices.
More research is required before we will promote these devices as useful additions to the athlete's toolbox.
What are the possible disadvantages of using a continuous glucose monitor?
The use of continuous glucose monitors presents several practical limitations.
First, they’re expensive. These monitors can cost around A$90-$100 per fortnight (because the monitors last for a maximum of 14 days) and a few mobile apps may require expensive subscriptions.
They may also be misplaced in the event you're training, competing, sweating, and even doing on a regular basis tasks like showering.
It's also easy to misinterpret data, which may cause unnecessary trouble. our A preliminary study Emphasize the importance of working with a sports nutrition skilled when wearing a continuous glucose monitor to make sure you will not be misinterpreting the info.
Elite athletes can also find that their sport's governing body has restrictions around these devices. For example, the world governing body for the game of cycling, International Cycling Unionhas banned using continuous glucose monitors during sanctioned races.
Healthy people that suffer from blood sugar readings.
Because these devices provide glucose readings 24 hours a day, it's also easy to stop obsessing over the info.
This could cause people to make unnecessary and overly drastic changes in eating behavior, resulting in what some doctors have termed “glucorexia.”
It's perfectly natural in your blood glucose to rise in response to eating carbohydrate-rich foods and liquids.
Worryingly, there are influencers who suggest that glucose should never “spike” and that it should all the time stay inside a really tight range, even through the immediate post-meal window.
In fact, it’s the rise in glucose levels outside the conventional range that could be a concern for health and well-being.
This indicates the danger of individuals without strong nutrition and physiology knowledge misinterpreting data from continuous glucose monitors.
If you’re energetic and plan to try a continuous glucose monitoring device, you must consider consulting. Approved sports nutrition So you can be properly informed about what the conventional response is.
More research is required.
Given the utility of continuous glucose monitors and the proven fact that they might be worn by athletes during training and at rest, we began to explore whether the info from these monitors could help elite athletes adjust their intake in response to exercise. might help adjust.
In our study, we’re particularly serious about tracking how data from continuous glucose monitors change in response to a day of coaching and eating. They may also be useful for exercise scientists trying to grasp if an athlete is overtraining.
But the fact is that almost all people will not be elite athletes.
The general public who has the money to splash on these devices should understand that there isn't much research into healthy people using continuous glucose monitors.
If you’re particularly concerned about your blood sugar levels, we recommend seeing a GP and/or a nutritionist. It's higher than stressing about and testing one more data set that isn't particularly useful yet.