The Power of Instant Feedback
Real-time alerts from CGMs can help you adjust your diet, medication, and activity levels to prevent blood sugar fluctuations that can lead to complications like damage to your nerves, kidneys, blood vessels, eyes, and other parts of the body over time.
This real-time feedback is particularly helpful with meals, Hess-Fischl says. She describes a patient who had overindulged during a meal he loved, then received an alert that his glucose was rising higher than usual.
“Instead of getting mad at himself for being human, he took a 20-minute walk and it leveled off his readings,” Hess-Fischl says. “I was so proud of him, because that is exactly what CGM can do — instead of feeling helpless or defeated, he made a positive behavior change.”
It’s not just about food choices though.
Stress and sleep, which are often interconnected, can also impact blood sugar levels. Cortisol, the stress hormone, triggers your liver to release more glucose into your blood. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body reacts as though it’s under stress. As a result, you may find that you wake up with higher morning blood sugar than usual.
Meanwhile, exercise can lower your blood sugar for up to 24 hours or more after a workout, since it makes your body more sensitive to insulin. Certain medications, like statins (used to lower LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol) and immunosuppressive drugs (like corticosteroids, used in arthritis treatment), can cause changes in your blood sugar too.
“Before CGMs became very popular, most of our focus was on looking at the A1C, which only really showed trends and average,” says Pouya Shafipour, MD, an obesity medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “CGMs show the exact timing of your glucose levels and the relationships to food, sleep, stress, exercise, and medication, which is really empowering for both patients and doctors.”
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