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Seems like it’s basically a clinical trial/beta test for a new continuous glucose monitor, nothing really exciting.
For more context for people who don’t know. You can buy CGM devices over the counter from places like Walmart and Amazon.
They attach to your body and monitor your blood glucose via a small “thread” that goes into your skin when it’s applied. They typically cost $50 for two weeks.
The OTC version has been around for a shorter period of time than the ones that require a prescription, but work the same way. The OTC ones tell you they are not for diagnosing diseases. Or for people who rely on insulin.
And Dexcom, the company in the article, is the most prominent vendor for these sorts of things. “A Dexcom” is the “Kleenex” for CGM in the type 2 diabetes world. From what I’ve seen.
RFK has been talking about wanting all Americans to use CGM for a long time now. This is part of that. The MAHA people talk about metabolic stuff like it’s the solution to our fucked up food culture in the US.
I use a CGM. But I can’t help but be suspicious of RFK.
Rumors are that Apple has been dumping money into figuring out how to make the Apple Watch do CGM. They have been chasing it for years.
Unfortunately there are very few actual CGM brands available. There are a bunch of different CGMs, but most of them are just relabels of other units, almost all of which are made by either Dexcom or Abbott. Even more unfortunately in my experience they wildly exaggerate the accuracy and lifetime of the units. Most claim an accuracy of +/- 20% which is pathetic for 14 days, but you’re lucky if it maintains even that terrible level of accuracy for half that time.
In my case I’m horrendously allergic to the adhesive that Dexcom uses on their units, so I can’t even use half the CGMs on the market, and I gave up on Abbott after their units started to struggle to even make it 48 hours without being off by more than 50 mg/dl.
I feel like I’m a Stelo unicorn. I’ve had good luck, and when I check with a finger prick it’s always close. I don’t use insulin. So it’s fine for my needs.
I suspect my body/arm/skin is ideal for the technique these use. And I think a large subset of people never have as good of luck. If you look on Amazon, you see the CGMs always have 2.5-3 stars. And in a broken place like Amazon where reviews are somehow always 4-4.5, this really shows how much you are rolling the dice with the OTC ones. But like I said, it’s been working for my needs.
It’s clear this market is proven and is valid. I hope breakthroughs in tech can happen to improve reliability, and longevity. If someone like Apple figures out how to do it with a watch style device, it’ll be really fantastic.
I used one for a while. It kept waking me up saying I was dying from low blood sugar at 2.4mmol (43mg/dl). Turns out if you sleep on it, it stops working, but the location means sleeping on my left side or my back causes it to fail.
Then, during the day, it says I’m at 9mmol (162mg/dl), but when I finger prick test to confirm it’s only 7.2mmol (130mg/dl).
I just took it out after 6 days because it was completely inaccurate in my case. Maybe it’s just incompatible with my biology or something, either way it was a waste of money for me. Makes me wonder if it has a similar problem as those finger pulse monitors, where it only works for certain skin types?
Pressure lows are a known thing. I recently learned there is a new type of device that lasts 365 days, but it involves surgically inserting the sensor under the skin and removing it at the end. The sensor is then powered by a rechargeable external device. They claim this technique is basically immune to compression lows.
But this isn’t available over the counter, and requires a specific diagnosis to qualify.
Yeah I was looking at that. But I have prediabetes / insulin resistance, and in my local area, nobody cares until your pancreas completely kicks the bucket. Prevention of disease isn’t really a thing here. That’s why I went out and bought my own sensor, just to see what was going on. It was useful for seeing like, wait why did my blood sugar spike after breakfast? Oh I didn’t realise overcooked oats were high gi. I changed it to raw oats in warm milk which is much smoother on the graph. But I would never qualify for that device because my problems don’t show up on the 3 month A1C test. And after I optimised the 3 foods that were more spike-y than the rest, I had no use for the inaccurate glucose monitor.
I’m glad you got some feedback out of it. I think that’s where they have the most value right now. But they are too expensive and too inconsistent for the sort of mass rollout RFK wants here in the US. They need to improve a lot to move away from the style of use you got out of an OTC version.
I’ve used one before and it gave me useful feedback. Turns out 2 bowls of raisin bran will spike my blood sugar, which feels bad. (ok, not an Earth-shattering revelation, but near real-time feedback with numbers was neat.)
The FDA’s leader right now:
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It’s for “Digital Health Devices.”
It is intended to let patients and their clinicians monitor metabolic and nutritional status, receive tailored guidance, and access real-time data and AI insights for behavioural changes.
Maaaaan. If only I were rich and living in the US. It’s a new frontier of snake oil.
Just get in His Majesty’s good graces and go to town.
It’s a glucose monitor, like diabetics already use, it’s not snake oil.
