Is Glucose Monitoring A Waste Of Money?
Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) companies are super popular right now.
They claim that one of the reasons people without diabetes should pay attention to their glucose excursions is because high glucose excursions cause inflammation.
And inflammation then leads to all sorts of nasties.
They scare you into thinking some foods are evil and their tracking device can tell you accurately what foods you should avoid.
If you don’t have time to read it, I’ll summarise the main points:
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“We get a rise in some inflammatory markers when we eat, just as we get an increase in glucose, triglycerides, free-fatty acids, insulin and body temperature.
An acute rise in a molecule or hormone is not the same thing as chronic elevation.
There is little evidence that acute glycaemic responses to meals (in people without diabetes) are relevant in terms of inflammation and its pathophysiological consequences.
How do I reduce chronic inflammation?
The best evidence we have is for the following 3 things:
Weight loss (for people who have overweight/obesity). Adipose tissue releases inflammatory factors so this isn’t a huge surprise.
Exercise
Get more plants and fibre, hahaha. The microbiome may well play an important role in this. Feed it lots of fibres and you’ll probably get a colonic environment better at fighting pathogens. If fewer pathogens enter the bloodstream, you reduce inflammatory markers in the blood.
Bottom Line
Be wary of hand-waving, poorly-defined and reductionist claims about things like inflammation. And also remember lots of things go up after a meal because we have to metabolise food:
Glucose
Lipids
Insulin
Inflammatory factors
Temperature
People who want to sell you devices that measure your acute responses to meals have a vested interest in scaring you into thinking convincing you that these acute responses are critical for your health.”
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Hopefully this will save you some money/time from falling for these claims!