alt Hacker NewsBlood glucose levels affect lots of health functions. Diabetes represents an extreme end of the spectrum where the body's ability to regulate these fluctuations fails, but just because your body can get your levels in control eventually doesn't mean you won't suffer from the negative effects of it needing to do so.
Maintaining consistent glucose levels improves mental health, weight management, sleep quality, muscle recovery, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular health, and may even slow aging. There isn't much clinical data at the moment on how to use blood glucose measurements to control glucose levels outside of people with diabetes (there are lots of things that impact it besides just sugar intake), but there are definitely major theoretical benefits if it can be worked out.
Also, just reducing the incidence of diabetes would be no small accomplishment. About 3.5% of global disability adjusted life-years (DALYs) are due to diabetes. As of 2021 it was the 7th largest contributor of global DALYs.
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Do you think CGM + alerting is a good solution for this compared with just, like, low-dose GLP-1s?
I am confident that blood glucose has a lot to do with mood regulation as well.
Having been diagnosed with bipolar since 1997, when I began mainlining insulin last year I immediately took notice of how calm and docile I became. I have anger issues and taking insulin turned me into a lamb. I also immediately began sleeping peacefully and restfully, which had been elusive for a decade.
I currently take a calcium channel blocker for hypertension, and Metformin for the glucose, and I monitor with Stelo. But I would give anything for that calming effect of fast-acting insulin.
sample of 1, but yeah changing my diet (very low sugar, more veggies) did alter my health visibly and rapidly. to the point that if I eat something too sweet too fast i have a very mild headache soon after, my system readjusted to not seek levels i grew up with