How do I know if I have a ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ blood glucose response to food? Should I be trying to avoid blood sugar ‘spikes’?  Are there certain foods that cause me to have an ‘unhealthy’ blood glucose response?

Continuous glucose monitors are receiving more and more attention in popular media, but are they as beneficial as the hype might suggest?

Insulin is a really important hormone with an important job to do.  It is true that if our body becomes less efficient at producing or using it then an inability to regulate blood glucose can lead to serious health problems such as diabetes.

But healthy blood glucose levels and insulin levels do rise and fall - they are supposed to.

And so monitoring your blood glucose levels with no medical requirement to do so can lead to a lot of unnecessary uncertainty and stress about blood glucose responses that are actually completely normal. 

When it comes to interpreting the results of a CGM, in between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ there are a wide range of considerations to account for, including frequency and duration of peaks, time of day, comparison of fed vs fasted states, readings immediately after eating and a certain number of hours after, for example.

We know with certainty that dietary changes applied consistently over time can significantly improve important health markers including blood glucose regulation - we don’t need the readings of a CGM to know this or to do this. So, unless you have been medically advised to do so (for example, because you have been diagnosed as diabetic), the benefits of wearing one are actually very limited.

Of much greater benefit to health are dietary and lifestyle changes like these:

• Achieving and/or maintaining a healthy body weight

• Eating a varied diet that contains protein, fruit and veg, and lots of fibre

• Minimising your intake of processed and ultra-processed foods

• Cutting down on alcohol

• Exercising regularly

• Prioritising sleep

So, do we need to wear a CGM to regulate our blood glucose levels? The answer to that one is no; no, we don’t. Do we need to worry about blood glucose and insulin ‘spikes’? Also no - in otherwise healthy individuals. Instead, you’d be better off concentrating on diet, lifestyle, and exercise, rather than certain specific foods and single responses to those foods in snapshots of time.

Related reading:

How I put my pre-diabetes into remission