I wore a continuous glucose monitor for a month and after the end of my experiment I stopped
eating mangos and I started eating bread for the first time in many, many years. This is the
strange story about how all of us have very, very different and unique digestive systems,
and how all of us have very different metabolic health, and why it's so important that you learn
about your unique body. Hey, my name is Lucas, I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a nutritional coach, I am not
type 2 diabetic, I do not have insulin resistance. Just for your reference, my recent A1C test was at
five percent and my fasting morning blood glucose averages in the mid 90s. While I would love for
those numbers to be a little bit lower, for all intents and purposes it would be impossible for me
to get a diagnosis of pre-diabetes or diabetes, no one would diagnose me with any kind of metabolic
disorder. Anyone you talk to would tell you that it's a total waste of time and money for me to
use a device like this and they would be wrong. In this video we'll talk about why why everyone
should use a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, for at least two weeks to understand how your
body works. Number two, we'll talk about how to get one of these devices, and number three,
I'll give you some tips for best practices so you can make the most from your two-week stint with
one of these stuck into your arm. As a disclaimer, I am not a doctor. Please work with your doctor. I
have put a PDF down below with some instructions on how to use these things, some language on how
to communicate with your doctor. I think you'll find it helpful. You can grab that down below.
Here's my story with blood glucose. My very first nutritional coach was a medical doctor
who was obsessed with blood glucose. Almost all of his work was with type 2 diabetes patients
and he was using lifestyle interventions to get them off insulin. He was really successful in the
short term, not so much in the long term. That's another video for another day, but what he taught
me was to go down to the pharmacy and buy a finger prick glucose monitor, it cost about 20 bucks,
I got one and he had me checking my blood glucose in the morning and after meals. It's
called postprandial blood glucose. Here's what I learned - zero, nothing, I learned nothing. My
morning glucose was low, my postprandial glucose was low, I threw the device away and that was it,
end of story. I put my focus on other things in health and wellness, I figured this blood
sugar thing was not for me. Fast forward about 15 years later I started having really bad sleep
problems. By sleep problems I mean I'd wake up at three or four in the morning covered in sweat,
drenched in sweat, and delirious, really, really disoriented and confused. I assumed I had some
kind of massive hormonal problem, so I got a bunch of blood work done, and the blood work showed
nothing. No one really knew what was going on. Quite coincidentally, at that same time one of my
podcast listeners sent me one of these things in the mail and said "Lucas, you've got to stick this
on your arm, it's been life-changing for me!". So I did. Here's what I found out. In the evening
I was eating mangos, I love tropical fruit, and those mangoes, as you would guess, sent my blood
sugar a little bit high. They'd give me a spike, nothing crazy, definitely not what I'd like, maybe
140, sometimes even 145 milligrams per deciliter. Not good, but not terrible. What happened next is
where the terrible thing happened. I suffer from something called reactive hypoglycemia. Not hyper,
not going up, but reactive. Meaning when I go up I come way down. At three, four in the morning I was
having 70, 60, sometimes as low as 50 milligrams per deciliter, that's a full-blown hypoglycemic
event. Confused, delirious, sweating, all of the above. When you don't sleep well,
you have a bad day. When you have a bad day, it screws up your focus, and your mood,
and so many different things. And it all came down to mangos. I could not believe it. I got rid of
the mangos and started sleeping much, much better, almost immediately. I had gotten blood work,
I had gone to see doctors, there's nothing, no one could have ever helped me with that, except
for this silly little thing stuck in the back of my arm. As you can imagine that led me down
a whole rabbit hole of experiments to understand how my body, how my digestive system works.
Why is it different? Well, in our gut all of us have about three pounds of bacteria. Like soil,
the soil in Barcelona is different than the soil in Boston, is different than the soil in Tokyo.
Our microbiome, our microbiota, those little bugs in there, are very different, and it seems
like it has a very big effect on how we digest and metabolise foods. There are other things going on
as well, like the health of your liver, and your hormones, and genetic factors, and a whole bunch
of other things we don't understand. Here's what I learned - fruit for me is kryptonite,
especially sweet fruit. What that means is mangos, apples, oranges, especially things like grapes,
they will spike me up, but even worse, I will have this reactive event that will drop me down so low
I have to sit down and sometimes lie down in the middle of the day. Now, this is heartbreaking for
me, I love fruit, I love tropical fruit, I just eat less, or I eat it rarely, or I eat a little
bit and I try to put my focus on lower glycemic fruits. Please know that this is probably not how
you will react. In fact, all the best information will tell you this is not how anyone reacts. That
information for me is wrong, this is how my body reacts. I have tested this dozens and dozens of
times. The second thing I learned which completely blew my mind, is that bread, especially when it's
with oil and vinegar, has very little impact on my blood glucose at all. What that means is for
someone like me - bread with oil and vinegar is a healthier food than a mango. Even saying that out
loud now I find that very, very hard to accept and believe, but the numbers don't lie, that's
how my body reacts. Other things that I learned from my experiments, all of the usual tricks that
people suggest, they worked for me. I don't know if they'll work for you, but it's worth testing.
What kind of tricks? A salad, front-loading a salad in your meals, because of the fiber,
that really helps to slow down the hit of blood sugar. Number two is vinegar, adding vinegar to
your salad or to your food, that really again slows down the blood glucose response for meals
for me. Avoiding all carb-only snacks is really really crucial. I can eat carbohydrates very well,
but I need to pair them with fat or with protein to slow down the absorption. The
number one thing I learned from all of my experiments, aside from the mango thing,
was that movement after a meal is absolutely amazing for my blood glucose. What that means
is if I have a big dinner and I stay seated in my chair at the table, or if I go sit on the couch,
my blood glucose will have a pretty predictable spike. Maybe it'll go to 125, maybe even 130
milligrams per deciliter. However, if I stand up, if I walk around, if I play with my kids,
do some chores around the house, it's very common that my blood glucose won't even cross 100,
100 milligrams per deciliter postprandial, that's about one to two hours after a meal. This change
is so dramatic and so simple to do and it can have such a long lasting impact on my health. What is
all of this data that I've learned have to do with you? Maybe something, maybe nothing. What it means
is you need to experiment. Your body's different, there are things you don't know, maybe it's the
mangos, maybe it's the movement, maybe it's the vinegar, you really need to understand your body
and you can do that now with one of these devices. If you go online you'll see all kinds of different
companies like Levels, Veri, and Nutrisense. They're all using this device. It is made by a
company called Abbott Labs, it's a medical device, so there aren't a lot of competitors. In fact,
right now there's really only two devices. One is called Dexcom, that's very expensive, and mostly
for type 2 diabetics. And then there's this Abbott Labs FreeStyle 2 or 3 device, this is what
everybody's using. It doesn't matter who's selling it, everybody's using this device. Hopefully there
will be some other manufacturers in the future. The medical industry is really tightly regulated.
This is safe, it's simple to use, it doesn't hurt, they call it a needle but it's really
just a filament. You can install it at home, it's very, very simple to use. So, how do you get one?
The least expensive option is if you can get your doctor to prescribe one and if your insurance
covers it. Now, for a lot of people like me, I can't get insurance to cover it, I don't have
a metabolic problem, I don't have any signs of metabolic disease, or blood glucose management
problems, no signs of insulin resistance, so I pay for this out of pocket. It depends on where
you buy it. If you're able to get a prescription and get it from the pharmacy your out of pocket
might be $75 for two weeks. It can be as high as $150 for two weeks. Now, that's a lot of money and
that's a big, big expense. However, I would argue that it's worth it. What you'll learn from this
in those two weeks is enough to really impact the next few years of your life. A lot of people get
obsessed with these and they wear them every day, all day, forever and ever. I don't think
that's necessary. Most of you will find everything you need to know in just a couple of weeks. So,
while it is a significant investment, oftentimes you can get enough data in that short period of
time. If you're talking to your doctor, the best thing to say is: "There's type 2 diabetes in my
family." I promise that's true for you. "And I would like to do everything I can to avoid
metabolic disease, specifically type 2 diabetes. I would love to wear an Abbott Labs FreeStyle device
for a couple of weeks to learn." See what they say. Some doctors are very supportive, some are
not. If they're not supportive, go online, you can order one. Again, check the PDF down below,
I'll show you how you can find one online with or without a prescription. OK, you get a device,
you install it, you stick it in your arm, you put a little bandage over it like this,
so you can swim and shower and you don't have to worry about it. What do you do now? Well, the app
that comes with your device is free, there's no need for a second app, and it comes with your
FreeStyle Libre device and you simply hit scan and then like in Android you scan the back of your arm
and then your device will tell you your current blood glucose. So my current blood glucose is
103 milligrams per deciliter. I'm about an hour and a half since I had some food and so I had a
protein shake and I had some nuts this morning, and so my blood glucose is relatively low for
postprandial level. This is something I'd be happy with. What I'm most happy about is that relatively
flat line here on this graph. What I mean by that is my blood glucose is mostly stable from
when I wake up all the way throughout the day. We often say that we want to have high energy,
but that's not really what we mean. We'd like to have stable energy, because for most of us the
highs come with lows and that roller coaster is not what we're looking for. You've got the device
installed, you've got the app on your phone, what do you do now? You've got two weeks, how do you
make the most of it? Pay specific attention to what happens with sleep, with stress, with food,
those are your big things. Many people find that when they're stressed out their blood glucose
rockets. This has to do with your cortisol levels and your body dumping glucose into your system so
you can go fight tigers. Many people find that when they sleep poorly, like less than six hours
per night, sometimes they even have pre-diabetic fasting blood glucose levels because, again,
their body thinks hmm Lucas is only sleeping four hours tonight there must be a war going on, let me
dump a bunch of glucose into his system so he can go fight. And then I go sit behind the computer
and I'm stressed out. The third thing to pay attention to, which is the most obvious, is how
foods affect you. Look at fruit, look at starch, look at carbohydrates specifically, you might find
that rice is kryptonite for you but potatoes are not, or vice versa. It can be really helpful for
you to understand how you can pair foods, how you can time your meals in a way that can have
an advantageous effect on your blood glucose, and again, what we're looking for is a relatively flat
line of blood glucose management. My challenge to you would be to give this two weeks and see
if you don't find something as big as what I found - removing mangoes and moving around after meals
quite literally is changing my metabolic profile in a way that's setting me up for a much, much
healthier future. It's very, very simple for me to do. Hope you found this video helpful. Again,
grab that PDF down below with some reference and ideas for speaking to your doctor and ordering a
device. If you'd like more science-based yoga videos, hit subscribe down below. If you have
experience using a CGM, good, bad, indifferent, I'd love to hear from you in the comments down
below. You can find my teaching calendar at yogabody.com and I'll see you in the next video.