Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Have you ever wondered what a hangover looks like on a CGM graph? Well, today we're going to show you and discuss what that really looks like. Welcome to the Duster Mud podcast, episode 41.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Rich, and I'm Shelley. Our second daughter, Hannah, is a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. And as part of her own health journey, she wore a continuous glucose monitor for a of weeks. We went over that data with you a few podcasts ago and wanted to highlight one additional chart that she sent us and then give you a wrap up of her overall thoughts, feelings, comments from her time with the continuous glucose monitor.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: That's right. She wore this for two weeks. And her final experiment was she's young, and she went out with her friends and had a few drinks. She had a couple of cocktails and some champagne, and she wanted to see what her blood glucose was going to do the next day. Now, she did not eat anything the next day. She fasted so that she could see what the results were on her blood glucose. Just having to deal with alcohol. Before we get to that, let's talk about alcohol and what it really is.
Is it a macronutrient?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Some do consider alcohol a macronutrient. You often hear about three macronutrients being fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Alcohol is sort of a special case because it has no nutritional value as far as our body is concerned, but it has calories. So some folks say that it's not a macronutrient. Some folks say that it is. There's about seven calories per gram of alcohol. So it does provide your body something. It provides it energy, but it doesn't really provide it any other nutrition. So there's a little bit of debate as to whether or not it's a macronutrient.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Now, in terms of energy, though, it doesn't really give us that much because it has to be processed alone. And kind of first it does.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: That's true. So the liver, it prioritizes processing alcohol, overdoing all of the other functions that it would normally do. So we've talked about in the past, especially those that are in ketosis. Your liver is busy processing fats and turning them into ketones that your cells in your body then use for energy.
When you consume alcohol, your liver stops that process, and it starts processing the alcohol.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: It's a really complicated thing that it does. We don't have to get into how it does it, but the fact is it processes the alcohol and it halts all other macrogenesis at all.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: So one of the things, especially for those who are in ketosis, one of the important things that the liver does is called gluconeogenesis, which means that it takes other stuff and converts that other stuff into glucose for those cells in our bodies that require glucose.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Unfortunately, while you're in the middle of a hangover because you've drank too much alcohol the night before, your body can't do both, so you're not getting the glucose that you need in order to have energy at any stable rate.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. The liver stops that gluconeogenesis so that it can start processing the alcohol. And if you happen to be diabetic and have gotten the dangers of alcohol kind of discussion, that's really where it comes in, is because the liver stops doing some of its other functions that it normally does so that it can process the alcohol. And for those who are controlling diabetes, especially through a low carbohydrate diet, now you're running into the potential for a severe hypoglycemic incident where your blood sugars really bottom out.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Because your liver stops producing glucose.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: You have to be really careful with that.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about her graph.
Put the graph on there.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: We're going to look at it on the phone while you all look at it on the screen.
It is an amazing spike and crash graph.
The time period is along the bottom of the graph, and it starts at 06:00 a.m. And you're looking at her day through to 03:00 p.m. So those spikes and crashes are happening throughout the day. The sort of gray background that's between 70 and 110, that is her target zone for her blood glucose levels. And although her body stayed in the target zone most of the day, it was not at all a staple blood sugar day, man.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Up, down, up, down. So, if you have ever had a hangover, you would know why you're getting hungry at these crashes and you want to go get something out of the pantry and eat, because your blood sugar is just diving, and it's diving because it's tending to the alcohol.
She doesn't have any other food in her system, so as it deals with the alcohol, it crashes. And then her liver, her body says, oh, no, we're getting too low, so it gives her some more, and then it says, oh, no, there's still alcohol in the system, so we got to deal with that. Up, down, up, down, all day long.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Right? And I would guess at each of those crashes, maybe having had a hangover before myself at each one of those crashes. She's getting the shakes.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Right.
This is just a great visual as to why. What's happening, what's going on. Your blood sugar levels are just crashing.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Each one of those little eye circles is her app saying, something is happening here.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: You're really low. You're really high.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Her app is telling her, you're spiking, you're crashing, you're spiking, you're crashing.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: So if you ever wondered what is happening, why you're feeling the way that you're feeling during a hangover, this is a great visual as to what's going on.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Why am I sweating?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, look down at the bottom of the chart. That's her interstitial temperature. The temperature in her skin, where this monitor is, the number really doesn't matter. What really matters is if you look there where it says plus 1.2 degrees celsius from baseline.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: She was running hot.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: She was running hot and she started running hot at about looks like 03:00 a.m. Her temperature started going up and then it went up through till about 08:00. 08:30 a.m. Then it crashed and then it popped right back up. And then her temperature started following basically her glucose. It did her blood sugar levels.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: I don't feel good just looking at it.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: You're wondering why. Oh, God, I'm hot. And then it's like, I'm freezing, I've got the shakes and I need to.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Eat the whole box of fruity bubbles.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: This is a very good visual.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: It is.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: As to what's going on in your body.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: I don't recommend it as you're dealing.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: With a hangover or the night after.
[00:08:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: So that was her last reading that she sent to us. And after that, she took off her CGM. She had worn it for 14 days, and she decided, I have enough data. I'm not going to spend another $150 on this. I've put things into my body, I've gotten data back and I have enough. So let's go over what her key takeaways were from wearing a healthy person fighter pilot, wearing a CGM for 14 days. What did that tell her?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: The number one thing that she said was, now she knows why she's having cravings and she feels like she's in absolute control and has power over those cravings and her hunger.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Now, the next thing she said was that she now feels like food is basically instructions that she's giving to her body. So she knows that if she eats carbohydrates, she's giving that set of instructions to her body, she's going to be hungry afterwards, she's going to have cravings and she's going to want something sweet. Like, she knows that.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: And she knows that if she doesn't consume carbohydrates, she's not going to be hungry afterwards, she's not going to have cravings and she's not going to want something sweet.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: That's an incredible thing to know.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: It is.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: It really is.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: She mentioned one of the things was when I don't spike myself, I don't crave. And we often think that our bodies aren't working. Right. Why am I so hungry? Why do I crave so much?
Why am I acting like this? And really, it's just because that's the message that you've sent to your body. Yeah. And knowing that is just so powerful.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: And her wearing this really helped her solidify because she saw the data. She saw when she ate the certain foods, what her blood sugar levels did associated that with how she was feeling. And so now she has a correlation all the way from what I put in my mouth in x number of minutes or hours is going to make me feel like this.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I have told my body that this is the result that I want based on what I put in my mouth.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Which is really. That's really cool.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: She also mentioned that she has a stable mood, just even kill all day. And for women to be able to say, that's wonderful.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Really is.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: And finally, she says that her sleep is much better when she is not eating carbohydrates, when her blood sugars aren't spiking up and down.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: She sleeps better and she wears a WHOOP. And so she has the correlation between the WHOOP and the CGM and how she feels are all telling her that she sleeps considerably better when she has not had a high carbohydrate meal the night before.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: I think it's awesome.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's awesome. So that covers it. She did an amazing job. She got gathered a lot of data for us and was willing to share it and for us to share with you guys. She's totally cool with all of this. And we. Thank you, Hannah.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Hannah. And we are still pursuing it.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: We are.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Don't give up on us.
We're going to do the same thing. We're just trying to find the best option for us in order to make it happen.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: But we'll keep you posted on it for sure.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Well, thank you guys for hanging out with us again. And we look forward to making more videos. Check us out on Mondays and on Thursdays. And we also put out a Friday YouTube video that is not a podcast, so you have to find that only on YouTube.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And until next time. Bye, y'all.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Bye, y'all.
