Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Cgms, continuous glucose monitors, need to be available to the public, and we're going to dive into why.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome back, insteadters, to Duster mud. This is episode 35. And here we go.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: So I got a phone call the other day from our daughter Hannah, who lives in the U. K. And she was very excited about something that she had recently purchased and received from Amazon.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah. She got a fitness device which piqued our interest. And we're like, really?
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Because we like all of the health stuff. We think that anything that would add to information about our wellness would be very beneficial to us, especially in the space that we have going on right now, diving into how our bodies react to nutrition and calories and fats and all of the macros. And this device that she got pays attention to one of those macros.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So she got a fitness continuous glucose monitor, a CGM designed specifically for fitness. It integrates with an app on her smartphone, and it monitors what's happening with her body when she eats, when she sleeps, when she exercises, and gives her the same real time feedback that a continuous glucose monitor gives folks like that use it for diabetes.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Right. She placed it on the back of her arm. It pokes and sticks on kind of thing, and it gives her a constant reading of her glucose as real time, all the time, continuously. And so it's giving her information about what happens when she wakes up, what happens when she sleeps, what happens when she exercises, doesn't exercise.
And it's been absolutely fascinating to her.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah. She was so excited about it and was sending us some screenshots of what it looks like on her app. And Shelly was like, we have got to get these.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I need one. I really do. I need one.
So he looked, and he was not successful.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I opened the Amazon app, and it was as if it didn't exist, which I'm like, what? So I looked. I had typed it in with two words for the brand name instead of one, and I said, oh, that's probably what it is. So I typed it in again, correctly this time, and it still didn't exist.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: As it turned out, it does exist. But there are regulations within the United States of America, through the FDA, that says what the citizens of this country can and cannot purchase in terms of medical devices.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Right? So even though this device is marketed as a fitness device, because it's a continuous glucose monitor, in the United States, they are considered medical devices and they are controlled by prescription.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Right. So in our country, if you live in the United States, in order to have one, you have to have a prescription. The end that doesn't settle well.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: No, it didn't sit well with me at all. So I did an Internet search and said, maybe I can find it. So I did. I found it, and it was an Amazon product. And I said, oh, cool. So I clicked on it, and it took me to Amazon's site in India, and I said, okay, I'll go ahead and order it. Anyway.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: I don't care if they send it from Mumbai.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: I don't care if it comes from India. And so, as I was making my way through the process, I got all the way to the shipping instructions, and it said, cannot ship to your location.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So it's heavily controlled. Yeah, they are heavily controlled. Now, all that to be said, what we've done is we've been in constant and almost constant contact with Hannah as she is experimenting as an n of one. She's doing her own experiments with her own body and coming up with a lot of really interesting information about what's happening to her glucose levels through her days.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: So you said n of one. That phrase is used a lot. And initially, when I heard that, I didn't know what it means. What does that mean in of one?
[00:04:31] Speaker A: It is an experiment of one person. You are doing your own experiment with your own self.
There is not outside control happening.
It's you and you.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: So a lot of times, when medical experiments are done and published, the number of people in that experiment n equals and then the total number of people that were in that medical experiment.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Right?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: And so when a lot of the doctors and fitness folks say n of one, n of one, n of one, that just means that there was one person in the experiment, right.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Rather than 360, whatever, however many people. Okay, so she's doing her own experiments. She is sending us a lot of interesting data.
We very much want to do experiments on ourselves to see how different foods, keto type foods. I don't know that I'm going to go so far as to try out the standard american diet. I think that's pretty evident about what it does to our bodies.
We all kind of see it. So what we would like to know is what of the keto foods? What of the kind of different stevia and almond flour and the nuts they say we can eat, and what's the volume and what does dairy do? So I would like to personally know what that does to me, and I'm.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Very interested in this whole net carb thing that is going on right now in the keto realm. We talked about it a few podcasts ago as a potential for why you might be hung up in a keto journey, especially if you're looking for weight loss. So I'm very interested to look at some of those net carb type keto friendly foods to see what does that.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Do, what's really going on? Yeah.
So what we're going to do is continue to get information from Hannah about what's happening with her. We plan to give you guys some on screen, actual data from her fitness device and give you the actual information of what she ate, when she ate it, and what was happening. She's a very fit person, and her system works really well. So it's really going to give us some interesting information.
And it's a young system because she's only in her twenty s, so we can have that right now. And then we plan to see if we could continue.
We will continue our quest to see if we can get our hands on some of these devices so that we can wear them and do the experiments on ourselves.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really interested in the information that comes from these. We believe information is power. And there's one case in particular where Hannah saw what happened after she ate something and went immediately and threw it away.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: She thought, I'm going to throw it away.
That is information and action.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And she was doing it as an experiment, like, what will this do? And when she saw it, it was so shocking to her that she went immediately and threw it away.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
I think the thing that dumbfounded her was she thought she was eating something that would be considered healthy, and that really just kind of got her. And so with all of this information, what we're planning to do over the course of the next couple of days is prepare a bunch of information and be able to present it in a coherent way on Thursday, on the Thursday's big podcast, so that we can take a significant amount of time, take our time, and go over what does this mean and what would this type of information do for all of us? Right.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Because we've talked about it before. Right now, 70% of the american population is either overweight or obese, and 50% of the american population either has diabetes, diagnosed diabetes, or prediabetes. And these monitors, they market them as clinically proven to reduce weight. Clinically proven to reduce a one c. But yet we can't have access to it without a prescription, even as a fitness device.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: So we're really wanting to dive into the information and get it out to you guys so you can see the type of information that's out there. And I don't know, especially if you are one of the people who is having metabolic issues, it might be something that you could get your doctor to prescribe you. And a lot of times, if that happens, they're even covered under insurance. Not always, definitely some insurances treat them differently.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: But if you could see the type of information that's out there, I believe. I think that it makes it really easy then to make decisions based on.
Here's what happened to me personally.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Well, at least you're making a decision based on tangible information and not on something that you can't see. Maybe you can feel it, but you can't see it. And because it's so hard to make changes. And we've had several comments recently about spouses, and one spouse wanting and doing desperately to change their diet, eat less carbohydrates or more fats or whatever the case may be, and then the other spouse being very reluctant or dug in their heels on it. But what would happen if we had the information in front of us, if we put the device on and we could see with our eyeballs exactly what's happening to me when I eat this or when I do that? This is the result. And a lot of times, just people being able to see something will change their mind. And I believe that we should all have equal, readily available access to these devices, period.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Now, before we go too far into that, let's just say on Thursday we're going to dive way into this, into the numbers, and we look forward to that.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I look forward to the comments. If you have a continuous glucose monitor, a CGM, we're really interested to hear from you and hear how it's working for you or not.
That would be really cool.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you use it? What information are you getting from it? Has it changed your behaviors in what you eat, when you eat, when you exercise? What has it done for you? That would be amazing.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Okay, so we'll see you guys on Thursday to continue this conversation. And until next time. Bye, y'all. Bye.
