Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Glucose Monitors

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Would people benefit from wearing a glucose monitor all day every day, even if they’re not on insulin? Evidence does not say there is a benefit, and there are some reasons not to get one. Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about the history of tracking glucose and our understanding of diabetes, as well as the advancement of technology where we’re almost at cyber-pancreases.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/Midwest Food Bank: https://midwestfoodbank.org/disaster-relief/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsawbones

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sydney McElroy. And Sydney, I have been so excited about our high-tech future that we are. I'm not. Yeah, no, it was just a contrivance. But speaking of the high-tech future, here's the one that I'm getting pretty jazzed about. In 2025, as wild as this seems, it was just last year, believe it or not. A lot has happened. Things are coming out as fast these days.

RFK said that, RFK Jr., pardon. RFK Jr. said that he's the secretary of health and human services, if you can believe that. Yeah, that guy. If you haven't been paying attention, believe it or not. He was the guy who, what, he left a dead bear in Central Park or something? It's impossible to remember all that guy's incredible, incredible tale. He had a worm in his brain, but it died. Don't worry. In 2025, he said he wants every American wearing a wearable health device within four years.

And in this case, I think he was specifically talking about a continuous glucose monitor. There's a lot of different wearable technology that people are using to, like, track stuff. And I'd like to continue to talk about it because there's a device that shocks you regularly. There's a device that measures, oh, lots of different stuff. Wait, what do you mean a device that shocks you regularly? Okay. Don't worry about it. We'll talk about it next time.

Some other time. So there's also rings, of course, are very big. rings, aura rings, health rings, whatever. Well, and does that count my watch? Yeah, for sure. Sure. Well, see, that's a dumb like, yes, I think that most of us will have a wearable of some sort

within four years if you count an Apple watch, because a lot, or some other kind of watch that tracks your steps. There's so many devices like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, but he wasn't making like a futuristic prediction about it. He's talking about how he's going to make it happen with the government. It's not like, I think everybody will have watches someday.

You know what I mean? Like he's, he really was pushing this, but what is it? What is it? Well, I know it's important and it's great for everybody. How do I know that? Because since in June of 26, the FDA allowed over-the-counter continuous glucose monitors, which we're going to be talking about, in kids as young as two, even if they're not on insulin. So we got to monitor continuously the glucose. Now, I know what you're thinking. I thought that was just for people with diabetes. And you're wrong. And you sound. stupid. I've been reading a lot, and it turns out everybody needs to be monitoring glucose all

the time. No. Okay. No. We're going to talk about why not. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah.

But like, it's just a thesis. And why? I think there's, okay, first of all, we're going to talk about what a continuous glucose monitor is and what the real uses are for it. Why do we have them? And then I want to talk about why this claim that they're good for everybody. and then why in the world are we having this conversation? Okay.

Why are we all talking about continuous glucose monitors? Let's talk about monitoring glucose. Now, I know that we talked about this in our diabetes episode. We probably talked about peeing on a stick and then the ants come and get the sweet pee. Yes, and there was a time where we tried to figure out if somebody had diabetes or not by tasting their urine, right, to see if there was sugar in their urine, because if you can't process sugar, it'll spill out into your urine, and then your urine will be sweet. So we don't do that anymore. We can check your sugar now in a variety of ways. But so first of all, we've done episodes on diabetes, and so I won't get into the weeds about diabetes.

I do think it's really important. The weed abetis. For this. The diabetes. I think it's really important for this episode to understand the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Yes. Yes. I still struggle with this.

Yes. So I'd like to let's go over it again. So generally speaking, and diabetes, every year I feel, feel like we get better and better understanding of diabetes. There are more and more treatment modalities. So our understanding, even since I've started medicine, our understanding of the types, so to speak, of diabetes have changed and the causes. But some things remain the same. With type 1 diabetes, it usually, the onset is in youth, typically, so younger, which makes you think it's a genetic thing. I think we assume that it must be a genetic condition. If it starts in childhood, it's not. Type 2 is

actually the more highly genetic condition. But type 1, usually onset in youth, and it typically is because your body is attacking your own pancreas, specifically the beta cells that make insulin. And so you are no longer making insulin. Without insulin, you can't take glucose into your cells and use it effectively, and your glucose runs very high, and then you get all the symptoms associated with that. So you typically lose a lot of weight, you're very hungry, you're very thirsty, you're peeing all the time, but you start to have wasting, and you can get very, very sick.

And patients, certainly before the invention of insulin that we could inject into people became very, very ill. So type 1 diabetes needs to be treated with insulin inherently because you don't have it. So we have to give it to you. Give it. Yeah, you got to get it. The goal someday would be that we give you a new pancreas. Wouldn't that be incredible? A cyber pancreas. Yeah, we give you a cyber pancreas, and then we don't have to give you insulin because the cyber pancreas makes the insulin. We're not there yet, But that day will come. But I am going to go ahead and trademark cyber pancreas. Type 2 diabetes, the usually onset is later in life, typically.

And it is not because you don't have the insulin. You're making the insulin still. It's because you have resistance in your cells to take it, using the insulin to take the glucose in. So the problem is on the other end. And type 2 diabetes, the more we have learned about it is more closely related to metabolic syndrome in general. It is closely linked to our weight. It is linked to, first of all, it's very genetic. And we see correlation with type 2 diabetes with a lot of other metabolic syndrome.

You said something interesting before I started recording. You said you wouldn't be surprised someday if we use actually different names for those two conditions. Well, I think that it would be useful because the treatment is so different between the two. Although I will say, obviously you can use insulin in type 2. and there are many type 2s who do end up needing insulin. But there are a lot of other medications that we can use to treat the insulin resistance, and then you have the insulin so you don't need it.

Whereas type 1, we need to give you insulin. Type 1 diabetics have to have insulin, right? Yes, they have to have insulin. So I think because the etiology is different and the treatments often are very different, it is weird to me that we still use the same terminology. I think it's confusing to people. I don't know.

me in the medical world, I'm not saying I'm confused by it. I'm saying I feel like sometimes it's confusing terminology. And I wonder why we threw them in the same bucket other than you both get high sugar and you can get similar symptoms. For sure, for sure. And there can be similar complications. All that is true. It is really important for any diabetic patient on insulin. And this especially applies to type one since they're going to be on insulin. It is very important that they are able to check their glucose. For many, many years, even after we understood diabetes and we understood the importance of insulin, you couldn't necessarily check your sugar at home, right?

You would have to go to a doctor and get blood drawn to check your glucose level. Can you imagine how inconvenient that would be? If you think about, you know, there are type one diabetic patients who have to give themselves multiple injections of insulin during the day, and depending on how they manage it for themselves individually, it might be based on what their glucose is at that moment, or it might be based on how many carbohydrates they've eaten in a certain meal. Having to adjust for that without the ability to check your sugar was incredibly difficult for many years. Wow. It wasn't until the 80s that we start seeing the invention of a home meter, something that you could actually take home. And probably

many of you are familiar with these, even if you are not diabetic yourself. It's a meter that you can have at home, you prick your finger, it needs the tiniest, teeniest drop of blood, and it can tell you your sugar in a few seconds. And over the years, they've become better and better. We have smaller ones that are more reliable, that need less blood, that you can use on other, you don't have to do a finger stick. You can use on, like, your arm, you know, so that it's... Why would you...

Why a finger stick in the first place? We have a concentration of little capillaries there, and it's easy to squeeze, and... I don't know, easy access point. It's just, yeah, finger sticks have always been the easy access point for that. But it's also, it can be painful, especially if it do it multiple times a day. Yeah. And so the freedom to be able to use another access site is nice. And then finally, we have in the, like at the beginning of the 2000s, we start to see continuous glucose monitors.

The first ones were only something that you would, like, wear and then give to the doctor for them to be able to, like, download basically in review. Right. So it wasn't real time. Sort of like the heart monitors that they'd like wear for a bit and then you send back. Exactly. Although even in those cases, you would, in like the heart monitors we wear, it's sending data to somewhere where they can review it. Because it will alert if something really, if you're wearing one of those heart monitors, if you've ever seen those ones, stick on your chest and you wear a round. for a while. It is sending data somewhere, and if something really wild happens, they will call

you. It's wild. Like, are you okay? Are you doing all right? You're great? So they refined the continuous glucose monitor so that it could be something that would give you real-time data. But they don't pretend to be angels, by the way. They got in trouble for that once or twice, like, hey, this is your guardian angels. We just want to make sure you're okay because you seem a little stressed out and people get freaked out, like really bad freaked out. Then they had to explain it as like a hole. You would get in big trouble if you did. trouble. They got a huge trouble, I think. That was a whole legal kerfuffle. So we have in the early 2000s monitors that you can wear all the time, can give you real-time data.

We continue to refine those throughout the 2000s and even up to now where we get implantable continuous glucose monitors. Yeah, those you can wear for like a year. The rest of these, I think, are more like two to three week kind of deals. And just to say, what is this continuous glucose monitor if you're not familiar with it? So it is something that you're actually going to wear on your body. There's a tiny little filament. So it does go into your skin. And it doesn't need to go into like a blood vessel. It doesn't have to go into a vein or even a capillary.

It's just going to be in the interstitial fluid. That's the fluid between yourselves. It will sit there and give you real-time glucose readings about every five to ten minutes. And then you can also like ask it to check. You can ask it like what's what's, what am I? I feel bad. What am I doing right now? Most sensors you have to change about every couple weeks.

There is the implantable one that you can change once a year now. You shouldn't have to stick your finger now if you have one on, so you can see the advantage there. There are ones, too, that can communicate with if you are someone who wears an insulin pump. So if you have diabetes and the best way to manage your diabetes is to actually have a pump that, Again, a tiny filament goes into your skin, and you can set it for like a basal rate where it's consistently releasing some insulin into your body, and then you can bolus yourself with doses after meals or based on carb count or however you manage your diabetes. And then it can communicate with your continuous glucose monitor.

So it's like, which is cool because this is approaching the cyber pancreas now. Because if the two, you know, if one is sensing your sugar and the other is adjusting your insulin level for it. That's kind of what your pancreas did. So that's pretty cool. We're getting closer. And all of this technology was really meant for diabetic patients who use insulin. Again, a real focus on type 1 diabetics because they have to use insulin. These are the patients that the continuous glucose monitor was made to benefit primarily. Does that make sense? This is why this technology was invented. For these patients, especially if you think of how many of these patients are diagnosis children, typically it is onset of in youth. This is such an easier way to manage

diabetes if you get used to the use of a monitor and a pump or multiple injections, whatever works best for you. That is an easier way than, you know, having to check your sugar multiple times throughout the day. So, and we have evidence that says in type one diabetics, continuous glucose monitoring, especially those that might be prone to hypoglycemia, low sugar episodes, continuous glucose monitoring is helpful, can help manage disease better, can help keep your average sugars lower. And then, you know, I think a lot of patients, I've had some patients who have that combo, will say their quality of life is improved.

I don't, that was not in the studies I was looking at, but, you know, they don't have to think about it as much. They don't have to stick their finger that they appreciate this sort of like automation of it. So that is why we have continuous glucose monitors. That's who they were made for. That's who they benefit. That's where the thrust of the research as to why we need these exist. It's really important, I think, to understand all this and why we wanted to do all this first. You really have to understand what these things are and that they are useful and that some people do need them. And we needed to establish that now so that in the second half of the episode,

we didn't have to keep saying it every couple of minutes. Yes. Because there are a lot of people that have taken this very useful thing and have pretty profoundly perverted it. I think that's that absolutely. And I think it is natural to say it works really well in type ones. Would it work as well in type 2s? So expanding the research to that makes sense. But then I think that's the next question.

So should all of us be wearing a continuous glucose monitor, especially since, March of 2024, when they made the first over the counter, continuous glucose monitor available. And then just this past June, when they made the first over the counter, continuous glucose monitor for children to an up. And again, these are not necessarily for diabetic patients. These are just for everyone. Everyone. Does everyone need to monitor their glucose all the time? Don't answer.

because what I was thinking was Let's go to the billing department Let's go The medicines The medicines That Eskil meant macabre So what happened was this When we got this great technology

In the late 20 teens You had a couple of different entrepreneurial companies that said Hey wait a minute There are these things That you can get this data from Maybe if you had someone to

help you to process it, even people without diabetes could use this, or at least that's the pitch, right? The company that, one of the main ones that I think has been kind of leading this is Nutrisense. And they were founded in Chicago in 2019. Now, when they started, it was still a prescription thing. So the original pitch with most of these companies was, you sign up with us and then you get the prescription from a physician that we've partnered with. And then we will help you to monitor your glucose. We'll help you to understand this data that you're getting from this thing because there's a lot of it.

And the way I understand in my layman's, I'll try my layman's approach here. These things are very useful, but they're good at tracking the kind of swings in glucose that people with diabetes have. and there's a little too much noise or maybe a lot of too much noise in that signal to detect useful information in people without diabetes. Well, and I think it's... Is that first, is that right? Yes, because that is why, I mean, if you read even the literature that supports their use

for type 1 diabetics, the intended audience, will caution that there are things that can make the readings wrong. For instance, this is a really easy example. they can be sensitive to compression. So if you sleep in a position, if you roll into a position where you're laying on top of your continuous glucose monitor, there's a chance that you compress the skin around it, which will decrease blood flow to the monitor, which the monitor may interpret then as low sugar. So there are reasons why it can be wrong, even when it's used appropriately in the right patient. and now we are deploying it to everyone. And you've got to think, too, a type 1 diabetic patient who is seeing their physician, who prescribes this to them, who helps them manage it, who manages their diabetes, who helps educate them about diabetes and about what to eat and what to do and what medicines to take, they are getting all of their questions answered constantly.

And they have somebody, they have an expert to consult with if something seems off. as soon as you introduce it to the general public, what expert will all of these people talk to? I mean, they don't have any education about diabetes or glucose or what any of this means because they don't have diabetes. So why would they know? Right.

Well, good news. There's Nutrisense and levels and other companies like Stello. Some of these companies provide the devices themselves. Some of them are just providing the like education. educational, educational part of the thing. So, can I say just real quick, I feel, I have mixed feelings about this aspect of it. First of all, obviously, this is going to be gross and I'm not going to enjoy this. But the fact that they are offering the educational piece, it is going to reduce the number of visits.

I see you out there, primary care physicians, just like me, where your patients are going to come in with this monitor they bought over the counter and they're going to have 50 questions for you. about it and you're going to be sitting there going, why are you mesh, you don't have dive? Why are you doing, what? Why are you doing this? And I'm certain you're having those appointments. And so I guess they're trying to cut back on that. I guess, yeah, it's really pricey. I mean, to use another company as an example, right?

Just the main pitch is weight loss, obvious. I mean, like, no surprise. That's their pitch. Monitor your sugar to lose weight. I mean, if you look at this company, Cignos, a lot of people like cloak it, but that's, that is the, I mean, If you look, it's, you don't have to delve to you. A smarter way to reach your weight goals. I mean, that's Cynos.com front page.

Like, that's how they bill it. I mean, if you look at other companies, like Nutrisense takes a bit more of like a control your health, take control of your weight, take control of your health. It's still take control of your weight. It's about weight. So with the pitch is this, you've been trying to lose weight for such a long time. The problem that you've been having, the one thing that's been missing is, now if you've heard any of our weight loss episodes in the past.

You should know that this sentence has ended hundreds of different ways for millennia. Yes. And this is the latest one. The idea is that your problem is that your body processes glucose in all these wild ways that you can't even. It's like your body is going wild with the glucose. You have no idea. You've got to get one of these monitors and give, well, Cynos, we're going to give their most popular plan.

If you get the six-month plan, it's going to be a hundred and twenty-seven U.S. per month for this tracking service. And it's, it's really, it's legitimately you wear the continuous glucose monitor. And then someone's like, and then, but the other, the other component is you're meeting with a dietitian who's helping you to understand what this means. And then, so that is the, that's what's, that's probably, you're meeting with a dietitian. And they're like, the idea is that the dietitian is looking at this data and saying, ah, I've got some special stuff that you don't understand that I get, I've got the keys.

Thank goodness you've been wearing this monitor. Two thoughts. One, you know, this inherently, I hate this kind of stuff because it inherently undermines patients' relationships with their own providers. Because if you have talked to your provider about do I, you know, should I be concerned about diabetes? and you've had that conversation, maybe you've been screened based on family history or symptoms or whatever, and your provider has said, no, you don't. We don't need to get you a glucose monitor. I've done the appropriate workup, and it was not indicated. It would not benefit you. And then

you've got these commercials that are saying, no, no, you do need it. It is the secret to your health and weight loss. It feels very similar. I sometimes see this rhetoric around hypothyroidism. Your doctor may have tested you for it, but they don't know all the right tests. Come see me. and I'm going to order 10 more tests that aren't covered by your insurance, cost tons of money, are not validated for this condition, but it's because your doctor's not telling you the truth. I feel like that's always inherent in this, which really fractures the relationship between a patient and a trusted provider. The second thing is, do we have evidence that monitoring your sugar all day will help you lose weight? Interesting question, Sid.

I mentioned this study from Cignos. This is one of the companies, and this is their best. I don't know how I found their journal before. They have a journal. But how compelling did you find their study that was sort of explaining how all this worked? Justin showed me a study from – this is just from August 11th. Wow. Okay.

So this is very recent of this year. This is happening now. So obviously this was a – this was funded by Cignos, I believe. And they took – it was a retrospective observational study. So they're looking back on reported data from these patients. So I think it's important to understand that those studies, I don't mean that they can never be worthwhile. Certainly sometimes they can, but it's important to understand the limitations of that. We are looking back at something that happened in the past and asking questions and trying to figure out what it could indicate.

That is not as strong of a study as a, you know, one that we are initiating those changes and watching them in real time. So it's like 3,000 adults. and basically they were trying to see, did they lose weight if they were engaged with Cynos? And did higher engagement mean more weight loss? And they're saying that yes, that six months, five percent total body weight loss. If you were engaged,

if you were higher engaged, it was 5.9%. And highly engaged with obesity, 7%. So what they're saying is there's a correlation between using our product and losing weight. But if you look through what that means, like being engaged with their product, yes, you're wearing this continuous glucose monitor, but also you're constantly meeting with a dietitian,

you're logging, not just your glucose, but you're logging your exercise, you're logging every bite you eat, you're logging all kinds of things about your life every day in addition to meeting with somebody who's going to give you advice, that whatever method you're using, if you are that intensely

monitoring and working towards losing weight, you're probably going to lose some weight. So I don't know that we can say wearing a continuous glucose monitor causes weight loss. I don't think that study can say that. I think what it says is we saw a correlation

between using Cynos and losing weight, and that probably is true for any. I mean, how many weight loss plans throughout history? Yeah, you probably, if you paid really close attention to it, did lose a little bit of weight. But was that necessarily healthy for you? And was it sustainable? And is that what a doctor would recommend? Not necessarily in any of those cases. On top of that Cigno study, I just want to call attention to there was, so JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association, internal medicine, published just, this is from

2025, 26, this from this year. Very recent, very recent. Like a month ago. For reasons that will become clear soon. Yeah. Published a study continuous glucose monitoring

for persons with and without diabetes in reaction I think to all of these over-the-counter glucose monitors suddenly being continuous glucose monitor suddenly being available.

They're routinely used by people type 1 diabetes. So what they said is should one, should people with type 2 diabetes be using them, and then two should people without any diabetes be using them? And the TLDR is this. There is no evidence that using a continuous glucose monitor prevents any kind of secondary disease, like complications, like heart disease or kidney disease or eye problems. The things we associate with unmonitor or uncontrolled diabetes, there's no evidence that a CGM will prevent that for type 2 diabetes patients or people without diabetes, okay?

No evidence for that. For people with type 2 diabetes, it can detect if you have low sugar, but there's no evidence that it will reduce any reactions like a seizure. Like if your sugar gets too low as a diabetic, you can have a seizure. There's no evidence that this is going to prevent that. And it is not relevant if you don't have diabetes. in terms of lifestyle for a type 2 diabetic, senior glucose could encourage a lifestyle change, but it also may unnecessarily restrict your diet. And I think you really need to remember that.

If you are hypervigilant about every bite of food you put in your mouth and the effect it has on your sugar, it could lead to disordered eating or other unhealthy eating activities. Which is a real risk of this pretend thing. Huge risk. And in terms of patients with, Without diabetes, there is absolutely no reason to look at – we don't even know what these fluctuations in glucose mean. It doesn't mean anything for you clinically. It's okay, well, you ate something, your sugar went up because it does after you eat and now it's back down and that's normal and it doesn't matter.

Obviously, it can't guide any treatment decisions if you don't have diabetes in a type 2. It's possible that if you see your sugar throughout the day and it's routinely high, you go to your doctor and say, hey, I think I might need to check and see if my treatment regimen needs. change is possible, but in terms of how it's going to impact your type 2 diabetic control, the reduction in hemoglobin A1C, which is your average of your sugar over three months, was about on average 0.3 percent, which is extremely, it's a low effect. So it may be if you are on insulin, this could be if you're a type 2 diabetic, an option for you, possibly. But right now we don't have strong evidence that it will be highly beneficial. And there's no evidence that a continuous glucose monitor leads to lower glucose levels or the avoidance of any

kind of disease process in someone who doesn't have diabetes, period. Okay. So why is all this happening and why is it happening right now? Well, you know that expression, follow the money? The one thing I'll say for the Trump administration is they make it really easy for you. It's really not hard to follow the money. In fact, it's pretty obvious. Here's the short version.

It revolves around two people. Dr. Casey Means, who was previously mentioned on Sub-Budence twice in connection with measles. Oh, no. You remember she was the failed Surgeon General candidate. Yeah, who couldn't get any traction because she would have done a bad job at it. Because they didn't trust her to be the top doctor when she, I believe, never actually practiced medicine. She didn't finish her training. And I will say has expressed vaccine, has said,

out the wazoo, but is a close advisor to RFK, as is her brother, Callie Means, who is an HHS advisor whose company TrueMed lets you use your health savings account to purchase wellness devices like these continuous modders. It's just, it's really that easy. It's just like, it's just that. And so in 2024, we had them, they're no longer prescription. 2026, we're giving them to kids. Like, that's, that's how it happened.

That's the extremely short version. And I think, I think the thing about this grift is that it's the insidious piece. So if you have RFK and his acolytes standing there saying, listen, all these years, big pharma, big medicine, big whatever, has tricked you, big doctor has tricked you into thinking that you need to pay money and see a doctor and be on medicine and it's all it's a racket they're tricking you because they want to profit off you and they want to keep you sick because they make money off you when it's as simple as eating healthy and exercising that's been his pitch right i mean he said that pretty clearly like it's it's cheap it's free eat healthy exercise get sunlight whatever um

hand your taint but see the problem with that is you can't make money off that so you got to find the grift so it's not as simple as eat eat healthy. It's by my continuous glucose monitor and then subscribe to my AI dietitian to interpret. We didn't even mention the AI part. That's a huge component of it. Like Cignos has one, I think it's, they, I think most of the companies are using, but it's like an AI, an AI watching your glucose and giving you advice on like how and then asking you questions about your whatever. Because at the end of the day, what they're going to tell you is that eating healthy is not the same for every person, which there's a grain of truth in that, right? There is a grain of truth in that.

But what you'll need is an individualized nutrition plan. Whether or not it is feasible for you or you can afford it doesn't matter. You're going to need one, and you have to pay them to get all the data and meet with the experts who are going to tell you what it is. And then they're going to probably tell you you need certain supplements and vitamins because all of these companies are tied in with the supplements and the vitamins and the wellness community who are going to sell you a number of other things. So it is, at the end of the day, it is as simple as eating healthy and exercising and buying all of our wellness products and prescribing or subscribing to all of our wellness podcasts and wellness videos and wellness books and wellness. Even if you grant the premise

that there is some information that can be gleaned from wearing this continuous glucose monitor and that like information is specific to you and it is it is information about how your body do you really believe that after three months or two months or three months of wearing it they're going to say yeah we've gotten all the information we need i don't think you need to subscribe anymore i think you've learned everything you need to do about your glucose no i bet you're never going to quite understand the problem i bet you're never going to quite get there you know I bet you're going to probably need to stay on that monitor until the credit card defaults. It's really important to remember that at the end of the day, if research has not been translated into watching real humans interact with this in real time and what is it doing to their health and safety long term, if you haven't seen that study, then you can't really say for sure that anybody needs it or that this is a good thing.

And I think that's the, that's underneath all this. There's the study that was done in, what, 2015, about personalized nutrition. And the idea was basically different people can eat the same meal and we can see different spikes in glucose afterwards. Like the variability of glucose is different from person to person outside of having something like diabetes. And so the idea is we all need individual nutritional plans based on our gut microbiome and I don't know, all kinds of things. why why i mean the the the thing that i was missing i read this thing and i thought okay and so my glucose will go higher if i eat the same meal as yours and then i will get sick have a stroke get diabetes what what they've never shown that they never shown what the what is the

significance of that i don't know how to interpret what they what this study says but they have now rolled that into an entire industry that's going to convince you, check your sugar all the time and do something about it every time. And I mean, all I can see this leading to is, one, that you're wasting money. Two, it's going to erode trust in your actual health care provider who is evidence-based and knows what they're doing. And three, it could lead to disordered eating. Yeah. So there it is. Don't get a continuous glucose monitor unless you need it. Yeah, I mean, if you, again, if you are working with a licensed health care provider who is telling you a continuous glucose monitor, I have evidence that shows it would improve your health and quality of life and safety and help you manage your type 1 diabetes. Absolutely. That's a great idea. But you should not, I see no compelling evidence that buying one of these over the counter and wearing them will improve your health in any way. That has not been shown. And it's really important. That piece has to be there for any of this to make sense. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

We also want to thank the taxpayers for the use of their song, Medicines, is the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to the Max Fun Network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family, and thank you to you for listening. I appreciate it. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Cindy McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

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