[00:00:00] Vesna: today I'm going to talk about how we use continuous glucose monitors to track your metabolic health. In the previous episode, I talked about why metabolic health is important, particularly for a woman in business and in leadership for having that high performance energy, your metabolism online to maintain your health and muscle mass as you get older.
[00:00:58] In this episode, I want to talk about how we use these devices to track metabolic health and to make changes and customizations to people's dietary and lifestyle plans and the things that we see. So this little device is known as a continuous glucose monitor and basically it goes on the arm. There's a little fiber underneath that sits just under the skin and it tracks your glucose levels 24 7. So it does this even while you're sleeping. And the reason why this is really important is that anything that you eat, anything that you do is going to respond because your glucose levels are going to respond to those foods and activities.
[00:01:37] Now, basically, you use your phone, there's an app on the phone which we swipe. but now we have continuous, so it's doing it 24 7. And we get the data through our system and we have a look at our clients. What they're eating, how is it responding, how their body's responding or their glucose levels are responding.
[00:01:55] How long their glucose levels stay high. For How quickly they come down, how low they go, if they drop overnight, what activities they're doing, if they're in a meeting at work and they're getting very stressed or What are the different things in their day that are actually impacting their glucose levels?
[00:02:12] And it's a real eye opener, because I can tell you that we've had clients that cannot believe that their glucose levels are spiking when they're in a particular meeting, or they're with a client, or they're doing a particular part of their work in their business, and they didn't realize how much their stress was actually increasing their glucose levels.
[00:02:31] So what we want to see with this is hopefully some, you know, slow, steady rises and just curves, right? And slow, the glucose levels coming down very slowly and kind of staying balanced and just those kind of very steady curves. We don't want to see spikes and drops, spikes and drops, because that means you're going to feel exhausted.
[00:02:50] It's really going to affect your mental health and mental performance and give you a lot of cravings. And it's going to make you more prone to weight gain, in particular, belly fat. So The benefits that we see with the glucose monitor is number one, how your body responds to food and to carbohydrates.
[00:03:06] Everyone is different. typical foods, the sugars and the carbs and the pastas and the breads and things like that, which are going to have the same reaction relatively with each person. But there are foods which will react differently. to different people, right? So there may be something that I can eat that has no impact on my glucose levels, but may do for you, right?
[00:03:25] And it's a really important tool to be really able to customize somebody's plan based on how their body's responding to that food.
[00:03:33] It also shows the impact of alcohol. Alcohol is a really big sleep disruptor. We can also look at how sleep is affected with a glucose monitor. Because it is checking the glucose overnight, right? When we drink alcohol, the body's prioritizing alcohol metabolism rather than maintaining healthy glucose levels, and therefore the glucose levels will drop overnight, and we see that picture overnight in the glucose, uh, tracking.
[00:03:59] So we can really see with our clients, and show them, how it's impacting their metabolic health, how it's impacting them physically. So it's easier to make decisions that maybe once felt hard, such as giving up alcohol or making changes to their diet. So basically if it goes up too high, an alarm will go off.
[00:04:17] We have that set so the alarm doesn't make a loud noise, but it goes off in the system. It can beep to really, give you the attention that you need to show you, Hey, your glucose levels are rising too high or they're dropping too low so another thing that we see with clients, obviously I specialize in exhaustion, burnout, fatigue, chronic stress.
[00:04:36] It's not uncommon to see low glucose levels. So going from this, you know, higher To then low and in that low phase feeling, you know, that could happen overnight or it could happen during the day. They feel tired. Their mood is very low. It may even later on trigger an anxiety attack. So it's very common to see these dips in the glucose levels that affect clients and their energy levels.
[00:05:00] The second thing that it really benefits is making the dietary changes, right? So if we can see that this particular food is not working for you, it's still causing a glucose spike, we are going to remove it, right? So we're going to really make customizations to your carbohydrate content, how much carbohydrates you can have, depending on how your body's responding to that.
[00:05:17] So it's really very unique for each person. We're really looking at the sleep cycle. Is it being disrupted due to low glucose and making changes to improve that as well?
[00:05:29] And also dietary changes for insulin resistance, because if somebody comes with insulin resistance, they have all the markers, they've had the testing, then we really want to monitor. We really want to make sure that we're not getting the glucose spikes and that the glucose levels aren't staying high for too long.
[00:05:42] Right? And we also don't want the sudden dip. So it's a really great way, again, of really customizing, personalizing based on your glucose levels.
[00:05:52] The third thing that really makes a difference is compliance. Right? Because you can actually get instant feedback on what you've eaten. So, I remember once, my partner bought me one of those bubble teas. Actually, he had it. I took a couple of sips out of it and I'd never had bubble tea before. This is a while back and my alarm went off very quickly, right?
[00:06:13] My sugar levels were the highest they've ever been based on just drinking a little bit of bubble tea because of the sugar content, right? And it was such an eye opener for me because I could never drink bubble tea again, right? Because I already, I knew what it was doing to my body. So That compliance of that instant feedback of what you consume is, is really registering and you're getting an alarm going off to show you, Hey, this isn't right for your glucose levels.
[00:06:39] This is not working for your metabolic health.
[00:06:41] So it really helps to break habits. I find with clients that maybe have had, Habits of, you know, sugar, carbohydrates, alcohol, that have been really hard for them to break. But seeing the instant result that it has on the body has made it very easy for them to change because the other thing that it helps is with mindful eating.
[00:06:59] So normally we are quite disconnected when we are eating, right? We're so not in tune with our body. We're mindlessly eating. We're busy, we're working, we're on the computer, we're on our devices or we're busy, whatever it is, and. Um, we're not mindful of what we're eating and this device allows you to be more mindful right?
[00:07:19] Because once you see the result that it changes in your body, it's very hard to repeat the same behavior knowing because you're not blind to it anymore, right? You know that it's doing that. Even if the device is off, you know the result. Like for me, I could never drink a bubble tea again, right? I know what it's doing to my body.
[00:07:35] And so it has this ability to break long term habits more easily because of this compliance, because of this instant feedback, because of this mindful eating state that you get into, because you're again reconnected to the body, thanks to this small little device.
[00:07:50] And the other benefit, the fifth benefit that we see is the monitoring, right? So, we get clients in my program, in my peak revival program, we get them to, to use this device, we get the data, and we review that data. And we look at how they're tracking, how they're going.
[00:08:06] So nothing can be hidden. It's a little bit big brother, I'll admit, but it just works a treat knowing that if you know that somebody is there to watch and monitor and see where you've slipped up and that's okay. And then we can coach people around what happened here. And we can coach around that area about was it a stressful event, what caused this, was it something in the diet that triggered cravings and they just felt like they were powerless against having some sugar.
[00:08:34] And it really allows us to work with them to smooth out some of those bad habits. And them knowing that they're getting the eyeballs on their data, makes it harder to go off plan as well. So the monitoring, like I said, it is a bit tricky. big brother, but it does very, works very, very well to guide people through the process and them knowing that they're getting the attention and that somebody is looking, I better stick to the plan that by the time the device comes off, you've already set up these new habits, right?
[00:09:05] You don't need someone overseeing everything that you're doing because you've already broken old habits. and installed new habits.
[00:09:12] So that is a way that we use this continuous glucose monitor. There are different varieties out there on the market. We use the freestyle one. Okay. Because we get the data through our system. We like the data customized. We really like to be quite detailed with what we look at, but there are other ones that you can just do it on your phone.
[00:09:28] Look at the data on your phone and it will give you everything in kind of like a snapshot. But like I said, we go a little bit deeper into the data to have a look at what that client needs best.
[00:09:37] So we love it. It's a great tool. It changes, you know, old habits and behaviors. It breaks unhealthy habits. It sets up better healthy habits, and it's a really great way to get people back into their bodies, reconnected with what they're eating and the impact that it has on their body. And improving metabolic health, improving energy, improving mental power and focus, improving mental health, right?
[00:10:00] And making sure that your body is lean and you have muscle mass as you get older to prevent the age related muscle loss.
