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Continuous Glucose Monitoring

(www.imperialviolet.org)
116 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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guiambros ◴[] No.44419406[source]
I've been using a CGM on and off for the last year, and it has given me a whole new perspective about food and nutrition.

I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc.

I also discovered the importance of what you eat for your first meal in the day (either breakfast or lunch), or how to better order what you eat (fibers, fat and protein first, carbs last), light movement after eating reduces 20+ mg/dl, and more.

At this point I don't even need to wear a CGM every day; I can tell my glucose level just by thinking of what I ate earlier.

I still wear one when I'm traveling for work, as I know I'll have less control over food and calorie intake (airplane meals, restaurants, team lunches, etc).

ps: if you're interested in learning more even without using a CGM, strongly recommend "Glucose Revolution" [1].

[1] Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar - https://www.amazon.com/Glucose-Revolution-Life-Changing-Powe...

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lurking_swe ◴[] No.44420488[source]
i’m confused why you considered this healthy?

> white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc.

white bread is basically 100% carbs (converts to sugar). croissants aren’t much better _and_ have unhealthy fat (butter). Dried mangoes pack the sugar of the fruit without much of the fiber and water (speeds up the processing of the sugar).

Healthy breakfast would be like 2 eggs with small slice of toast on the side. Or a small omelette with cheese and mushrooms and spinach. Or perhaps steel cut oats, with thin sliced banana.

Basically - real food that also not loaded with carbs and sugars. Carbs are OK if you actually need them (workouts, etc). Office workers don’t need lots of carbs.

Granted, “healthy” is a spectrum…some people would consider it a win to not smoke, drink soda, etc.

And you’re 100% right about eating fiber first. It greatly slows down sugar absorption/processing! And reduces the sugar spike. That’s an advanced tip most don’t know about.

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ajb ◴[] No.44420565[source]
Dried mangoes don't have fibre? How does drying them remove it?
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fnands ◴[] No.44420698[source]
They do have fibre, but a large part of (non-dried) mangos are water. If you remove the water, then the sugar density per volume/weight goes up a lot.

This makes it easier to consume much larger volumes of dried mangos vs raw mangos. This basically goes for all dried fruits.

Eating three mangoes in a sitting feels like a huge amount of food. Eating three mangos worth of dried mango is pretty easy.

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1. guiambros ◴[] No.44430032[source]
Exactly. Dried fruits (and dried mangos in particular) may seem healthy, but you should treat them like candy. In fact it's worse than candy - at least chocolate has fat, which makes you feel full, while dried mango is pure sugars and carbs.

You can easily eat 100g of dried mango, not realizing it packs 80g of carbs (!). That's enough to create a huge glycemic spike, followed by an immediate crash half hour later.

In the end of the day, fructose and sucrose are sugars after all, so treat them accordingly.

ps: same for fruit juices. Outside of a few vitamins (which you probably don't need, if you eat a healthy diet), juices are not much better than sodas, and pack a tremendous amount of sugar.