In this YouTube monologue, Victoria S. Dorsano explains what continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are and why they are essential tools for people with diabetes, providing continuous blood‑glucose readings that help manage insulin therapy. She then critiques the recent trend of marketing CGMs to healthy, non‑diabetic consumers. Dorsano outlines three main concerns: (1) the over‑pathologizing of normal glucose fluctuations, which creates unnecessary anxiety and may lead people to avoid healthy foods like fruit; (2) the promotion of a low‑carb, high‑fat dietary narrative driven by CGM data, which can result in nutritionally incomplete or overly restrictive eating patterns; and (3) the misinterpretation of glucose spikes because many factors—physical activity, stress, time of day—affect blood sugar beyond the food consumed, leading to erroneous dietary changes. She warns that excessive data without proper metabolic expertise can distort people’s relationship with food and cause needless restriction. Dorsano discloses a sponsorship from Freak Athlete, provides a promo code, and ends with a call to like, subscribe, and make informed personal health choices.
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So I don't know about you guys, but I've been getting a ton of ads lately on TikTok and Instagram and even YouTube with people taking these like plunger-like devices with these stickers and just going like, boop, or like boop. And they're putting these like devices on their arms and it draws you in 'cause you're like, wait, what are, what are they doing? They look nervous. Are there needles in there? Like what's going on? Until I realized that these are CGMs. Or continuous glucose monitors. Really technology that's been around for a long time, but now they've like made it new and sexy for the everyday user instead of somebody who is diabetic or pre-diabetic. And then usually the subsequent shot is them having like a strawberry or like a few bites of white rice or some pretzels, and then looking at their app and being like, oh, my blood glucose is so high, look at it spike. And then them showing how they're adjusting their diets and all that stuff to eliminate all these spikes in blood glucose levels. Which at first sounds like a good thing, right? For most people, like, it's great to make sure that your metabolic health is good and that, you know, we're not, uh, doing anything that's crazy or, you know, harming our, our metabolic health in the long term. It's a good thing. But there are several reasons why I'm not a huge fan of CGMs being marketed to everyday users, to people who are not diabetic, um, and who don't really need to be monitoring their blood glucose, and frankly how it can be dangerous for some people. So I'm going to dive into that in today's video, but before I do, a few words from today's sponsor. Freak Athlete has been creating some of the highest quality equipment on the market, especially for those of us who want our joints to feel great and our bodies to perform even better. Oftentimes, various aches and pains and injuries can keep us from achieving our health and fitness goals. But Freak Athlete makes it easier than ever to train the weak links that prevent many of us from being able to move forward and make some serious progress. Their equipment is designed to target areas like the knees, shins, low back, and hips, which are often areas neglected when using traditional strength training equipment. Some of their trademark pieces, such as the Multi-Sled and Tri-Flexer, have helped me to stay fit and healthy from the comfort of my own home while recovering from ACL surgery and really continue to be a cornerstone of my daily workout routines even today. Another thing that I've loved about their equipment is that many of their pieces are modular and can be broken down easily and tucked into your gym bag to bring with you for your workout wherever you go. And get this, the folks at Freak Athlete believe in their products so much that they even have a lifetime warranty and 100-day money-back guarantee. So if you're looking to amplify the way that you work out and to become a freak athlete yourself, I highly recommend looking at the equipment that Freak Athlete offers. You won't be disappointed. Go ahead and click the link below in the description and use my code Victoria S. Dorsano 10 to get 10% off your entire purchase. And thanks again to Freak Athlete for sponsoring today's video. So when we think of diabetes, we all kind of know the standard like blood prick where they do a little blood prick test and then they take that blood and then test the glucose levels in that blood and make sure to see where it's at, if they need insulin or not and that sort of thing, or if they're regulating their blood sugar appropriately. But the CGM, you know, typically is something that for diabetics, insurance will cover if they are showing that they need advanced glucose monitoring. If, you know, maybe their medication isn't working that well and they need to either increase insulin or try something like metformin if they haven't tried that already, that sort of thing. So the CGM is just something that is recommended. It takes multiple snapshots throughout the day at different times, where you can see your blood glucose throughout the day. And the reason why this is good for diabetics is because diabetics produce little or no insulin, which is a hormone that helps to regulate the blood glucose in your body. So without appropriate insulin production, the glucose levels can kind of get out of control for people with diabetes. Hence why having something like a CGM can be really good for monitoring that throughout the day so that they don't have really high highs, really low lows, and they can keep their blood glucose more in check that way. So again, instead of getting like a tiny bit of information there from a finger prick test, and a little bit later on in the day, and a little bit over there, they're getting more of a continuous reading throughout the day from that CGM. But lately CGMs have become this new and sexy, like, advanced health metric to have and to track, um, as I've been seeing it more and more and more, not only in ads, but I've been seeing people walk around with these patches on their skin, which I know are CGM monitors, and, uh, they're individuals who don't have diabetes, which I think is really unfortunate because I think a lot of companies do a really good job of using this medical lingo about metabolism and how it's good to know these things when in reality Having normal fluctuations of blood glucose when you are not diabetic is still very, very, very normal. In fact, there's no evidence to show that having those types of fluctuations are actually dangerous. Blood sugar levels are supposed to go up and down, so labeling elevated glucose at different points in the day as being something that is bad is creating some of this, like, over-pathologizing of normal metabolic health. Which is a fancy way for saying that it's just creating a worry where worry is not needed. And marketing in the health space is really, really good at that because if they make you worried about something, you're probably going to buy something to fix that worry. But here's just an example of how over-pathologizing something like blood glucose levels and how they spike and dip throughout the day can lead to adverse nutrition habits in the long run. So something like bacon might not spike your blood sugar levels, but an orange will. So you might start to avoid things like fruits that, yes, have a high content of fructose, but by no means are unhealthy for you, especially if you have normal digestive function. Again, I'm not talking about a diabetic community, but for those of us that have normal insulin production, having an orange is not going to be a bad thing. But if you start seeing that having fruit is spiking your blood sugar, you're going to potentially start avoiding eating fruit. Which then you're missing out on all these micronutrients and antioxidants and great things that come along with eating an orange and other pieces of fruit. So if you start to adapt your diet according to these blood sugar spikes, you might start to move to things that are not going to necessarily spike your blood sugar or create those sharp spikes and dips, but it might be something that's going to create other issues. Like, you know, the high saturated fats in bacon can lead to high cholesterol and other heart issues down the line. Now, zooming out from that point, this leads me into the second point as to why I'm not a huge fan of CGMs for your average everyday person versus somebody who's diabetic already is that it kind of leads to this anti-carb or low-carb narrative as being the healthy way to eat. Carbohydrates are not inherently unhealthy. Some carbs, of course, healthier than others. And yes, most of us probably would be better off if we started to eat less refined sugar and less highly processed carbohydrate sources. But that's also true with foods that are highly processed with fats too. So the main difference is that carbohydrates are going to spike your blood sugar. With these CGM devices, you're going to see that, and high-fat content foods will not. So then naturally you start shifting into a low-carb, high-fat, high-protein type of diet, which for some people may be optimal, but for the general public, it can lead to a lot of disorganized eating patterns. It can lead to a lot of fear around carbs, and you can be missing out on a crucial source of energy for your body and all these great micronutrients and, um, phytonutrients and things that do come from some carb sources like fruits and veggies and even whole grains, fiber, things like that that you get from those types of carbs as well. Anytime you start to decrease or potentially even cut out an entire food group is when it starts to get kind of dangerous as far as what you're missing out in your diet and some of the benefits that you're not going to get anymore from that particular food group. So that's why I just think having some of that blood sugar data is not necessarily super helpful in that way. And the third reason why I think CGMs may not be super great for the general public in general, if you're trying to utilize it for correlating certain foods to certain blood glucose spikes, is that foods are not the only factor in your blood glucose spikes throughout the day, or your blood glucose dips for that matter. Physical activity and stress and just time of day can play a big role in how your blood sugar is throughout the day. So you may may actually misinterpret some of the data. If you eat something and then you're looking into the app and you're seeing that there's a huge spike, it could have been from previous physical activity. It could have been from a bout of stress earlier. So it's hard to make a direct correlation as to what is causing what in, in that kind of monitoring system. So then you can really just end up avoiding foods that you didn't need to avoid in the first place. And that's just a sad thing when you have to cut out something or you feel like you have to cut out something. That you really might enjoy. So overall, I just think that sometimes too much data isn't always the best thing. I think that we can be looking for problems where there aren't problems, and that can be an issue in itself and can really lead to this distorted relationship with food and understanding our bodies without the appropriate information of somebody who is a metabolic health expert. And by no means am I— I'm definitely not a metabolic health expert. I know very little in comparison to what you know, an endocrinologist would know, or somebody who specializes in diabetes and in how the pancreas works and that sort of thing. Right. So I think it's important to have the entire picture and not just those snapshots that you see from an app correlating to what you think is a food item. And it could just make you so anxious about what to eat and kind of lead to more of that restriction mindset around food, which ultimately isn't healthy either. So if you are also seeing those ads with people stabbing their arms with these little suction cup things and leaving a sticker and then checking their app and eating a strawberry and seeing all the blood sugar spikes and you're like, oh my gosh, please just think twice about doing that for yourself because more data isn't always better data. Anyways, I hope my two cents was helpful, insightful, maybe a different point than what you've heard out there. At the end of the day, you have to make your own choices for your health, but I figured I'd just share a little bit about why I feel like it might not be the best decision for some people, um, especially when it's so easy to get marketed to and kind of sold into this like pseudoscientific narrative that's being, um, shared around when you're getting marketed to. So if you like this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up, subscribe to my channel. I so, so appreciate it, you guys, and I will see you guys next time. Bye!
