For the past week and a half, I’ve tried Nutrisense and worn CGM to monitor my blood sugar levels. Share my experience here! I was granted a Nutrisense membership for a 1-month trial, and this post is not sponsored. Use my link and code GINA50 to get $50 off.
Hi friends! How was your week? Thank you so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes to P! We had a great day and ended it with a requested fire pit dinner. Hope you had a great week too!
In today’s post, I want to share my experience with Nutrisense. I’ve been curious about this company for a while, especially after conducting the Inside Tracker blood sample study earlier this year. My fasting blood sugar is a little high and I’m worried it might be a deeper issue. I waited and after my good friend Mia posted about using Nutrisense to monitor her blood sugar levels, I knew I wanted to give it a try. I then contacted the company and was excited when they gave me a month to try it out and see if I liked it.
I received the product, was super nervous to put it on (hi, I’m a huge needle phobe), and waited until Mia said she would walk me through the process, along with hers. You can watch the video here to witness the moment I almost started to panic during the live video. (She said, “Look, you can see the needle there,” and I blanched.) I really wanted the data, so I took a deep breath and went for it. I’m really glad I did it because being able to see how my body reacted to different foods was extremely valuable.
(I smiled, but panicked. Turns out, hooking up the CGM wasn’t what I thought it would be. It was painless and super easy.)
What is Nutrisense and how does it work?
Nutrisense is a program that provides expert guidance consistent with continuous glucose monitors (CGM). CGM tracks your blood sugar every 15 minutes throughout the day so you can stay informed Sleep patterns, diet, exercise, stress, and nutrition can all affect your blood sugar levels. Persistently elevated blood sugar can lead to inflammation and damage in the body, so it’s helpful to understand how your body responds to the above factors, and especially how it recovers. For example, If your blood sugar spikes after eating a carbohydrate-rich or sugary meal, will it stay elevated? Or can it be restored within 2 hours? How high are the spikes? ?
When you sign up for Nutrisense, we’ll deliver your continuous glucose monitor and details about how to connect it to you. (You can watch me in action here!) You will apply the CGM and protective patch to the back of your arm, download the app, and scan your CGM to start tracking. Once added, it usually takes about an hour for the phone to recognize it and start scanning. (You just click “Scan” on the app and hold your phone up to the CGM where the camera is.)
In the Nutrisense app, you are initially paired with a registered dietitian who can help you interpret your data, make recommendations, provide feedback, and run experiments in real time.
How much does Nutrisense cost?
The service starts at $350 per month and goes down based on time invested. (A 12-month commitment is $199 per month.)
The CGM used by Nutrisense is Freestyle Libre, which is valid for 14 days. (Your app will notify you when your sensor expires.) You don’t need a prescription to use Nutrisense.
What types of information do you receive and how do you interpret it?
Your blood sugar is plotted on a chart 24/7, and you can see how high it rises and how long it takes to stabilize. It might be interesting to see spikes throughout the night and how different patterns and lifestyle changes affect your blood sugar.
I got this from my registered dietitian who messages me frequently and is always available to answer questions: (This was after a smoothie caused a higher spike than I expected)
To help provide more context, I’d like to walk you through what I see when I evaluate glucose response, so let’s use breakfast on 10/11 as an example (chocolate, smoothie, almond milk):
Peak (^ on the meal card). First, we look at blood sugar spikes, aiming to avoid repeated exposure above 140. Your blood sugar peaked at 114, well below the threshold and normal peak!
Exposure (wavy lines on place card). Secondly, we also want the area under the curve (AUC) to be small. Therefore, if the blood sugar quickly rises to 150, but returns to the pre-meal blood sugar value within 1 hour after eating, it is a small area under the curve. However, if the blood sugar slowly climbs to 130 and remains elevated for 4 hours, the area under the curve is Much bigger. curve. We want blood sugar to return to pre-meal values within 2-3 hours after a meal. You can help monitor your AUC by evaluating meal card AUC values and checking the standard deviation in your analysis. Your AUC is 42.9 – I’d say, best case scenario I’m looking for <30, but <50 is still fine!
Stability (triangle on meal card). We also want to avoid major “changes” in glucose. So it’s possible that after the meal you only hit 130 (which is fine!), but your pre-meal value was 70, so that would be a pretty big swing. You can monitor this by evaluating your delta value, as we always want the delta to be less than 30. Your delta is 33, which is great!
Recovery (2 hours credit on meal card). Finally, we want blood sugar to return to pre-meal values within 2-3 hours after a meal. Your answer is 23, which means you are 23 points away from the baseline value at the 2-hour mark.
What I learned using Nutrisense CGM
Some buffers to prevent blood sugar spikes
Especially when you eat a high-carb meal: take a walk before or after a meal, start with some kind of protein, and moderate your carb intake and meal timing. Since your insulin sensitivity is better during the day and weakens at night, you may tolerate foods better if you eat them in the afternoon instead of late at night. For me, that’s definitely the case with drinking – if I drink in the late afternoon, it doesn’t affect my sleep.
Whole food based carbs have no significant effect on me
Especially when they’re paired with protein. (Berries, apples, bananas, and oranges didn’t cause spikes, even when I ate them themselves.) The same goes for oatmeal, paleo pancakes, tortillas, and starchy vegetables. Refined carbohydrates, on the other hand, do cause spikes. We went to a party at a friend’s house and I ate more candy and refined carbs than usual (plus champagne), and my blood sugar was elevated throughout the night and into the next day. It’s interesting to see how one meal affects insulin sensitivity the next day.
Stress levels have huge impact on insulin response
I noticed that I peaked on days when I felt more stressed.
Exercise will improve your level
But they drop immediately and improve insulin response throughout the day.
Wine spikes my blood sugar, but tequila doesn’t.
Important lesson haha. ) If I drink one drink, both recover fine, but two drinks the next day cause levels to rise. This experiment confirmed the fact that I don’t drink alcohol well, and it served as a good reminder for me to try to cut back on my drinking. (Now I drink one to two drinks a week.
Plus, my body loves tortillas, beans, and rice.
I had my usual Mexican meal with family on Wednesday night and no big spikes.
Inner Peace
A large portion of us are metabolically inflexible, which affects how we handle stress, injury, and recovery from illness. I was concerned that my last blood test showed high fasting blood sugar, but this confirms that this is not usually the case for me (my blood test was an outlier) and is a good indicator of my metabolic health and how my habits are affecting me. blood sugar levels. This was my main concern and it was a relief.
advantage:
R&D support is invaluable.
I loved the ability to ask questions and she did an excellent job teaching me how to see my patterns, assess my reactions and ideal target ranges. This has become one of my favorite pieces of health equipment!
The app is well designed and easy to navigate and use.
I enjoy using the app and find it easy for me to master it even as a newbie.
shortcoming:
When I first put it on I ate a little weird.
As much as I was afraid of eating anything that would irritate it, eventually, I had to tell myself to get over it and eat normally after a few days. If I eat only protein and vegetables for 14 days, these numbers won’t help me. So I had margaritas, tacos, dessert, all the stuff I normally eat, so it would give a real picture. I would not recommend this method if you have a history of eating disorders.
It was so uncomfortable that I ended up taking it off a few days early.
(I think it’s more of an adhesive than an actual sensor.) When I have friends with diabetes, I recognize the privilege I have to be able to say “I don’t want to wear this anymore” and take it off . Rely on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) to survive. Just wanted to write a little note here to tell you that I saw you. <3 In the 11 days I wore it, I didn't sleep well at all - it was super light sleep because I was subconsciously worried about rolling onto it and sleeping at night. Also, I was a little shocked by the catheter when the pilot took it out for me - it was a tiny plastic tube, but it was longer than I expected, haha.
All in all, it was a very valuable experience and I enjoyed being able to access all the data and learn from my Nutrisense RD.
How to remove Nutrisense
Cutting Nutrisense out of your life is as easy as pie. Here’s what you can do: Simply opt out of the Nutrisense CGM plan – Oops, something went wrong while submitting the form? Don’t worry. Just unsubscribe from their newsletter and you’ll be on your way to being awesome. But before you go, remember that Nutrisense lets you know your blood sugar levels and allows you to track your health goals.
This is a great way to start your journey towards a healthier, happier lifestyle. Speaking of lifestyle, Nutrisense can guide you on how to adjust your diet and lifestyle based on your blood sugar levels. However, please remember that Nutrisense is not a test that provides diagnosis, cure, mitigation, prevention, or treatment of any disease or medical condition. Still, you can control your blood sugar levels, lose weight, and achieve your health goals by starting with Nutrisense. Keep it up, man!
Do I need to connect a second sensor?
I think I’ll definitely do it eventually, but I’m going to take a few weeks off. I want to experiment more with meal times and eating certain foods alone + with others.
Have questions about Nutrisense? Is this something you thought you would do? If you decide to give it a try, you can use my link and use code GINA50 to get $50 off. Or, you can stay tuned for more future Nutrisense content by subscribing to our newsletter! 🙂
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