CGMs (continuous glucose monitors), the challenges, and how we can use them --
What motivated me to write on this is that I use a website called ChartMyLife.ai to track various goals with text prompts, including meals and workouts (still hoping that Apple makes an app for this).
The essentials within the article:
- Signos provides personalized insights for weight loss by tracking users' responses to food and exercise.
- It uses Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) to monitor blood glucose levels in real-time via a sensor worn on the arm or abdomen.
- Users learn how daily habits like diet, hydration, exercise, stress, and sleep affect glucose levels and can cause spikes.
- High blood sugar can lead to health issues like diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease.
- The platform defines an "optimal glucose range" and adjusts it based on individual patterns.
- Users discover surprising effects of foods on their glucose levels, like oatmeal causing significant spikes. (individual results)
- The Signos app identifies over 60 possible spike-causing factors beyond food, including stress, medication, and hot showers.
- Users gain a deeper understanding of their energy levels and health after just one month of use.
- Maintaining stable glucose levels can lead to improved metabolic health, weight loss, and a decreased risk of chronic diseases.
One significant downside discussed is logging meals. You can easily track your sleep with apparel such as a smartwatch (however difficult it was with Signos), but taking down product details to track the calories, portion size, etc. is quite a common hindrance.
One potential solution is SnapCalorie. Kyle Wiggers from TechCrunch points out: "no app can give a truly accurate account of how many calories you ate in a meal. There’s a range of variables apps don’t consider, after all, like different cooking methods and the amount of time it takes to break down individual foods."
Of course, these trained computer vision models can improve over time, thus the estimation may be closer to truth in the future. However, the visual appearance and portion size do not necessarily give out the right answer i.e., one can have two types of yogurt with different calorie content, they look the same, same weight, different properties. This is one aspect where retailers could develop their CV models to recognize products instantly and give you the details needed for i.e., tracking the effect on blood sugar. One organization might do this in Finland where we have relatively few competitors but, the problem would be how it affects consumer choice between the trade-off for health and price, as these things are considered competitive advantage. Another possible solution is reading SKU codes which can store product attributes. Thoughts?
Link SnapCalorie: https://lnkd.in/dJHpbCMm
Link Signos: Signos review: I learned how eating and exercise impact my blood sugar (cnbc.com)
Director of Scientific Research, Restore Hyperwellness; Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University
3moI'm so proud that Restore Hyper Wellness is a leader in bringing science to the wellness industry and that scientists are being ushered into leadership positions in so many aligned brands!