Continuous glucose monitors promise insight. For Victoria Song, they spurred a yearlong spiral instead. Writing for the Verge, Song recounts strapping on two over-the-counter CGMs—Dexcom's Stelo and Abbott's Lingo—not because she has diabetes, but because she has PCOS, a family history of Type 2 diabetes, and a job testing health tech. What she thought would be a short experiment into whether she could use the resulting data to optimize her metabolism turned into 13 months of devices, doctor visits, medical research, and mounting anxiety—to the point an unhealthy food obsession developed. The "thought of a spike alert or a bad score was enough to convince me that I should forgo eating meals or snacks entirely," she writes.
Overnight readings looked ominously high, but "at the doctor's office, I got shrugs, quizzical brow raises, and a reluctant acquiescence to run blood tests." She did manage to get an ultrasound, which confirmed non-alcoholic fatty liver—a condition a previous doctor had already suspected, as it's common in those with PCOS.
After a year, her numbers were worse than ever, and her doctor determined her "non-medicated efforts to rein in my chaotic metabolism, while admirable, weren't cutting it." She's now on medication that has helped her shed weight and see improved liver enzyme and fasting glucose levels. "Proponents of non-diabetic CGM use might frame this as an outright win," writes Song. "In many ways, it is. Even so, I'm hesitant to characterize it that way. I was often stumped by my data, anxious when consulting doctors, and for a time, wrecked my hard-fought relationship with food and exercise." Read her piece in full here.
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