3 ms·

I work in a related area. Non-invasive blood glucose has been a holy grail for analytical science, for decades, and remains a brutally difficult problem.

crazygringo 2y ago
Yup. But there's hope that computational techniques can extract the signal from the noise. If they can it'll be huge. Maybe even Ozempic-huge. There's a theory of weight loss that you can objectively manage your weight by never allowing your blood sugar to go over a certain level.
- bubblethink 2y ago
  >There's a theory of weight loss that you can objectively manage your weight by never allowing your blood sugar to go over a certain level. That doesn't work, even if it were true. You can also manage your weight by never allowing the weight on the scale to go over a certain level.
  - jbaber 2y ago
    As a number nagging you to eat better, glucose is actually great because it's responsive in real time, not a lagging indicator like weight.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    What do you mean it doesn't work? How do you know? And no -- your weight on the scale varies drastically with water levels and food in the gut. By up to five pounds. It is useless for figuring out if you can eat another bite of rice. While glucose levels are literally minute-by-minute. They're fine-grained enough to actually tell you when to eat more and when to not.
    - ac29 2y ago
      I think the point was that it is easier said than done. Losing weight is simple in theory, you can just eat less. In practice, eating less is very hard for some people. Having real time glucose information isn't going to help those people.
      - prirun 2y ago
        Just as one data point, I have a diabetic friend on insulin and under a doctor's care who was put on a CGM and told by the doctor "if the meter reads 150 or higher, don't eat". Sometimes this meant not eating for a day. He lost 70 lbs in about a year and hugely reduce his insulin use.
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        Actually, it may very well help those people. Losing weight is hard because it can be incredibly difficult to "just eat less" by the right amount. If you "eat less" too little, you won't lose weight. While if you "eat less" too much, your health suffers and willpower becomes too difficult. And counting calories doesn't work well if your calorie needs vary per-day, which nearly everyone's does -- how much did you walk, what temperature were the rooms you were in, etc. The idea is that real time glucose information will allow you to "eat just right" -- never eating so little that willpower becomes an issue, but never so much that you gain weight (or fail to lose weight). You shouldn't be so dismissive of the idea.
- RandomUser4976 2y ago
  Nonsense. Tell this to humans that die when their blood glucose is insanely high (500mg/dl), go into DKA and they are SKINNY!!! You’re suggesting 20 calories can make you obese because it raises blood glucose lol! 3-5 grams (12-20 calories) of a mild-glycemic index carbohydrate can send your blood glucose well above 120mg/dl and you would not gain weight because of an extra 12-20 calories. Additionally, 1,200 calories from fat (133 grams of fat) will not spike your blood glucose until 5-12 hours later and you you can gain weight, but that signal is lost because the rise in blood glucose happens 1-3 meals, or even the next day after eating the high fat meal. Blood glucose is VERY important but not predictive of weight. Diet, (the amount and macro composition of calories) is predictive of weight and exercise is predictive of weight. The are other factors, but those are the main predictors.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > Tell this to humans that die when their blood glucose is insanely high (500mg/dl), go into DKA and they are SKINNY!!! We're not talking about people with underlying health conditions. Exceptions don't invalidate a general principle. > You’re suggesting 20 calories can make you obese because it raises blood glucose lol! Nothing "lol" about it. An extra 20 calories, 20 times a day, every day for months and years, above your caloric needs, is yes quite likely to make you obese. How else do you think most people get obese? > fat... will not spike your blood glucose until 5-12 hours later And you can become aware of those patterns. You will know, for example, not to eat anything else during that window. Or learn to eat fat in gradual amounts, rather than large amounts in a single sitting. > Blood glucose is VERY important but not predictive of weight. You seem quite confident about that. You're also quite possibly wrong. The underlying logic is pretty sound: we gain weight when our blood sugar goes up and therefore our insulin goes up to remove the sugar from the bloodstream and, eventually, store it as fat.
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      > The underlying logic is pretty sound: we gain weight when our blood sugar goes up and therefore our insulin goes up to remove the sugar from the bloodstream and, eventually, store it as fat. I like this post because it assumes that humans don’t use sugar for energy. It is all stored as fat because the human body is a closed system that does not burn calories. Also I like “I see you said 20, obviously you mean 20 times that”
- analog31 2y ago
  Indeed, there's always a hope that more advanced computation will crack this nut in the future. That's been a constant for a quarter century too.

crazygringo 2y ago

Yup. But there's hope that computational techniques can extract the signal from the noise. If they can it'll be huge. Maybe even Ozempic-huge. There's a theory of weight loss that you can objectively manage your weight by never allowing your blood sugar to go over a certain level.

bubblethink 2y ago
>There's a theory of weight loss that you can objectively manage your weight by never allowing your blood sugar to go over a certain level. That doesn't work, even if it were true. You can also manage your weight by never allowing the weight on the scale to go over a certain level.
- jbaber 2y ago
  As a number nagging you to eat better, glucose is actually great because it's responsive in real time, not a lagging indicator like weight.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  What do you mean it doesn't work? How do you know? And no -- your weight on the scale varies drastically with water levels and food in the gut. By up to five pounds. It is useless for figuring out if you can eat another bite of rice. While glucose levels are literally minute-by-minute. They're fine-grained enough to actually tell you when to eat more and when to not.
  - ac29 2y ago
    I think the point was that it is easier said than done. Losing weight is simple in theory, you can just eat less. In practice, eating less is very hard for some people. Having real time glucose information isn't going to help those people.
    - prirun 2y ago
      Just as one data point, I have a diabetic friend on insulin and under a doctor's care who was put on a CGM and told by the doctor "if the meter reads 150 or higher, don't eat". Sometimes this meant not eating for a day. He lost 70 lbs in about a year and hugely reduce his insulin use.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Actually, it may very well help those people. Losing weight is hard because it can be incredibly difficult to "just eat less" by the right amount. If you "eat less" too little, you won't lose weight. While if you "eat less" too much, your health suffers and willpower becomes too difficult. And counting calories doesn't work well if your calorie needs vary per-day, which nearly everyone's does -- how much did you walk, what temperature were the rooms you were in, etc. The idea is that real time glucose information will allow you to "eat just right" -- never eating so little that willpower becomes an issue, but never so much that you gain weight (or fail to lose weight). You shouldn't be so dismissive of the idea.
RandomUser4976 2y ago
Nonsense. Tell this to humans that die when their blood glucose is insanely high (500mg/dl), go into DKA and they are SKINNY!!! You’re suggesting 20 calories can make you obese because it raises blood glucose lol! 3-5 grams (12-20 calories) of a mild-glycemic index carbohydrate can send your blood glucose well above 120mg/dl and you would not gain weight because of an extra 12-20 calories. Additionally, 1,200 calories from fat (133 grams of fat) will not spike your blood glucose until 5-12 hours later and you you can gain weight, but that signal is lost because the rise in blood glucose happens 1-3 meals, or even the next day after eating the high fat meal. Blood glucose is VERY important but not predictive of weight. Diet, (the amount and macro composition of calories) is predictive of weight and exercise is predictive of weight. The are other factors, but those are the main predictors.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > Tell this to humans that die when their blood glucose is insanely high (500mg/dl), go into DKA and they are SKINNY!!! We're not talking about people with underlying health conditions. Exceptions don't invalidate a general principle. > You’re suggesting 20 calories can make you obese because it raises blood glucose lol! Nothing "lol" about it. An extra 20 calories, 20 times a day, every day for months and years, above your caloric needs, is yes quite likely to make you obese. How else do you think most people get obese? > fat... will not spike your blood glucose until 5-12 hours later And you can become aware of those patterns. You will know, for example, not to eat anything else during that window. Or learn to eat fat in gradual amounts, rather than large amounts in a single sitting. > Blood glucose is VERY important but not predictive of weight. You seem quite confident about that. You're also quite possibly wrong. The underlying logic is pretty sound: we gain weight when our blood sugar goes up and therefore our insulin goes up to remove the sugar from the bloodstream and, eventually, store it as fat.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    > The underlying logic is pretty sound: we gain weight when our blood sugar goes up and therefore our insulin goes up to remove the sugar from the bloodstream and, eventually, store it as fat. I like this post because it assumes that humans don’t use sugar for energy. It is all stored as fat because the human body is a closed system that does not burn calories. Also I like “I see you said 20, obviously you mean 20 times that”
analog31 2y ago
Indeed, there's always a hope that more advanced computation will crack this nut in the future. That's been a constant for a quarter century too.