Supersapiens - continuous blood glucose monitoring

https://www.supersapiens.com/en-US/

CGM for the general population (non diabetics) is coming. Has anybody else been using glucose monitoring to augment their training? Up until now I’ve been using test strips but continuous would be a game changer with the increased sampling frequency. Previously when dexcom ruled the landscape it was prohibitively expensive, but the freestyle libre system has really brought the prices of these systems down. It’s only a matter of time before it’ll be available for purchase in the drug store like glucose test strips. Any experience or thoughts?

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I think these are a neat technology. Looking at the marketing site, they seem to be positioning as a guide for workout fueling? I’m a little skeptical of that angle, but perhaps some pathological metabolic states will be detectable. I think the real value of CGMs will be for the sedentary masses. If we put a CGM on your average “healthy” American we’d find that actually half of them undiagnosed diabetics (ie, BG way out of range after meals), it’s just no one ever checks anything other than their fasted state – once or twice a year at the doctors office. Again, athletes are more likely to be healthy in this regard, but it’s hardly a guarantee. Once people can see what specific foods are doing their blood glucose, the conversation then turns to an uncomfortable confrontation of carbs.

But there’s still blind spots. Fructose won’t show up at all on a BG meter, or CGM (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease might be your first hint). And it’s not that all carbs are bad… some people seem to be able to get away with eating whatever they want while others have to be very selective about which carbs they eat.

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Interesting…Suprasapiens just seems to be the app, while the device is the Abbott Freestyle Libre…seems like it is basically the same device as the existing diabetes system, but “repurposed” for athletic use with the necessary “not for medical use” claims.

Was just about to post this too. Interested to hear people’s thoughts

Could you expand on this? I don’t know what you mean by “flash”.

Thanks.

He’s mistaken. It is a continuous monitoring of blood glucose. It’s just that the data is not transmitted in real time, like the dexcom models. You have to “flash” it by waving a reader close to the probe to be able to pull the info. In Europe I think you can just use a smartphone and app, whereas in the US they haven’t approved the app yet.

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More than anything I’ve found measuring bg has the potential to be pretty useful training and diet tool. Kinda like a food diary. I don’t feel like I would need to keep a food diary all the time, but when I’m not achieving certain goals, having the data allows me to analyze where things can be improved.

Even though it doesn’t get to directly measure fructose, since our diets of fructose usually consist of sucrose and is rare to have pure fructose, it’s more of the relative increase in blood sugar after a meal or pre workout I’m interested in. Also the area under the curve analysis of some meals has me avoiding those particularly unhealthy meals. It’s nice to get immediate feedback on your diet whereas weight and body fat% are metrics on a greater time lag.

I wonder if they have figured out any algorithm based insight into the patterns of bg before you bonk. I doubt it though.

I agree about slapping this onto the average American. So many will suffer from pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes. It’ll probably be pretty lucrative to gamify it into an effective diet plan.

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Yes, you are incorrect and your information is outdated.

Version 3 has also just been approved.

Your definitions are outdated. It is called intermittent scanning CGM vs real time CGM. Therefore, they are both CGM as far as the medical world is concerned. The data you receive are continuous measurements so for all intents and purposes, they are effectively the same unless you needed real time data.

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For a type 1 diabetic on insulin, yes real time has been shown to be more helpful because they need to act on the changing data within minutes/seconds. However, for an athlete or even a type 2 diabetic, what you want is the continuous data. You want to see the curve of your glucose response to what you ate and/or how you are responding to exercise. That’s the power of continuous data which was not as readily available before.

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You have to ingest large amounts of free fructose for it to appear in your peripheral circulation. Otherwise, it is essentially all removed by the liver during first pass of portal blood.

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Man, I can’t wait until you can buy a combined glucose/lactate/HR/NIRS/respiratory rate/core temperature monitor! Then I could really nail down my training zones and finally make some forward progress!!

Probably gonna be a while, though, so I guess I will just have to continue to rely on my primitive brain…

ETA: Oh crap, I forgot about sleep monitoring.

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I always thought the point was to avoid finger-stick measurements 20 times per day. Realtime-broadcasting certainly opens up more interesting workflows. Sounds like comparing a basic HRM that broadcasts on BLE/ANT+ to a headunit/watch vs an HRM with a built-in memory that you can download from later. Both have their place – it depends what your purposes are.

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Kinda yes, or you can see the spike, observe, and remember. The feedback is within minutes/hours.

That’s fair. The biggest benefit I’ve seen personally through the research and self experimentation is the person to person variability in their ability to handle glycemic loads of the same exact meal. It leads to personalized food decisions that have led to better outcomes. For example, I found that I absolutely cannot tolerate a big bowl of vietnamese pho that’s packed with vegetables. I might as well be eating toast dipped in maple syrup as far as glycemic load is concerned.

I think we’re just at the start of how to use the technology effectively. Eventually I see this being something like a heart rate monitor or power meter. It’s not absolutely necessary, but certainly can help most with training and health.

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Speaking from a US perspective only, the Freestyle Libre requires a doctor’s prescription. It is not necessarily that the data from the new device is not accurate enough, but that if they make medical claims, but that it would then fall under the purview of the FDA…not many people are gonna want to have to go to a doctor and get a Rx (and doctors would also likely be hesitant to write a Rx because they don’t know anything about it).

I’d be shocked if it isn’t the exact same device (maybe slightly tweaked for data reporting purposes) but without the medical claims, which would allow them to sell the device OTC. Normatec does the same thing with their compression boots. They sell a “medical” version and an “recovery” version…but they are functionally the same. One requires a Rx, the other doesn’t because it is not for medical purposes.

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As a diabetic who has often struggled to properly fuel rides, this sounds like a fantastic thing. I would already be using a CGM, except the last time I checked (a couple of years ago) my insurance wouldn’t cover any of the available CGMs in the US, and the cost without insurance was over $500/month. For me, that’s a non-starter. If these guys can make the cost reasonable, I’m sold.

Ultimately, though, i would love nothing more than a field on my Garmin for real-time blood glucose levels.
That’s all. I don’t want yet another app for my phone (which is in my pocket, not on my bars) or a wearable. If their app will rebroadcast the data to my Garmin, I’m OK with that. If I have to fish out my phone to check levels periodically, I’ll deal with it but it won’t be ideal, especially on the mountain bike.

I do wonder how they’re going to be pricing this. I doubt highly Abbot will be making a specific version of the sensor just for sport use. So, while marked “not for medical use,” it will likely be the same guts as their medical device. It won’t take long for the diabetic community to figure out that the same sensor and a different (free) app will save them potentially hundreds of dollars/month. This could have a significant impact on their medical version sales.

I really want to see this come to market successfully, and see what it does to the CGM market in general.

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Did anyone in Canada try this:

without prescription and use the app:

It looks like you can buy sensor also on Amazon.

I was considering this few months ago, then I desisted because I did not want to buy the reader… but with the phone it looks pretty affordable.

Thanks,
Enrico

Yup, I just ordered a pair of sensors and plan on using the app only. Saves you a bit more than a hundred bucks if you forgo the reader.

The sensor appears to be the same. The regulatory part is probably the only thing that’s different.

Curious. I have no doubt that in time (5-10 years) there will be the ability to transmit to a head unit in real time. How would that be useful for you though? For a type 1 diabetic or maybe even a type 2 diabetic on insulin I guess I can see the merit. However, I’m not so sure if it’ll be that useful for the general population to have real time data on a bike ride. If I had to guess, if you are going to bonk, you’re better off planning ahead than reacting to blood glucose readings. In any case, I will find out though! I’ll be getting my sensors and will do a lot of experimenting. :blush:

You have to run your phone (the app) over the device to get a reading. My mom uses this to monitor her glucose as she is trying to not become (medicine dependent) diabetic.

We are in the USA. Her thing may be something else, but is same exact principle. Looks the same as well.

I’m insulin dependent, so being able to see what’s happening in real time would be invaluable. It’s particularly difficult to fuel correctly when the ride is long, and the efforts are varied and unpredictable. If I could see what my glucose is doing, I could anticipate and adjust. As it is now, I guess, and try to err on the side of too much - the lesser of the evils.

Indoors, I can (and often do) do finger-stick tests during rest periods of interval workouts. For longer SS to thresh intervals (10+ min) I’ll sometimes test mid interval. I’ve seen my levels go from comfortably high to very uncomfortably low in 5 min during sweet spot intervals. This info has informed me as to how to fuel for the outdoors, but it’s imperfect at best.

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