What I learned from wearing a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM): Meditate
A self-proclaimed bio-hacking nerd and bio data tracking junkie, I am fascinated with the many ways that we, as human beings, can improve our mental and physical well-being.
As a healthy male, 155 lbs with 6–7% body fat, I do not drink alcohol, eat dairy, grains and sugar and I exercise and sleep well. I pride myself on living a healthy lifestyle and am always searching for better ways to improve my quality of life. In my continuous quest for knowledge, I became curious about how one’s lifestyle can affect their body’s hormones and sugar levels. I wondered how fasting, exercise, and stress would affect my own glucose levels. I decided to wear a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) for two weeks and track my findings.
Personal Experiment
Fasting
Every day I fast for 16–18 hours and eat within a 6–8 hour window. Much to my surprise, my GCM showed that my glucose was notably elevated in the morning even after fasting from the previous evening. According to the American Diabetes Association, it is recommended that non-diabetics maintain a blood glucose level of 100 mg/dL in a fasting state- one morning I recorded 140 mg/dL!
Fasting for longer than 7–8 hours causes a drop in insulin levels, causing other hormones such as glucagon, adrenaline, growth hormone, and cortisol to increase the glucose level. The body reacts like it’s starving, and activates “gluconeogenesis,” the process of creating new glucose or pulling stored glucose from the liver into the blood. At least for that day when I reached 140 mg/dL, I found that fasting for 18 hours caused my glucose to jump way too high. Dr. Dave Lemay who is a Performance Medicine Consultant for the NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL says that there is no perfect diet recommendation that fits every person. Each person has his or her own genetics and environment and the dietary recommendations for one person can be detrimental to the next person. Tracking with personal data can give you objective feedback as to whether or not something is working for you and your body. This was a very interesting and revealing discovery about how my body reacts to fasting and the results.
Even though this increased glucose level I recorded happened only once in my experimental period, it is something people should pay attention to. It happened to a healthy person like me and could happened to anyone else too. Imagine if this was the day I had planned to go do my bloodwork labs…The results would have been so skewed!
Meditation
During my two-week experiment, I also wanted to see if meditation had any effect on my blood sugar levels. Meditation produces specific physiological response patterns in biological systems such as metabolic, autonomic, endocrine, neurological, cardiovascular, and psychological. The goal of meditation is to reduce stress hormones, especially cortisol, with the purpose of decreasing the influx of glucose into our blood.
Stress, physical or psychological, causes the body to secrete hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, into the bloodstream. These hormones increase the blood sugar level to feed our muscles to fight or run. Since there is profound evidence that supports the theory of physiological “fight or flight” responses to stress, I decided to monitor my glucose levels with the practice of meditation.
On one of the days I was monitoring my glucose, I was late for work and was rushing to shower and get ready, which caused by glucose level to go up to 130 mg/dL. After settling down and getting a chance to meditate, I saw my glucose level drop from 120 to 102 mg/dL after only meditating for 10 minutes!
“Would you take a daily pill if it was scientifically proven to benefit your brain by increasing focus; reducing stress, anxiety, and depression; and improving memory, emotional awareness, and overall happiness? What if it wasn’t through taking a pill, but simply the act of sitting still, for even just one minute a day?” — Dr. Mark Hyman
Just Breathe…
Meditation can involve focused breathing exercises to benefit glycemic control, as evidenced by Ted Wilson et al. This group conducted a study in order to evaluate a simple breathing exercise and its effect on postprandial (after eating) glucose and insulin levels. Although it was a small study with 26 subjects, it showed promising results: those performing relaxation breathing (cycles of deep inhalations and slow exhalations) had significantly lower blood glucose levels compared to the control breathing group (subjects who did not have any rules on how to breathe).
I practiced meditation and my results were fascinating: my normal daily glucose level was lowered from 100 to 80s mg/dL! Also, I frequently noticed that my glucose level dropped on average 20 mg/dL after only 10 minutes of meditation.
I highly recommend you try experiment lowering your glucose level through meditation. At the very least, it’s free and not harmful, so why not?
Sugar is Sugar
Fighting stress by practicing meditation (breathing exercises) and fasting showed such interesting co-relationships that I did not want to do anything that would interfere with my experiments. One day I ate some organic, paleo, vegan dark chocolate. My glucose level went up from 94 to 121 mg/dL within 5 minutes! Although this chocolate is considered healthier than eating a regular milk chocolate, it still increased my blood sugar level. Honey has a low glycemic index (around 55) so when I ate honey my blood sugar only increased by a small amount.
The below graphic shows the effects of me eating an acai bowl which is considered healthy and how it affected my blood sugar level. Sugar in any disguised form is still sugar!
This is an actual photo of my glucose levels after eating a healthy açai bowl, with no topping- no sugar added.
My Conclusions
It is important to be aware of how your lifestyle affects your body’s hormones and sugar levels. I got a CGM device because I was curious about how my lifestyle affects my glucose level. Through my experiment, I was able to see in real-time how my body reacted to working out, fasting, eating sugar, stress and how important meditation is to my life.
My favorite part of this experiment was how meditation affect my glucose levels! Not only did it drop, but it did it so quickly! I recommend that you try this experiment to see how your daily routine affects your glucose levels, but please discuss CGM with your physician prior to starting. I feel that this is an opportunity to practice preventative care, rather than finding out that you’ve been inadvertently keeping your glucose at high levels.
About the Author:
Navin Hettiarachchi currently works for an NBA team. He considers himself the “one stop shop” for healthcare.
References:
1. Hatting M, Tavares CDJ, Sharabi K, Rines AK, Puigserver P. Insulin regulation of gluconeogenesis. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2017;1411(1):21–35.
2. Sinha SS, Jain AK, Tyagi S, Gupta SK, Mahajan AS. Effect of 6 Months of Meditation on Blood Sugar, Glycosylated Hemoglobin, and Insulin Levels in Patients of Coronary Artery Disease. Int J Yoga. 2018;11(2):122–128.
3. Marik PE, Bellomo R. Stress hyperglycemia: an essential survival response!. Crit Care. 2013;17(2):305. Published 2013 Mar 6. doi:10.1186/cc12514
4. Wilson T, Baker SE, Freeman MR, Garbrecht MR, Ragsdale FR, Wilson DA, Malone C. Relaxation breathing improves human glycemic response. J Altern Complement Med. 2013 Jul;19(7):633–6. doi: 10.1089/acm.2012.0603.
