The Health Hunt: Real Healing Journeys, Everyday Wellness & Expert Tips

Ep 16 - Our CGM Experiment Results: How Food, Exercise, and GLP-1s Actually Impact Blood Sugar

• Sandi Magder and Daniel Schuman • Episode 16

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Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) can reveal how food, exercise, stress, sleep, GLP-1 medications impact blood sugar in real time. In this episode, we break down what our CGM experiment actually showed, including what spiked our glucose, what surprised us and what the data taught us.

In Episode 12, Dan and Sandi put on continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) in real time. In this follow-up, we share the CGM results: what spiked our glucose, what surprised us, and what the data actually taught us about food, stress, sleep, exercise, hormones and peptides.

This isn’t about chasing perfect numbers (even though… yes, we both tried to “game” the system). It’s about using glucose data as a learning tool, not a judgment.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

  • Why labs are the snapshot and CGMs are the movie
  • Dan’s baseline markers (A1c, fasting insulin, C-peptide) and why CGM patterns can still look “off”
  • The Dawn Phenomenon: the early-morning cortisol/hormone-driven glucose jump (without food)
  • Why some exercise can temporarily raise glucose (and why a post-meal walk still helps)
  • Sandi’s first-time CGM chaos: setup frustrations and why the Levels app felt like “CSI: Glucose”
  • The “healthy” meal betrayal: vegetable soup and carbs you don’t see coming
  • The matcha mystery (and the surprising culprit that changed the spike)
  • The fat kid day: pizza and truffle fries and a glucose spike that made us question our life choices
  • A real talk note on “biohacking” and why we don’t recommend obsessing over the data
  • The shocking results of the tirzepatide hack experiment

Quick reminder:

The Health Hunt Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. We are not medical professionals. Nothing in this episode is medical advice—always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health.

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Intro: Our CGM update and what we’re actually testing

Sandi Magder

Welcome back to the Health Hunt. A human, humble, and often humorous exploration on all things health. In episode 12 of this podcast, Dan and I put on continuous glucose monitors, also known as CGMs. And I was a bit of a baby leading up to actually putting mine on. But we did this so that we could experiment and better understand how our lifestyles impact our glucose. Today, Dan and I are sharing our real-life experience wearing the CGMs, what we noticed, what surprised us, and what the data actually taught us. This is not about chasing perfect numbers, although I did try to game the system a little bit. It's about using CGMs as a learning tool to understand how things like food, stress, sleep, movement, and hormones show up in real life. Now Dan kept very detailed notes throughout this CGM experience, so he'll walk you through his experience. I'll also be sharing my experiences, the patterns, the takeaways, my experience with the app that I used, but perhaps with a little less organization than Dan. Now you know the drill. We got this quick disclaimer. The Health Hunt Podcast is for informational entertainment purposes only. We're absolutely not medical professionals, and nothing shared should be considered medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health. All right, let's get into it.

Dan’s CGM context and baseline labs (A1c, fasting insulin, C-peptide)

SPEAKER_01

All right. Thank you, Sandy. I appreciate that introduction. I don't know if I'm as organized as you say I am, but for CGMs, I step it up and uh get my organizational skills together. And so today I'm going to walk you through my CGM experience experiment. And obviously, Sandy will talk about hers as well and what I noticed this time around. And just to be clear and up front, this is not my first time using a CGM, as you probably realize. I typically do this two to three times times a year and probably for the last couple of years. And if you listen to the podcast before in episode four, I go into a deep dive about blood glucose and um all the um biomarkers surrounding that. Um really great listen. I would I would go back to that after you listen to this. Um again, this isn't medical advice. I'm not a doctor. This is just me observing patterns in my body and sharing what I'm learning. So before getting into the day-to-day CGM data, there's an important context. Uh, from a traditional lab standpoint, um, my metabolic markers are good. Um my A1C, which is again uh the 90-day snapshot of my blood glucose, is 5.2, which is right in range, uh which reflects uh healthy average. And then I've also had deeper insulin markers tested, and this is where the story gets more nuanced. My fasting insulin came back at six. Uh, with anything under 16 is considered normal. A fasting insulin is a test your doctor probably will not give you at their own behest. You have to ask for it or take a deeper dive into biomarkers to get that, but it's a very important one, as I am told, and just as I've read. Again, fasting insulin is how much insulin your body needs to keep the glucose stable and lower it is generally better. My C peptide was 1.39, right in the middle of the normal range, which suggests my pancreas is doing its job without overworking.

Sandi Magder

We want that. We do yay, pancreas. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I think there was uh, Sandy, you can remind me what was the t-shirt with the pancreas, or do we not remember?

Sandi Magder

Oh, I gotta go back and I don't know, something about something with pancreas and t-shirt.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, for sure. There's definitely there's a pancreas t-shirt in the health hunts feature.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, if you're wearing a pancreas t-shirt in the public, and I mean, that's people are gonna notice that. Like, I mean, what is going on? So it could be will be a good t-shirt. Um, my insulin resistance score was 15. Again, as far as the um ranges go for labs, under 33 is insulin sensitive, 33 to 66 is impaired sensitivity, and above that is insulin resistance. So insulin sensitive, again, we want to be insulin sensitive. And so uh under 33 uh at 15, I was I'm pleased with that. And so by these traditional definitions, um I'm insulin sensitive and I'm optimistic that my my biomarkers are in the right, you know, going in the right direction.

Sandi Magder

And the theory is that we want insulin to react to glucose spikes so that it can reduce them, right? Otherwise, you're just stuck in this high state.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely correct. Okay,

Why CGMs are useful: patterns vs averages

SPEAKER_01

so why are CGM CGMs useful? Labs give you averages, as I just went over, you know, kind of some of my tests, but CGMs show you timing and patterns. So you can have normal insulin markers like I do, and see elevated fasting or stress-driven glucose, especially for me in the morning. It doesn't mean something's wrong. It just means something is happening.

Sandi Magder

Okay, well, I have to say that this entire experiment was incredibly eye-opening for me. It was it was wild to see how my blood sugar spiked with certain meals, how quickly or slowly it went down, but to return to normal. And this is just eating things that I would consider healthy. And also note like I still haven't gotten the blood work that Dan is recommending. And so that's on my uh to-do list, but I think it will be certainly helpful to know some of those markers. But this experiment in terms of, you know, the actual acute things that would happen during different activities, eating and things like that is still useful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, I truly enjoyed um getting updates from Sandy during her process. It was her first time, and she was very detailed, and uh I was impressed. And so um, you know, hearing what was going through her head and what her results were and numbers were, it will be um very interesting to everyone.

Sandi Magder

So And wait, by updates, do you mean panic attacks? There you go. Because that's how they felt to me. Dan, oh my god! Okay. We'll get into that later.

SPEAKER_01

Said by a true perfectionist, folks. Uh so I the first day

Day 1 surprises: coffee, workouts, and the “almond incident”

SPEAKER_01

of my test when I turned this thing on um was January 9th. Uh that was the day we must have been the day that we did that episode. Yeah.

Sandi Magder

Recorded it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So for context, when you turn the thing on, the readings are off in the beginning. It's calibrating itself. But where you want to be once it settles in is between 100 and 140, even less than that. You want to be ideally between 80 and 100 for the optimal range. But if you know your the average range is between 100, 140. And then as you do things and eat things and live your life, the glucose variability, if it's spiking within that range, the 100, 140 are good. So for my first readings were 134 to 140. So that's high, but it was calibrated. Um, it also didn't surprise me because I had coffee and my cortisol spikes, and you know, I this has happened with all those other CGMs. It just kind of does this, it settles in. Um, and so I I reminded myself that when I went to go exercise, once it settled in, that my glucose went from 120 to 135, which is a normal response, but it's kind of counterintuitive that like you go exercise, which is a healthy thing, but that would that would spike your glucose. But obviously, scientifically it makes sense.

Sandi Magder

Is that more with strenuous exercise? Because then we'll talk about this later. But, you know, and we talked about this in the other episodes, but apparently when your glucose is spiking, you're supposed to go for a walk, for example. And so that where is where it's a little bit counterintuitive to me, what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01

No, exactly. And so I this is a lifting weights. Um, and there's if an expert was on, there's obviously a direct causation as to like it would make total sense, I guess, scientifically, why your body would need glucose and more energy to why you're while you're doing things, like lifting things. But from a biomarker gamification perspective, you would you would think that all healthy things wouldn't raise glucose. It would keep it lower because you want the healthier the as your glucose is lower, it's healthier, right? And so it's kind of a it's it's it's it's not intuitive. And so um, you know, we'll have expert on to discuss more about the physiology behind exercise and why glucose goes up and why that that's important actually, and so on and so forth. But um, so I just reminded myself that exercise spiked it, which I should have known, but I just I maybe I'd forgotten. Morning coffee pushed me in the mid-20s from when I was probably sitting at low all hundreds. Um, I I I had actually forgotten about that, I had not looked in my diary and didn't remember that. Um and then that day on January 9th, I of course I had chocolate covered almonds at night. Uh, you know, my mom, I tell my mom not to buy these things for me, and she puts them into the cupboard, and I get in there and it's like, oh, there's the chocolate-covered almonds from Whole Foods. I pop in four or five of them, and of course, you know, shooting up, I mean, couldn't predict it anymore. It's so obvious. Shoots way past 140m, way out of the range that I mentioned. Uh, I know this about me. I mean, I I suspect with most people it would be the same way. Very clear signal that sugar and those things are um obviously making my pancreas work overtime. And then later that day, again, we settle back into the 90s. And then at night I dipped into the low 80s, which all makes sense.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, I'm fortunate, at least right now, to live alone. And so there's nobody buying things that I don't want in the house. I can't have stuff in the house for a maybe snack. I mean, it's like all or nothing. So when I shop, I can't bring stuff home that I don't want to binge on or that I don't want to spike my glucose. Now, when

Sandi’s first spike: “healthy” soup, carbs, and panic-texting Dan

Sandi Magder

I finally, and I'll talk a little bit about my experience with setting up the CGM and the app and some trials and tribulations that I had. But when I first got it set up, it was hours after Dan was kind of locked and loaded. And so I already knew what his initial starting numbers were. And so mine came back below 100. I think it was like 97. So the competitive asshole that I am, I was feeling really good about myself. I think I'm sure I texted him. And, you know, obviously it's it's an initial reading, it sort of means nothing, but I like the number that I was seeing. And so the rest of the day, I was pretty busy and I hadn't really eaten anything. And then I don't know what time it was. It was relatively late. I don't typically eat this late, but it was later in the day and I was too lazy to cook. And so I had a can of vegetable soup, like low sodium, what I think is healthy, can of soup. And then the next thing I knew, my app was telling me to get off my ass and walk around because my glucose was spiking. And it went up to about 145. And I probably had a bit of a meltdown. And I think that's probably the first time I texted Dan to let him know what was going on. He talked me off the ledge. Now, looking back at the label, I saw that it had about 41 grams of carbs, probably from things like potatoes and whatever brother, maybe starchy vegetables were in it. So it kind of makes sense because carbs turned into sugar. But I just I wasn't prepared for that. And that was my first sort of jarring experience with the app showing me what was really happening. So it was useful information, but again, a little bit jarring. And then overnight the levels went back into the 90s, so I felt good about things. Uh, and then the next experience was that sometime in the morning, I yeah, I had my morning matcha, and yes, on an empty stomach, and I'm not supposed to have caffeine on an empty stomach, but that's how I roll. And it spiked to 147. And it was very upset because I love my morning matcha. And so I later experimented with how to kind of fix these, and I think I figured out what the culprit was. And then just as a general overview, the the rest of my day was pretty stable. I typically eat like the same thing every day: either eggs and avocado on almond flour toast or like a tofu and avocado. And my glucose really loves those meals. So, you know, that's kind of what day one looked like, or I guess day one and day two.

SPEAKER_01

That's really interesting. Uh, the vegetable soup, everyone has a vegetable soup, meaning um, my vegetable soup when I first did my first CGM was Jersey Mike's sub on white bread, turkey sub on white bread, 180. Like scary high.

Sandi Magder

Well, I can beat that. Wait till we get to my fat kid's eye.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. But for no reason. So Sandy's vegetable soup is my Jersey Mike's. I mean, could I have gone to Jimmy John's the next day? I mean, I'd love to do that, and tested to see if that would have been a 180 because based like literally down to like the bread that's being used, you can. And I I may just do that um to be fat dan and another CGM. But you know, the question you'd ask is is, you know, is that vegetable soup the culprit, or is it just vegetable soup and canned soup in general, you know?

Sandi Magder

So yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

But um, the matcha is very interesting. Uh, I have coffee on an empty stomach, so we are clearly a podcast of empty stomach caffeine people. Uh that's um glucose 101, it's gonna spike. Um, bottom line. And so very interesting findings. If if anything, if anyone's gonna find deep dive deep dive findings, Sandy will. And so um he's this is a very interesting.

Sandi Magder

Well, that's the forensic accountant to me. I don't even know if I've ever talked about it, but that's my day job.

SPEAKER_01

It's like CSI glucose for Sandy. Um I love hearing it real time. So uh skipping the January 11th, stable but running hot for me. My variability was tight. I was roughly between the 109 to 126. Now, these numbers, 109 to 126, are elevated. These are not ideal um CGM numbers. And kind of the average is 115. So these numbers do not, as I mentioned, jive with my biomarkers. And so I think that that is just I almost want to point that out again.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, that's interesting. I know we talked about it, but I think until you see variability in practice and in real life, you don't really understand fully conceptually. So the app was really useful in that. Um, I'm gonna share, like I mentioned, a little bit more about the levels app experience, which is the app that I used. But the app rates my variability score over the day. So that was helpful. It gives it like a score out of 100. So that gives it, that's really helpful to see. And I just found it really interesting. Um, you know, it gave me a good goal of keeping things relatively consistent.

SPEAKER_01

Just want to add that again, uh, Sandy did levels. I did not. So she has these extra insights based on the UX and UI of that, what is seemingly a great app, I guess, right, Sandy?

Sandi Magder

Yeah, once I got everything set up, which I'll talk about that later, but yeah.

Dawn Phenomenon: cortisol-driven morning glucose jump

SPEAKER_01

Uh so January 12th, uh, I will kind of label this as the cortisol and dawn phenomenon. Look up Dawn phenomenon. This is a thing. This is in traditional medicine and functional, like this is a thing. I I really connected the dots this day. My average glucose dropped from 112 while I was sleeping to the 70s. And uh after lunch, I hit 128, took a nap, dropped to 85. These things all make sense. But at 5:30 a.m. before I woke up, my glucose jumped from 78 to 111 in about 25 minutes. I observed this without food. And this lines up with what I just mentioned is called the Dawn phenomenon. In the early morning, hormones like cortisol, uh, grow growth hormones, I use a big word, ready for big word, everyone? Glucagon.

Sandi Magder

What?

SPEAKER_01

Rise to help you wake up. I don't even know. Like I just know that glucagon is a thing. I I can't define it here for everyone. I like it. Maybe someone smarter than me can do that. I think we have 20 listeners now. You know, feel free to chime in at some point, email me. But um, your cortisol signals the liver to release stored glucose. And so I have these cortisol spikes and the CGM numbers directly correlated to that cortisol spike. Um so for me, I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, but uh it was an interesting pattern to notice and that the CGM had picked up on it.

Sandi Magder

Well, that is interesting. I mean, I I think I noticed a little bit of that. I don't know if it was to the same degree because it was pretty stable in the morning, but I'll have to go back and check because that's but it makes sense. I mean, obviously, as you're waking up, hormones start to activate, and that, you know, it's telling your body to get up and get moving and do some stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So January 13th, I experimented with low carb. After a late morning workout workout, my glucose stayed between 90 and 100. So obviously for me, and this is again repetitive of past times I've worn CGMs, uh, higher carbs, as Sandy had mentioned with her vegetable soup, um, raise your glucose. There's a direct correlation there. Uh, and so this all made sense. Now, it got

Dan experiments with tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) and what changed fast

SPEAKER_01

interesting on January 14th. I did something uh maybe a little of a biohack. Do I recommend it for everyone? No, but I wanted to know what the rage is. Um, I started microdosing manjaro, typically called terzepitide, uh, at a very low microdose to see how my glucose would respond to the injections. Almost immediately, appetite dropped. It was insane. Uh, my sugar cravings disappeared. I mean, there was no chocolate-covered almonds to be seen. They were all hidden. My average glucose, I think I mentioned before, it was around 115 prior to this. Now it was in the 90s, and it was in the 90s with very little variability. So it was kind of like flatlining. It's very, very weird.

Sandi Magder

Within how many days? Did you see this immediately, or it took some time for things to kind of stable?

SPEAKER_01

24 hours.

Sandi Magder

Wow. Okay. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01

So um my understanding is this, and I I believe this is the case. Terzepitide is FDA approved via Manjaro for diabetes, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes. Trzepatide and Zbound, WeGovi, and other things is for weight loss. So it's the same active ingredient, but the FDA has approved these different ones for the various purposes I just had mentioned. So um a biotook manjaro, well, it was trzepazide basically. But and so again, you know, January 15th and 16th, we're talking about just stable numbers, just totally different, totally optimized. And this isn't a micro dose, meaning uh my micro dose was 1.25 milligrams. The actual lowest dose offered is 2.5. So I had to actually only take half of that dose. And so half of that dose was make was impacting me great in an amazing way. And so I think, you know, they don't recommend, I call it microdosing. They don't recommend microdosing. It's not like looked upon as favorable in traditional medicine, especially for doctors or the the obviously Eli Lilly, but as you get to the functional integrative side of things, you want to know what the lowest kind of dose is for your body to see, you know, results. And so mine was low.

Sandi Magder

Well, that's a that's a fascinating experiment. And so again, first of all, the fact that it you saw results within a day. So I have I have questions. First of all, if you you know took took it and then saw your chocolate-covered almonds, were you just like, no, thank you? You just zero interest in the chocolate-covered almonds?

SPEAKER_01

So this is so strange. Zero interest. Wow. Total disconnect. Like, couldn't even imagine putting my hands in the chocolate almond pouch. It was just it was so uninteresting to me. So it obviously there's like some type of like a mind-body, like like brain thing going on where I mean again, you know, how these medicines work, people smarter than me can come on and talk about that. But shocking, I know that there, I know a lot of people taking this medicine five or ten milligrams. I could not imagine. I don't know if I would be have interest in eating like a French fry on that type of dose.

Sandi Magder

So how did you eat then? Like just obviously you need to eat some regular meals. Was that a struggle? Did you have to force yourself?

SPEAKER_01

It's not a forcing yourself. It's just um you get a little bit hungry and then you put food on the plate and you only eat half of the serving. And my, you know, and like my my friends or whoever was with me, it was just like, you know, damn, when's the last time you take home like a doggy, like like like a food to put in the fridge? You never do that. Like your plate's cleaned, and sometimes you're snooping around on someone else's plate. And so um it was just shocking to me. It was slightly uncomfortable, like just a feeling and a little bit of nausea, actually.

Sandi Magder

I would say is uh no, I'm hard, no on nausea. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And so that's you know, but it's just at 1.25. So I be the people's physiologies are so different. And so um, yeah, but um any other questions or a lot, but that's probably a whole other episode.

Sandi Magder

So we'll okay, we'll talk about it offline.

SPEAKER_01

Who knows? Um a quick note, just again for anyone new to this, um, if you're tracking your glucose, um, I would suggest starting with labs. I would get the things we've talked about in this podcast on many different episodes done. Get a baseline, understand where you're at, and then use the CGM, as Sandy and I have some more stressful circumstances, and but um use it as a learning tool, not as a judge. It's helping you understand how food agrees with your body and how it affects your body. And so, and then change one variable at a time and use this data to understand more about yourself, ask better questions. But um, even you know, I've done this and I know Sandy has is don't chase perfect numbers. Um, and just just learn.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, I mean, I learned a lot. It actually made me think twice about some of the things that I was eating or how I could better, how I could eat them and have less of a reaction with the glucose spike. So it was, like I said, I I use the word eye opening and that's exactly what it was. Stuff that I had never thought about because I generally, unless I'm having a fat kid day, which I'm fully aware of what I'm getting into that day, in general, I think I eat pretty healthy. And so to eat things that you think are healthy and that have health benefits and then see the spike, it's a little alarming. But good information.

SPEAKER_01

I kind of feel like our fat kid days are the same. Like I do pizza. I think you're a pizza person too, right?

Sandi Magder

Yeah, but I'm also a tacos person and a sushi person. And really?

SPEAKER_01

So sushi, like what did you say, order an abnormal amount of sushi? Or how much?

Sandi Magder

Well, that's yes, that's the problem when I order food, is that I'm, I don't know. I'm like, if I'm ordering, I may as well get all the things. And so I'll get some sushi and then I'll get some appetizers and like to the f they always send me extra chopsticks. This is how I gauge what they decide is a reasonable amount of food for someone. They'll look at it and send me three cents of chopsticks, and I find that very offensive because there's nobody else here.

SPEAKER_01

I have one question totally related to this topic, totally off topic of CGM. Have you ever done Uber Eats or DoorDash where you order sushi and then also add in like a pizza on the same delivery? So it's two different food groups.

Sandi Magder

Um, no. I haven't ordered from like two places at the same time. I'm I might now because I order enough stuff. Like there's I, you know, a yeah, I feel like there's space for that.

SPEAKER_01

I've never done that, but I feel like there's a world where that happens all the time.

Sandi Magder

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It must.

Sandi Magder

I've done that when there's other people involved and people want different things. For myself, I've not ordered from two places. But I I have sometimes ordered Uber Eats more than once a day. You know, like I'll like I'll eat something and then later I feel like I need a Starbucks something. And so a couple hours later, another delivery comes to the door. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Love it. There we go. Learning more about you every day. Let's do some takeaways on my end so we can hear about Sandy's experience. Um, zooming out, my labs show pretty good insulin sensitivity. My A1C was is under control. CGM continues to show kind of this um impaired fasting glucose, monally driven glucose patterns, as I talked about with cortisol. So all this can be true at the same time. Um, what it all means is um I have to be mindful of what I eat, but uh, you know, for whatever reason, the biomarkers when I test um put me in a good place. And so um, and also just extremely important. When I introduced the terzepitide, the Manjaro, uh, my glucose um stayed under 95, the variability dropped, and my appetite changed really rapidly. And so this medicine does work, and there is a place for it for people that do have um issues in this regard. I wanted to see how it worked for me, and it's it might be something I'd revisit, but it isn't right for everyone. But uh wow, was I um was it a great learning experience?

Sandi Magder

Okay, I do have one question. So the 95, but you're saying it stayed stable. Did you eat a pizza or a Jersey Mike sub and it still stayed stable? Or you were sort of at a decent healthy kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01

I think I had like pasta and it was I think it got to like 104 or something. Wow. It just the variability, the spikes were just so tight. Whereas my other spikes were, you know, mountains and peaks and valleys, whatever. And so um it was just nuts. And so I I I if someone's interested in experimenting that way, it's it's it's pretty alarming and pretty well, not alarming, it's it's just very interesting.

Sandi Magder

So yeah, okay. I mean, that I feel like this is a whole episode, especially since these, you know, drugs are very prevalent today and there's a lot of talk about them. So that will potentially be another episode maybe we have an expert on, but definitely in in the context of this experiment, like fascinating. Yes. Thank you. Okay, you can say no to chocolate cover omens. That's that's wild. Okay. All right, so I'm gonna

Levels app vs Stelo app: setup drama and what the data tracking was like

Sandi Magder

share a little bit about my experiences. A lot of this is app-based because I want to kind of be able to, you know, report back on on the app that I was actually using. And so I know Dan kind of mentioned it, but just so you have more context, um, Dan was using the Stello app, and Stello is the manufacturer of the CGMs. I went through an app called Levels, and Levels uses Stello as their CGM. So there is a correlation, but then Levels has sort of a more intricate app that gives you a lot more data, allows you to put in more inputs. And so, you know, we wanted to kind of see what that did. Now, if you listen to episode 12 again, where we put on the CGMs and I almost tried but didn't, and then it wasn't painful and you know, I was being dramatic. When we first put it on before the episode concluded, I wasn't able to connect the CGM to the app. And this was annoying. So a couple of things that really I was not thrilled with with the app itself. And first, and we we talked about this, but I kind of expected to turn on the app and it would literally show me like step by step how to put it on, how to put the CGM on. It didn't. And so I resorted to YouTube videos and all sorts of things. And so before with the episode, I was prepared, but had I have just used the app, it it didn't really walk me through what I would have liked. And then at the end, so there was a part where you integrate it with something called DEXCOM. I think that's another level of the manufacturer. I don't really I can't quite tell the details. And so it connected to that, but it never prompted me to put in the code that was on the box that would actually tell the app what specific CGM you were using so it could directly connect to that. And so I spent hours. It's probably why I didn't have my soup for until like later in the day, because I was fighting with this entire process for hours. I was very frustrated. I eventually went to, I guess it somehow I ended up with Stello tech support. And what I found out, and I don't understand why I didn't know this from the app, was that I had to then download the Stello app, which was the one that Dan used, and that's where I connected the CGM. So I downloaded it, it prompted me for the code in the box for the CGM, and then somehow it already had integrated with the Levels app and I was off to the races. And immediately it had the that 97 reading. And so again, it was simple, but somehow it was missing a step. It didn't tell me to do that. So that was a little frustrating. But then we know we got it all set up. So then my next experience is just with the app in general. Uh, I found it again, once it was set up, once we got through the troubleshooting, I found it very user-friendly in terms of just how to integrate it, how to navigate it, how to put inputs, how to read it. All of that was as I expected, and I appreciated sort of the the detail it gave me. So I was able to input the details of each meal. And some of that included you can scan barcodes. So again, with the soup, I scanned the barcode, it was able to find it, and then it immediately knew all the macros and everything that went into that particular food. A lot of things that I eat are combined, and so I'd have to add the individual ingredients, which was kind of a pain and it became a little bit cumbersome. But also, you know, the next time I ate that meal, and luckily I eat the same thing like every day, I could go and point back to it. And this became very useful because then when you have a glucose spike, you can look back to the details of the meal. So like I didn't take detailed notes like Dan did in sort of a journal fashion, but I was able to look back at the app and literally just kind of like click on the meal that I input and be able to see what I ate that day. And so it kind of reminded me where I was at with things. And so, like I said, I it became a little bit annoying to have to put my food in because I'm a I snack and I the way that I eat, although it's contained kind of within a small window during the day, but that was a little bit annoying after a few days, but again, very useful, very interesting. The other thing the app does is about two hours, two to three hours after you eat, it rates your meal in terms of the glucose variability. So anything that doesn't cause a large spike, anything that stays pretty relative, it'll give a score. Like I got some meals, like the eggs and avocado or the tofu, pretty much got a 10. Other things like the morning matcha a couple times got like a two or one, and then I'll get into the fat kid days, and those were for sure ones. But that was useful to see. And then it was kind of fun to wait around and see what score my meal got. There's also charts, um, like I was mentioning, so you can very easily see the spikes. It helps really visual, you know, help you really visualize. You can also add in when you exercise. So it's it allows you to do all of the inputs for things that are relevant. It it connects also to my watch or to my Apple phone, and so it's tracking my sleep. I didn't do a lot of experimentation with sleep, or at least not that I could identify what the changes were. That might be sort of in round two, because I do actually the levels when they send you the product, you get two CGMs, and each one is a two-week period. So I have another one that I'll probably wait until I actually get off my ass and go get my lab work so that you know I can report back on those important metrics. But that will be something I'll try and pay a little bit more attention to. But it is cool that you can put in your inputs and very easily understand what's going on. And then the other thing that it does is which is blessing and a curse, but it lets you know when your glucose is spiking. I don't have like noisy alerts on, but I definitely got a pop-up on my phone that says your glucose is spiking. Maybe get off your ass. I said go for a walk or move, but that's that's how I interpret it. And so I did actually, not all the time, but I did test the going for a walk theory, and it definitely lowered my glucose faster than if I didn't. So that's good data, although it's slightly annoying because I enjoy not getting up after I eat. I want to vegetate, but I know that it's probably something that I should do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You may have said this. I just want to to for the audience out there, Dexcom is the company that creates and built Stello.

Sandi Magder

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Um, that's that's the company. And then Stello is the product that is used by Levels, or you can use Stello directly to from Dexcom. And Levels is the company that you know Stanley's mentioning that has all these bells and whistles to um update the user experience. You may have said that already, but that's one of the kind of things.

Sandi Magder

Well, I didn't I mentioned I didn't know exactly the Dexcom. I knew it was something manufacture related, but I didn't know exactly how that worked with Stello. But that was the the missing link is that it connects to Dexcom, you set up an account. And that just for anyone who wants to try this, I think I mentioned it in the episode too. When you set up a Dexcom account, it tells you this. I probably didn't read it, but it says, I think it says use an email instead of a phone number because it gets glitchy. And so I originally used a phone number before I was excited and I didn't read that part, so that I switched it because it did actually give me an issue. So read the instructions.

SPEAKER_01

So were you always on the levels app, or did you interface also with the cellos app?

Sandi Magder

I didn't really, I think I looked at it once, but I was just mostly opening the levels app. So I did all of my inputs and things like that within the levels app. And it's it's cool too, because I, again, I know I eat healthy, but I don't actually know how many calories I eat a day, how much I don't really track my I don't track the macros. So like protein, carbs, fat, all those things. And so by doing this, when you're putting in all the foods, it's tracking your macro your macros. And it allows you to set goals for all the things like movement, kind of like other apps, but it integrates it all. And so it's it's kind of got everything in one place, which is cool. And again, it helped me to see like I was eating way more calories than I thought because I only eat like one big meal a day. But like I'll put a giant scoop of avocado-based spicy mayo. I have a lot of fats and they're healthy fats, but it's just I it was it was very useful and interesting to really see what that adds up to. And that helps me make potentially different choices or contemplate stuff like that. So what what information does the Stello app give you? Just where your glucose is? Does it have any other bells and whistles in terms of there's no bells and whistles?

SPEAKER_01

It's um and don't get me wrong, Dexcom, I love you, Stello. Thank you for you know creating an OTC uh CGM. And it's but these companies create, they're not in the app creating business. Yeah. So using the Stello app directly, and I'm sure some people from Dexcom would admit this is like kind of dialing up with a 56k modem, AOL.com. Like it's just so it's so old school. And so you guys, I mean, I haven't looked at the levels app, but um, and I I will at some point, but I mean that's that's the real deal. They're really, you know, focused on making sure people understand and can gamify all these numbers.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, and like I said, it was pretty user-friendly. Like again, it was slightly cumbersome to put in my meals, but it saved all the information so I could easily go back and find one. So I didn't have to sort of do it every time I would. And even if I didn't put it in, it actually would prompt me to say, Did something happen at eight o'clock because your glucose spiked? And then I'd be like, oh, okay, I forgot to put this in. And so yeah, we had talked about, you know, it's kind of this process is fun because it's gamified. And it really was. Again, like waiting to get my the score for my meal and just to look back and see what my variability was for the day and kind of setting my own internal goals was was great. Okay, so let me talk about a couple things just

Sandi’s food experiments: sweet potato spike, matcha tweaks, supplements

Sandi Magder

that I noticed in terms of what affected my glucose. And so I mentioned the soup, this infamous soup, and other higher carb meals definitely created a spike. I was able to mitigate this, and you know, we had done some research, so we sort of had an idea of the types of things that could help. But in order to mitigate this, I would make sure that I had a protein and some fats with the meal. Um, and I understand that if you have the protein first, and I don't know how long before having the carbs you're supposed to have that, but that it does help with the spike. But also I eat sort of a combined meal. So just for example, I'll roast a can of chickpeas, um, which has protein, but it also has a lot of carbs. But I'll eat that with avocado and some soft-boiled eggs. I know it's a weird meal, but that's what I eat. And I eat it together, and I still, even though I was eating the eggs and the avocado with it, I still had pretty significant spikes. So I don't know, I hadn't quite figured out the secret to mitigating that. And I do love my roasted chickpeas, so I gotta work on that. One day I ate a purple sweet potato, which I've heard is very healthy because of all of the nutrients in it. Well, it spiked my glucose to 155. So I'm looking at the sweet potatoes a little bit more less favorably, but I guess also, I don't know, maybe I eat an egg before or something like that. And and speaking of eggs, so again, I we we know, and I've talked about being resistant to this because I don't like eating in the morning, that it's better to have your caffeine on some sort of a full stomach. And so I hard-boiled some eggs and I woke up in the morning and I shoveled the eggs in my mouth and I hated my life, but I did it, and I did notice a lower spike. The other thing though, I don't know how foolproof this was because what I realized is the problem I think that first couple days with my matcha was that I was putting in um like powdered coconut milk. And I think for whatever reason that was creating some of the problem. I mean, I played around with different sweeteners, like I also used coconut sugar, which is supposed to be lower glycemic than regular sugar, other things. Like I don't use real sugar for anything. So I think that I didn't like that either. So I switched it up. I went back to my cashew milk, which is like a liquid cashew milk, and I also switched back to maple syrup. And even without shoveling eggs into my mouth first thing in the morning, the spike was significantly less, which made me happy because I stopped shoveling eggs into my mouth in the morning because I'm not super dissatisfied with the results that I got after that. So I I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think of is, oh my god, I gotta eat these eggs because I didn't know what else to eat. Like, I'm a vegetarian, it's hard to find, I can't eat a steak in the morning. So I was waking up and and dreading going to the fridge because like those eggs were staring at me. And I love eggs, but I just was not ready to digest them.

SPEAKER_01

Anyway. Just curious. Um purple sweet potato. The first thing that came to my mind was green ketchup. Like, are these things supposed to be purple? Like, how does that even happen?

Sandi Magder

Yeah, they're supposed to be. I mean, there's Japanese wine, there's a couple different kinds, but I had heard someone on another podcast, like a cancer specialist, talking about that being sort of one of the best foods for so I guess, you know, that's the thing, and and why we got to be careful about like a glucose spike is not necessarily the worst thing in the world, right? And there's that's a whole other topic that we can get into in terms of where you want to be and the actual variability and all those things. But I have to be careful now about being afraid of things that have health benefits, but that's I remembered as spiking the glucose. And again, there's probably things that I can do so that I could eat that and also, you know, mitigate the spike. So it was interesting and also made me slightly sad.

SPEAKER_01

Sandy, never have vegetable soup with purple sweet potatoes.

Sandi Magder

I know, right?

SPEAKER_01

That would be break the CPU.

Sandi Magder

The other thing that kind of upset me a little bit is, and I talked about this in the supplement episode, I had been having trouble swallowing pills. And that's the culprit was these giant fish oil pills that once got stuck in my throat and my brain never forgot it. Now, I'm happy to report that that's starting to improve again. Um, and so I am able to swallow some pills, but I had started to move into supplements that have uh that are like more of a gel base and things like that. And I guess they have some sugar-based, something, not sugar, but something in it. And those were spiking my glucose. So that was a little upsetting because they're expensive, and I think there's some good stuff in there, but I don't know. That you know, uh gotta figure out what's going on there too. Okay, let's

Fat kid day: pizza AND truffle fries and the 217 spike, oh my!

Sandi Magder

get to the fun stuff. My fat kid day. And I'm pretty sure Dan encouraged this. He was like, Did you did you have your fat kid day yet? And so that was licensed to eat. And so, like we talked about, so I ordered a bunch of things, but the the basis of it was a pizza and truffle fries, because I just can't say no to truffle fries. And so as soon as I consumed that meal, I could feel the judgment from the app. And this is where I'm embarrassed to even say this because you didn't, Dan, you didn't share numbers anywhere near this. And it actually concerned me. I think I probably went to Chat GPT because I freaked out. It spiked over 217. So I don't know if I'm gonna die. I'm here to talk about it. So I didn't die and it went back down, but it was very slow. It was spiked for like three to four hours. Maybe I kept going back for another slice of pizza.

SPEAKER_01

Pizza's at the like top of the pyramid for catalysts to spike your glucose. Like there's like no and then speaking of that, did you there's no way you got pizza and truffle fries in the same order? Was that too?

Sandi Magder

I did. No, no. There's a restaurant that has that. And I specifically order from them because if I'm gonna have a fat kid day, I need the truffle fries. And so, oh yeah. Wow. That's from I'll let you know offline where that's from. It's local. You can order from there too.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, learn something new.

Sandi Magder

I think I may have even thrown in mushroom risotto. I can't remember. I sometimes get that in the order, but that's so that again, it's like that's all the things. I think I I don't think I ordered any dessert stuff. And speaking of dessert, so I again, like I'm cognizant of all of these things. I've tried keto-based diets. I think that that had helped me with inflammation. It's a little bit hard for me to stick to, but I buy these um like chocolate. They almost look like Reese's cups, but they have dark chocolate, no sugar, and then some kind of nut-based butter. I have a I don't have a huge sweet tooth, but I like to eat something sweet after a savory meal. And so I usually have one of those, and that kind of satisfies it. And those didn't really create any spike. So that made me happy. I what I didn't get to do, and I had talked about wanting to do this, was kind of experiment with sleep and stress. But like I said, I have another monitor that eventually after I do my lab work, I will try. That's a little bit harder to test because you can't force stress. I don't necessarily know how to even evaluate it from one day to the next because life is stressful. I mean, I guess if you have something hugely stressful, you can tell the difference. But I feel like that's a little bit more challenging to test. I've been not great about going to sleep like at 10, 10:30 to get those optimal kind of like golden hour sleep things. And so I don't know. I it just I that wasn't something that I was able to test, but I will try and focus on that next time. So, like over it all again, once I got past the original fight that I had trying to get everything set up, I enjoyed the levels app. I was happy to take it off after two weeks because it was a little bit exhausting to monitor it full time and to have to worry about every single thing I ate. And now, obviously, I'm eating some of those same things. I know what it's doing, but I think it's less in my face. And so it gave me a little bit of a reprieve. And then just so you know, too, these are meant to be worn for two weeks, and I didn't know what was going to happen after two weeks, but it actually stops communicating with the app. So you have sort of no choice, like there's no point in leaving it on. Now, I did text Dan freaking out because when I took it off, and it was a little bit challenging to get it off because it kind of gets stuck. The device didn't have the needle on it. And so I was sure that it was stuck in my arm. Uh, I never really found it, but so far, no issues, and so I'm assuming that it's not in my arm. But I did have a small panic attack and texted Dan. So that was my sort of overall experience.

SPEAKER_01

Super useful. Wow. So yeah, it's just like Sandy said, like once you put that um CGM on your arm, it's like going to the matrix. Like you are in, and everything is gamified, everything is micromanaged, and you are looking at numbers, and so there is um an aspect of that that can be stressful and for perfectionists, per perfectionists, it can be difficult. And so taking it off is definitely that reprieve and getting back into the normal world.

Sandi Magder

Yeah, I mean, I thought about doing the back-to-back ones, but A, I wanted to do the lab work, and B, I I wanted a vacation from my CGM. And so anyone that, you know, wears them full-time diabetics or anybody else that needs to monitor glucose, like good for you, because it's it's tough. I guess maybe you get more used to it and it doesn't, you know, rule your life as much. But um and I went in there knowing that it was going to be a little bit stressful for me again as the perfectionist. And my my goal was to not let it stress me out. And for the most part, it was okay, but I had I had my moments.

SPEAKER_01

No, you did a great job. And now you have another one that you can use uh later this year, possibly. And so um after some bond markers done. So short and sweet, I don't see labs and CGMs as like competing tools. Labs give you the snapshot, as I mentioned, and CGMs give you the movie. Like they're you know, they're ongoing and you put them on, you're in the movie. And so together they help you understand your body instead of just guessing. And so um highly recommend um doing a CGM, learning more about your body. Message us anytime. Uh, we're happy to answer questions or find out answers if insofar as we're able to.

Sandi Magder

Absolutely.

Wrap-up: using data to inform, not scare

Sandi Magder

And so if there's one thing we hope you take away from this episode, it's this your data doesn't exist to scare you, it exists to inform you. And I needed to keep reminding myself of this, but it's a good message. Lab, CGM, symptoms, appetite, energy sleep, none of these tell the whole story on their own. But when you put them together, patterns start to emerge, and patterns are where the insight lives. What worked for us didn't automatically work the same way for the other. And that's kind of the point. This isn't about copying someone else's protocol, it's about understanding your physiology, your stress load, your lifestyle, and your nervous system. If this episode sparked questions for you about glucose, hormones, fasting numbers, or whether tracking tools make sense for you, we'd love to hear them. You can always reach out. We are at thehealthhunt underscore podcast at most social media platforms, or you can just send us an email at infothealthhunt.com. Now, if you found this episode helpful, the best way to support the show is to share it with others and follow, rate, and review the podcast. It helps more curious humans find their way here. As always, stay curious, trust your body's signals, and remember you're not. Broken. You're just learning. We'll see you next time on the Health Hunt.