Biohackers have been enjoying the convenience of continuous blood glucose monitors for the last few years. Being able to see how food and exercise effect our blood glucose provides insight into lifestyle changes that we can make to improve ourselves. The FreeStyle Libre CGM costs less than $300, but it has some three issues that need to be worked around to make it useful:
Abbott does not sell the FreeStyle Libre in the US so it must be bought on-line from another country
The FreeStyle Libre if bought outside the UK or AU will be in another language. I run mine in Italian as there is no English option.
Abbott’s Auto-Assist currently does not sync data with MacOS Sierra.
The first two issues are easy enough to work around, but having data to review in a friendly graphed form would make things so much easier. Enter Diasend, the utility that was designed to pull data from various glucose monitors, upload it to the cloud and provide a friendly web / phone app interface for viewing. Diasend is a free utility and service. Simply create a account, download the ‘Diasend Uploader’ and plug in your glucose device to your laptop to sync.
I’ve especially enjoyed using the Diasend iOS app for reviewing data. I can actually eat a significant amount of carbohydrates (50-100g) per day as long as they are in the form of starchy vegetables and nuts. Faster carbs like ginger beer brought my blood sugar up to 138 mg/dL. In second place was half a plantain which would peak at about 116 mg/dL. Now I can briefly eliminate these two foods while I look for other spikers.
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