We all know about the health applications on our phones that measure our step count during the day. Many of us, nowadays, also were smartwatches that measure our heart rate or our sleeping behavior. But what if you could continuously monitor your blood sugar levels?
Some of you might be familiar with an Abbott FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor (CGM) (FreeStyle Libre, n.d.). A small biosensor with an enzyme-coated wire that is inserted into the skin that people with diabetes often wear on their arm to measure their glucose levels (Figure 1). This biosensor helps people with diabetes to manage their blood sugar levels and ensure that it remains in a healthy range (FreeStyle Libre, n.d.; Cumbers, 2021).
The company Levels has brought this technology, initially developed for people with diabetes, to mainstream customers, people such as you and me (O’Connor, 2021). Levels has introduced a wearable device, similar to the FreeStyle Libre CGM, that measures your body’s glucose levels throughout the day in real-time and transmits that data to your phone (Figure 2 and 3) (Levels, n.d.; O’Connor, 2021; Cumbers, 2021; Burns, 2020). This allows you to keep track of how your diet, sleep, exercise, and stress levels affect your glucose levels. The Levels application also studies your diet and activity choices and provides suggestions on how you can improve your health. The insights provided into your biometric data by Levels will provide you with a better understanding of how your way of living affects your health (Level, n.d.).
Levels smartly taps into the increasing demand for personalized nutrition (O’Connor, 2021; Cumbers, 2021; Burns, 2020). The mainstream population is now, for the first time, able to measure an internal biomarker. This is perhaps not only interesting for the fit customers that already spend quite some time on their health data, but also to make other mainstream customers more aware of how their lifestyle affects their glucose levels. It can potentially help with avoiding chronic illnesses, such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and even Alzheimer’s, which are all rooted in insulin resistance to some extent (Cumbers, 2021).
“Foods I had never suspected of being harmful turned out to be chock-full of sugar. It’s really opened my eyes to what I’m eating.”
– J. Cumbers (2021) on wearing the Levels CGM and using the Levels application.
I am not necessarily a big fan of continuously tracking my own health data, because I already spend quite some time thinking about how to best eat healthy and ensuring that I stay active. However, people close to me have diabetes and wear the FreeStyle Libre CGM and I indeed have learned about a few products from them that I thought were healthy but ended up containing a shockingly large amount of sugar. So, I think applications such as Levels can be important to create awareness among people that might need to change their lifestyle for the better. What do you think? Would you like to track internal biomarkers in real time? Do you think technologies such as these have a future? And is there a point where measuring your health data goes too far?
References
Burns, M. (2020, November 17). Levels raises $12M from a16z and others to bring its biowearable to market [Online]. TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/levels-raises-12m-from-a16z-and-others-to-bring-its-biowearable-to-market/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGV2ZWxzaGVhbHRoLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHp5fCIJYlrrUl8PIyfEwKJB4CxxwNrTxRpwR7T9mWy5VYUqYsRVViaChUAzsOQ9XKmSSIhuAwT-QVrwQon8uZqnlJAnJtr8vvr4w0AXFO–xwRURHFBe32yEvi4Y7_di1VMNC_pssjRC23rguaUvpKAiRIXxteMQhVJvVcfd5Kg (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
Cumbers, J. (2021, February 17). America, Your Diet Is Killing You: Why The Glucose Crisis Will Be Worse Than The Opioid Crisis [Online]. Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncumbers/2021/02/17/america-your-diet-is-killing-you-why-the-glucose-crisis-will-be-worse-than-the-opioid-crisis/?sh=2361409a73d5 (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
Diabetesvereniging Nederland. (2020, February 13). Freestyle Libre readers vertraagd geleverd [Online]. Available at: https://www.dvn.nl/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/freestyle-libre-readers-vertraagd-geleverd (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
FreeStyle Libre. (n.d.). Home [Online]. Available at: https://www.freestyle.abbott/nl-nl/home.html (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
Levels. (n.d.). Home [Online]. Available at: https://www.levelshealth.com/ (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
O’Connor, A. (2021, February 8). Can Technology Help Us Eat Better? [Online]. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/well/diet-glucose-monitor.html (Accessed: 2 October 2022)
Hi Isabel,
Thanks for an insightful blog and sharing your perspectives on tracking own health data! This is an interesting topic which I personally also interested in currently. I myself also track my own health data by using a smart watch device but indeed being able to tracking on the biometric data like blood sugar level (glucose levels) is a next level. Agree with you that this would be beneficial if the devices can be offer for not only people with chronical illness (diabetes) but also for the mainstream customer as the best way is to control the amount of sugar intake and build up a healthy lifestyle to prevent the chronical illness instead of reacting to it once we got it. Something I would be curious about are the following:
– Data privacy: What would the company do with the health data collected from the devices/ app? Would there is a privacy policy build around it? Would the health data collected be able to generate any prediction/ diagnosis about my health condition?
– Potentials biometric data: Apart from the glucose level, would there be other biometric data that we can collect from the biosensor devices?
Thanks for bring out an interesting topic!