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Continuous glucose monitoring made me continuously crazy
Features Close Features Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Features Gadgets Close Gadgets Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Gadgets Science Close Science Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Science Continuous glucose monitoring made me continuously crazy MAHA is obsessed with these wearables — for all the wrong reasons. by Victoria Song Close Victoria Song Senior Reviewer, Wearable Tech Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Victoria Song Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apr 8, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC Link Share Gift Image: Continuous glucose monitors — also referred to as glucose biosensors — aren’t just for diabetics anymore. Victoria Song Close Victoria Song Senior Reviewer, Wearable Tech Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Victoria Song is a senior reporter and author of the Optimizer newsletter. She has more than 13 years of experience reporting on wearables, health tech, and more. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. Link Share Gift Daily life is different when you’re tracking glucose. A little over a year ago, I was on my way to a conference. My bags were packed, the Uber was on its way, but there was one last thing to do before I could head to the airport. Tearing open a small isopropyl alcohol wipe, I cleaned the skin on the back of my arm. After that, I applied a small applicator to the clean skin, doing my best to ignore the visible needle inside. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed a button. It made a ka-thunk. I repeated the process on the other arm. In my right arm, I now had a Dexcom Stelo. In the left, an Abbott Lingo. Both were over-the-counter continuous glucose monitors (CGM) that would monitor the rise and fall of my glucose levels. Opening my phone, I checked both the Dexcom and Abbott apps to make sure the CGMs were transmitting data. I made a mental note to check how high altitudes might impact readings. It crossed my mind that, to my surprise, I’d felt zero pain. There was no urgent medical reason why I needed to track my glucose. I’m not a diabetic. My A1C levels — the metric that measures long-term blood sugar — have always been good. But glucose tracking isn’t just for diabetics anymore. On social media, you can see doctors, wellness influencers, biohackers, and athletes talking about CGM use. I just happen to test health tech, so I thought I’d give it a whirl for a few weeks and see if there was any benefit for a non-diabetic like myself using this tech. Instead, I ended up spending over a year testing the devices, reading up on studies, speaking with researchers, and falling down rabbit holes. I bounced from doctor to doctor trying to figure out if there was actually something wrong with me — or the devices I was using. Applying CGMs has become second nature over the past year . They don’t hurt, but I am hyper aware of the types of sleeves I wear while testing. The first “professional use” CGM was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999. Most people think these devices are used to track blood sugar, but that’s not entirely correct. Technically, they provide real-time glucose measurements from the interstitial fluid between your cells, just underneath your skin. Compared to traditional finger-stick tests, which directly measure blood sugar, CGMs can track glucose trends over an extended period of time. Until 2024, CGMs required a prescription and were devices primarily used by Type 1 diabetics — people who produce little to no insulin. Now, both Dexcom and Abbott sell CGMs targeted at non-diabetics, prediabetics, and Type 2 diabetics who don’t rely on insulin. To differentiate, sometimes you’ll see companies market over-the-counter devices as “glucose biosensors.” The benefits of using CGMs for prediabetics and Type 2 diabetics are clear. Unlike Type 1 diabetes, prediabetes and Type 2 tend to develop over time as the body becomes more resistant to insulin. If caught early enough, it can be “reversed” with lifestyle interventions like changes to diet and exercise. People with pre- and Type 2 diabetes also make up the overwhelming majority of cases in the US. According to the American Diabetes Association , as of 2021, Type 2 diabetics make up about 95 percent — or roughly 36 million — of the estimated 38.4 million Americans with diabetes. Meanwhile, about 98 million were estimated to have prediabetes. Put all that together, and a significant number of people could potentially learn a lot from using CGMs about how their dietary habits impact a legitimate metabolic condition. Related RFK Jr. wants a wearable on every American — that future’s not as healthy as he
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- Follow Follow See All Science Continuous glucose monitoring made me continuously crazy MAHA is obsessed with these wearables — for all the wrong reasons.
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