As soon as I observed the primary, I noticed them in all places – a curious white disc caught to the higher arm. Folks had been carrying them on the health club, on the underground, within the workplace. An web search advised me they had been steady glucose screens, which give an instantaneous read-out of your blood sugar stage.

Across the similar time, I observed media protection of ZOE, a dietary recommendation programme based mostly partly in your blood sugar responses to meals, whose podcast recently topped the UK charts. And my social media feeds had been full of posts about methods to hack your glucose ranges. Clearly, glucose is having a second.

We usually take into consideration blood sugar in relation to diabetes, wherein the physique can’t regulate glucose ranges, with critical well being implications. Steady glucose screens had been invented to make it simpler for individuals with diabetes to seek out out – and therefore management – their blood sugar ranges.

Now, nonetheless, some corporations provide them to individuals with out diabetes as a part of a programme of personalised vitamin recommendation, seeing them as a window into a person’s response to eating regimen that may information the meals they need to eat for optimum well being. The concept behind monitoring glucose is to cut back the “spikes” that occur after consuming, as this may assist with weight reduction and increase temper, vitality ranges and sleep, or so the story goes. So, what do we all know concerning the well being results of glucose spikes? And is monitoring them a great…