Modernizing Blood Glucose Monitoring for PCOS [Podcast with Kara Collier] - PCOS Diva
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Modernizing Blood Glucose Monitoring for PCOS [Podcast with Kara Collier]

Regulation of blood sugar levels is a critical factor in managing PCOS. I have long advocated for glucose monitoring, but new technology like continuous glucose monitoring is making it easier, faster, and more revealing. Kara Collier is a registered dietician, nutritionist, and founding partner of NutriSense where she’s the director of nutrition. More than that, Kara is the leading authority on the use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology.

  • 4 pillars of glucose regulation: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress
  • The value of data to share with your doctors
  • Snacks with a neutral effect on blood sugar
  • Supplements that seem to help people increase insulin sensitivity
  • Nutrient deficiencies that can cause glucose dysregulation

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Mentioned in this Podcast:

Complete Transcript:

Amy:

Today on the PCOS Diva podcast, we’re going to be talking about a tool that you can use in your healing PCOS toolkit, and we are going to be talking about continuous glucose monitors. And if you don’t know what those are and how those could be helpful, you’re going to want to tune in to today’s podcast, because we’re going to be talking to Kara Collier. She’s a registered dietician, nutritionist and certified nutrition support clinician with a background in clinical nutrition, nutrition technology, and entrepreneurship. After she began became frustrated with the traditional healthcare system, she helped to start the company NutriSense, where she’s now the director of nutrition. Kara is the leading authority on the use of continuous glucose monitoring or CGM technology, particularly in non-diabetics for the purposes of health optimization, disease prevention, and reversing metabolic dysfunction. So welcome to the PCOS Diva podcast, Kara.

Kara Collier:

Thanks, Amy. Excited to be here.

Amy:

So why don’t you start by telling us your story? How did you become one of the leading authorities on CGMs?

Kara Collier:

Yeah. So as you mentioned, I am a registered dietician, and I started my career in the traditional healthcare system. So I was working in the hospitals, particularly ICUs’ critical care nutrition, and I was mostly seeing people who were coming in with a lot of suffering and acute complications from lifestyle-related chronic conditions. So when you imagine an ICU, you think car accident, trauma, gunshot wounds, but most often what is happening is emergent leg amputations from uncontrolled diabetes or emergent hemodialysis from uncontrolled hypertension, things that could have been prevented in the first place, and so working in this system, seeing all of the suffering was really frustrating to me.

So, from there, I kind of left to do a different startup, and the whole time I was thinking about how can we actually make a dent in that problem? How can we help prevent people from ending up in those situations? I really dove into the research on preventative health and what’s driving a lot of this, and a lot of it comes back to our metabolic health. At the end of the day, I describe metabolic health as the foundation of which good health is built upon, and if we can improve people’s metabolic health early on decades before they end up in that ICU, then we can help prevent a lot of those outcomes from happening.

So long story short, the obsession with understanding metabolic health led me to this tool called a continuous glucose monitor or CGM for short, and after testing it on myself, my friends and family, others who were in my circle, I realized what a powerful tool this can be, not just for diabetics, which is what it’s traditionally used for, but for everybody to help prevent that core problem I was seeing. And so from there, I met my co-founders, Dan and Alex, at NutriSense, where I’m now director of nutrition and co-founder there, and we’re using this technology for the everyday person, not just the diabetic customer, so that they can understand what’s happening in their glucose values day to day and help tweak and prevent and optimize their health way before we’re catching it down the road when complications are arising.

Amy:

Yeah. And especially with women with PCOS, where the syndrome, certainly one of the root factors is metabolic that if we do take control of it early on, then we lessen the chances of serious health issues like cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes down the road. So, I think that monitoring your glucose and the way that we’re going to talk about is certainly a very helpful tool, and I’ve wrote about it in my book, Healing PCOS. It was one. I didn’t use a continuous glucose monitor, but I would use a regular traditional glucose monitor to really understand how food was affecting my body, because I was so out of touch with my body, and I was having a lot of hypoglycemia and didn’t really understand why and was able, by using that just traditional glucose monitor and pricking my finger before meals and an hour after meals, I could see which foods were spiking my glucose and then sending it crashing.

It was a way that I could make empowered decisions on what I was eating, but of course I had to ask my doctor to prescribe it for me. I know she was a little hesitant, but I was able to get one. Since then, gosh, that was probably 17 years ago, and technology has improved that now we have these continuous glucose monitors that, I think up until I found your company, you still had to really work with your doctor to get one.

Kara Collier:

Yeah, absolutely. So how they work in the United States is they’re considered a medical device, so they do require a medical prescription. And if anybody has ever asked their physician for one of these because they understand the importance of the data but they’re not an insulin-dependent diabetic, then you’ve probably run into the issue that we did, which is 99% of the time, your physician’s probably not going to understand that importance, and they’re probably going to say no. Then you’re left kind of on your own, and you don’t really have an ability to get that. So, we at NutriSense realized that this is unfortunate. We’re trying to flip the script on that and change the way we talk about health and preventative health as a focus, but we have a physician’s network that does take care of that prescription process for you.

So let’s say you have PCOS, you’re trying to manage it, get it under control, and your physician isn’t really listening to the fact that this might be a helpful tool for you. You would just come to our website, fill out a quick health questionnaire. One of our remote physicians will procure that prescription for you, and then we’ll send the devices to your house. So we take care of all of that background headache that we don’t want you to have to deal with, so that you can just get the data and work on understanding your body and tweaking what might need to be tweaking and not having to worry about all of the logistics involved in getting the device.

Amy:

Yeah. And the device that you’re sending out is based on the technology of the Freestyle Libre. Is that …

Kara Collier:

Yeah, exactly. So in general, these continuous glucose monitors, as you mentioned, it’s relatively newer technology. It really started becoming more publicly available maybe about 10 years ago, but it’s come a long time, even in the past 10 years. There’s two major players out there that make these hardware, this continuous glucose monitor. There’s Dexcom, and then there’s Abbott. So Abbott makes the Freestyle Libre, and both of them measure glucose continuously. So with the Libre, you just kind of at home stick it on the back of your arm and it stays there for two weeks straight, and it’s able to continuously show your glucose levels on your smartphone. Dexcom works very similarly. It only lasts 10 days. You can put it on your stomach or your arm. We do use the Libre device because it is significantly cheaper, and we’re trying to make it as cheap as possible for our customers, but we have our own app and service on top of that.

So because these devices are really geared towards an insulin dependent diabetic, that’s what the Libre and Dexcom app is geared for too, so it basically shows you your glucose level and has you write in what your insulin dosing was, and that’s essentially all that the app provides you. So, we created an app and experience that’s more geared towards the everyday person trying to learn about themselves, so you can log your meals and your activities and your stress and your sleep levels and sync different data points that you might be collecting and see various analytics insights to help understand what’s going on beyond just medication dosing with your physician. We also offer a complimentary dietician support, so through the app, you can chat with your assigned one-on-one dietician, who is trained at looking at this data, understanding this data in the context of different situations.

So in the context of someone with PCOS, someone with prediabetes, someone who’s just kind of healthy looking to learn, it can help you understand what the data means, different experiments to try to learn more, different tips, tricks to help lower your glucose values, so they’re there to be utilized as much or as little as the customer might want them for. Some people are messaging their dietician every day. Some people might just have a question every once in a while, but that’s another part of our service to help pull it all together and really allow people to understand the true insights from the data. We didn’t want it to just be data and you get all this information, you don’t know what to do with it, or you’re drawing the wrong conclusion, wrong insights, not actually moving the needle or making a difference. So, we really think that data plus human expertise is where the power, the magic is.

Amy:

So I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I remember a client saying to me once that having PCOS is like a big science experiment, and that you have to be constantly testing different supplements that work for you or don’t work, different ways of eating, and looking at that stress reduction techniques, and sometimes the messages that your body gives you. I think that tell you whether those experiments are working or not can be really nuanced, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re really working or not. There’s a device on the market that tracks ovulation for women with PCOS. It’s called the OvuSense Fertility Monitor, and that is a tool for your toolkit to see if those experiments that you’re making with diet and supplements and lifestyle are positively or negatively impacting your ovulation. But what makes me so excited about this continuous glucose monitor is that you can see in real time how those lifestyle changes that you’re making are impacting your glucose.

Kara Collier:

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned using the glucometer, the finger stick, which is a great place to start if you’ve never done any glucose tracking, but if you understand the importance of glucose as a metric, then the nature of that continuous data is just so exciting and so much more insightful than you can get with kind of a random snapshot here and there. Instead of just one piece of the puzzle here and there when you happen to be checking it, you get this movie. You get the whole picture. You can see exactly what your glucose response is after a meal. You can see what’s happening while you’re sleeping. You see what’s happening on your drive home during your commute. All these different situations, just even wearing one sensor for two weeks, you can get so much more insight that would require hundreds of fingerpricks, which nobody usually likes doing.

And touching on that mind-body connection, this is actually something that a lot of our customers walk away with that they didn’t expect they would get from this type of device is they leave saying that seeing the data in real time really enhances that mind-body connection, where now you can pinpoint more easily, even if you’re not wearing the device, “Oh, that is low glucose. I know now what that feels like, what different events trigger that,” or “This is high glucose. I know what this feels like. I can connect this better.” You have that better attunement with your body, which just helps make more mindful decisions, whether the data is there or not. Helps put those pieces of the puzzle together.

Like you said, a lot of this isn’t super intuitive if you don’t have the data at first to learn it and understand what’s driving these things. Many people are like, “I always have this glucose spike at 2:00 PM, and that’s also when I have an energy crash or I feel kind of brain foggy, and I never made that connection that it’s with this meal.” But you can make that so much more easily when you have that real time feedback.

Amy:

Something else that I was just thinking about. I had a client reach out to me talking about how she’s having some issues with her blood glucose dropping after she’s eating, I suspect that she has some underlying root issues that are non-PCOS related, like Lyme, but her doctor doesn’t believe her. And I was thinking of telling her maybe she needs to pick up one of your monitors, because it’s great to be able to actually bring in that data at your doctor’s office. I know that as a young woman, and I think this happens for a lot of women who are thin with PCOS, we tend to, I think, have a lot of hypoglycemia, and I was getting to the point where I was fainting from low blood sugar, but doctors didn’t really know what was going on. I wish that I had this type of tool back then to actually bring the data and show them exactly what’s going on, so that they could better help me.

Kara Collier:

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s such a frustrating experience when your symptoms are so real, and other people are not acknowledging that or not trusting you. We hear that a lot from our customers as well, and we actually, a large percentage of our customers do have PCOS, I think because they understand how metabolic health and glucose is especially important. We see greater swings in glucose in general with women with PCOS, and with that is both highs, but also both lows. So, that hypoglycemia can feel really awful. Sometimes those symptoms are mild, a little bit of shakiness or nervousness. Sometimes it just feels like anxiety, but it’s actually hypoglycemia and it can be even more extreme where it’s waking you up in the middle of the night or you’re dizzy, nauseous, borderline passing out kind of like you were mentioning, so this is actually very common. Sometimes it’s fasting hypoglycemia and sometimes it’s reactive where it’s right after a meal, but being able to pinpoint, again, what different choices and lifestyle factors might be driving that, or even just to validate that it’s real is so helpful.

Amy:

And you brought up a good point about that fasting hypoglycemia, like at nighttime, and so many women with PCOS have disordered sleep, and sleep as we know is so important to the healing process. And I suspect a lot of sleep issues, I mean, obviously they can be hormonal, but I think a lot of sleep issues for women with PCOS are glucose-related, and it’s hard to figure out if that is the case, if you don’t have a device like this where you can actually see what’s happening while you’re sleeping.

Kara Collier:

Absolutely. And like you said, it is sometimes a giant experiment, which can be both frustrating but also empowering, because you can get closer and closer to learning these different nuggets and tweaking and understanding what’s going on. There’s lots of factors that obviously influence all aspects of health, but sleep is also quite nuanced. There can be many different things driving whether you’re sleeping well or not, but glucose is certainly related in that equation. Sleep and glucose are tightly correlated in both directions. Poor sleep is going to raise our glucose values the next day. Higher glucose levels is going to cause poor sleep glucose dips in the middle of the night going to cause poorer sleep, so we have to find that sweet spot as we’re working towards sleep optimization as well.

Amy:

Right. And maybe it’s having a snack before you go bed, and maybe you can’t do an intermittent fast from 6:00 PM till 6:00 AM the next day, and you need something before you go to bed.

Kara Collier:

Exactly. Yeah. There really is no one size fits all with all of this. This is why we try to emphasize personalized nutrition and health so much, because we see such a wide variety of things that work and don’t work for other people. First, we have to really assess and understand before we can then experiment and find what works best. But for some people, yeah, it might be that you actually need to fast a little bit more, because you’re eating too close to bed, and for some people fasting too much and we need to fuel a little bit more. So, it really varies depending on kind of what the data is telling us.

Amy:

So for women with PCOS who are trying to figure out like what the best diet approach is for them, so I think that’s one of the biggest questions I get is what’s the best diet? Is it keto? Is it paleo? Is it vegan? Besides looking at food sensitivities, I think that looking at how the food that you eat is reacting from a glucose standpoint is a great way to sort of figure out what the best diet is. But I’m just curious, Kara, how long does it typically take a customer to use the device to figure out which diet is working best for them? A couple of months, or …

Kara Collier:

That’s a great question, and it really depends on what knowledge level you might be coming into this with. Some people have been digging into nutrition for years, they’ve tested a bunch of things and they know exactly one or two things they want to try out. A month might be enough for that person who’s fairly knowledgeable, has already made a lot of changes and is really just kind of fine tuning. But if you’re at a place where you’re like, “I have no idea what diet is best. I want to try several different things and see what the data says,” I would really recommend at least three months to be able to really dial in from that standpoint.

Amy:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I think during that time too, you can see also your stress response and how that is impacting glucose. As women with PCOS, we already have elevated cortisol levels, but we know that when we’re under stress, we produce more cortisol, which kind of steals from our insulin and makes us more susceptible, I think, to blood sugar spikes as well. Are you seeing women, say, adding meditation to their lifestyle and seeing an impact on blood sugar?

Kara Collier:

Yes, absolutely. So when we think about optimizing our glucose responses, we typically look at four big pillars. One is nutrition, one is physical activity, one is sleep, and then one is stress. Stress is such an important, critical component of having good glucose responses. It’s not just about nutrition, and it’s definitely not just about carbohydrates. Stress is so important and often overlooked by individuals. As you mentioned, we have a normal stress response that is part of our nature, our physiology, and that increases cortisol and adrenaline, which also increases glucose levels, so it’s telling our body to pump out more glucose and decrease insulin sensitivity so that glucose or fuel for the stressor remains in circulation. We see this play out in individuals all the time where you might be in that commute. Maybe your commute is super stressful traffic, and for that hour-long commute, your glucose is 20 points higher than it is the rest of the day.

Or you’re giving a presentation and you’re nervous, or you’re fighting with someone you’re arguing, and we see these big glucose spikes, like you just drank a soda or had a piece of candy, and that’s just the stress response. But we also see this in chronic stress. So when somebody has elevated overnight glucose values and especially morning time fasted values, but everything else looks pretty good, your nutrition is pretty good, you’re sleeping well, a lot of times this is due to kind of chronic underlying stress that is this constant hum of cortisol driving that glucose response, especially in the fasted state. So this is something then where we can incorporate those stress management techniques like you mentioned, and maybe that is meditation, or just being more mindful and aware of those stress responses, being aware of physically what stress feels like so that you can physically relax your body. Exercise, deep breathing, whatever that stress management technique might be that works best for you, when people start to incorporate those into their routine, we instantly see improvements in those glucose responses as well.

And this is such an important factor, because for so many people, I think we ignore stress because it’s hard to quantify. If your baseline is chronic stress, it’s really hard to actually step back and identify that you are under stress, and so when we can see that data, it helps people to have that aha moment of maybe I am more stressed than I thought I was, or maybe this lifestyle I’m currently living isn’t actually optimal for me. So, it helps kind of take away some of that subjectiveness and maybe the emotional component of stress. Nobody wants to say, or a lot of people are hesitant to say they’re really stressed out, and so it really helps to have that data to quantify it a little bit and then also be able to correlate that.

A lot of people are wearing heart rate trackers or HRV monitors and see the connection. Now, you have two data points showing you what drives stress up or what drives it down, the glucose and the HRV heart rate response. So it’s very helpful in pinpointing that and allowing people to be consistent with the stress management techniques as well. When you see it working, people are more likely to stick to it as well.

Amy:

Yeah. And that’s just such a powerful recognition of the work that you’re doing to try to improve your stress levels to actually see that happening in real time. I think that that just helps you keep moving forward.

Kara Collier:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s so important. It can’t be overlooked. A lot of people just want to be told what to eat, what diet to follow, and they don’t want to talk about stress that we have to talk about it, because it’s just a critical component to the healing journey, like you mentioned.

Amy:

So I’m curious in the work that you’ve done with so many people now that are doing continuous glucose monitoring, are you seeing any other interesting patterns that you think would be relevant for women with PCOS that you might want to share?

Kara Collier:

Yeah. So kind of circling back to nutrition specifically with we’ve worked with a lot of women with PCOS. Nutrition is very personalized, like you mentioned. There is absolutely no one size fits all. It really depends on your goals, your background, what the data is showing. But we do see in general for most individuals, but especially those who might have some underlying insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, that modern recommendations for carbohydrates are probably too high for these individuals. The dietary guidelines that are recommending 45% to 65% of your calories from carbohydrates, that doesn’t typically work for most women in these instances, especially as you get older and our carbohydrate tolerance tends to decrease as well.

This is something where, again, your personal sweet spot, your carbohydrate tolerance is going to be individualized depending on genetics, epigenetics what’s going on, but also level of activity, all these other factors, and being able to kind of fine tune how many carbohydrates might be optimal for you, and then also what type. This is something that has been very interesting for us to see after working with thousands of people now is how varied our glucose responses are to carbohydrates. Typically before CGMs, we really used glycemic index to predict your glucose response to a carbohydrate. This gives a number value to a food and it tells you if you’re probably going to have a high glucose response or a low one, and something like white potatoes or bananas would be high, while something like beans or whole wheat anything would be considered lower. But we see that maybe that’s true on a population level when you average everyone’s responses, but at an individual level, it varies so much, and just personal anecdotes.

I’ve tried just about every carbohydrate out there, and I consistently have the lowest glucose response to bananas of all foods, where everyone is like, “Bananas are super starchy, and you shouldn’t eat them.” It’s just something very interesting where you really don’t know unless you’re measuring it of how you personally, as a unique individual, are going to respond to different foods, and then what that threshold of total amount is. So that’s one thing we always kind of emphasize is experimenting with the foods you like trying different things, and then let’s say you love bananas and you have a large glucose response to it. We can try a few different tricks, hacks that help a lot of people. Something as simple as eating a protein first makes a big difference for just about everyone we’ve worked with. So let’s say for breakfast, you were just eating a plain banana. Now, if you try making some scrambled eggs first and then eating the banana, you will most likely see a significantly lower glucose response, so small things like that.

Amy:

I mean, I’m even thinking about your smoothie ingredients. Some days, I can make a smoothie and I might not put enough fat in it, or I might have too much banana. I definitely am one that does better with just a lower glycemic fruit in a smoothie, like berries, but I think it’s just great to be able to fine tune your diet as well.

Kara Collier:

Yeah, absolutely.

Amy:

So many women want to know snacks. What snacks can I eat that would probably have maybe a neutral effect on blood sugar, or just kind of keep it balanced throughout the day? Do you have any data on what snacks would be best?

Kara Collier:

Yeah. So when we’re thinking about building a snack, we really want to focus on, typically for most people, protein and fiber. Because again, carbohydrates are going to be the thing that raises your glucose the most. There’s going to be some carbohydrates that you personally respond well to possibly and can include as a snack, but if we’re giving kind of just general rules of thumb for people, we want to focus on protein and fiber with that snack so that we have both satiety so that the snack actually holds you over, and you’re not just eating again an hour later, and we also have even glucose responses. Related to that reactive hypoglycemia. We mentioned a lot of people, maybe their snack is a typical snack, which might be chips or a granola bar or maybe something that sounds healthy, but probably isn’t because it has added sugars in it.

A lot of times, what we see is that sharp glucose spike and then a crash afterwards, and that crash leads to triggers of hunger again, and then the snack didn’t actually achieve its goal. So, we want those even glucose responses and satiety. So if we’re thinking about protein and fiber, hard-boiled eggs with cheese and veggies is always a classic, or if you’re doing something like avocado with either carrots or cucumber. Chia seed pudding is something a lot of our customers love because it’s a little bit of a sweet as well, but you can make that with just a milk of your choice with chia seeds and top it with almond butter, nuts, coconut flakes. Edamame, hummus, smoked salmon, beef jerky, tuna salad, things that are higher in protein without a bunch of the added carbohydrates is a great way to go. You can do a yogurt bowl as well if you do the full fat, unsweetened, plain Greek yogurt, and top it with some of those lower glycemic berries, some nuts and seeds, and that’s very satiating as well.

We actually have on our blog at nutrisense.io, we have recently made a blog about choosing snacks, because we get this question as well. So for those interested, they can check that article out as well.

Amy:

Those are great ideas and great tips. I know I should have my monitor on, because I can kind of feel my glucose dropping. That’s why I have a little brain fog and forgot to ask you that question, so I need to go have a snack after this.

Kara Collier:

I’m interested to hear your responses. And me personally, I’ve tweaked around with snacks, and the Greek yogurt bowl works really well for me, where I do the 5% yogurt unsweetened and add some toppings on top and I feel full for a while, even glucose response, but it does take a little experimenting to see what might be best for you.

Amy:

Yeah. And make sure once you figure out what snacks that you can have … For me, almonds really work well because I can take them with me on the go, and as I start feeling that low blood sugar feeling, and if you don’t really know what it is, that’s where this monitor can really help you determine, “Okay. That is what I’m feeling.”

Kara Collier:

Yeah. And once you do know, definitely agree being prepared as the way to go. If you know you’re susceptible to those low glucose values, which as we mentioned, is very common for women with PCOS to have those hypoglycemic moments, knowing what are your go-to snacks that work and having them prepped and available helps us to avoid grabbing the candy bar or the chips or whatever happens to be closest and just helps if we’re planning ahead.

Amy:

Yeah, and I think it really breaks that cycle of craving. So many women with PCOS have just crazy sugar and carb cravings, and I always say that willpower is really no match for low blood sugar. And you were explaining earlier what’s happening. You have a spike and then you have a dip and then your body’s craving sugar and carbs again, to kind of get that blood sugar stabilized.

Kara Collier:

Exactly. It’s a physiological response, because the body, when it senses that hypoglycemia, it thinks it’s in danger and it might actually be in danger, so the brain is sending survival signals to get glucose fast, so we’re going to naturally crave sugar. We want to kind of combat that as much as possible by either preventing the hypoglycemic moments as much as possible, but then also being prepared when they come in knowing exactly how you’re going to resolve them.

Amy:

Yeah. And so I was just wondering, have you noticed any trends with certain supplements that seem to help people increase insulin sensitivity better than others?

Kara Collier:

Yeah. The supplement that we seem to see the most success with is berberine. So for most people, a typical dose would be about 500 milligrams twice a day typically, and usually eat it with meals because some people do experience some GI issues, especially if it’s on an empty stomach, but we see pretty good success with berberine. Many people have tried it and experimented with it. There are some mixed supplements out there that are meant for glucose optimization, and the typically have some nutrients like chromium in them, zinc, sometimes magnesium, and these usually work pretty well as well. Not usually as effective as berberine, but those micronutrients are important for glucose metabolism.

Typically, there’s a few nutrients of concern where if you are deficient in those nutrients, then we usually see greater glucose dysregulation, so we want to make sure our vitamin D levels are where we want them to be. Zinc, chromium, magnesium, thiamine, and if those are not optimal, you’re not getting good sources of food from them or for many people are vitamin D deficient, we want a supplement to an optimal level, but going beyond that typically doesn’t add extra benefit, but we want to make sure those nutrients of concern are not potentially low or deficient.

Amy:

So a lot of women with PCOS are taking supplemental inositol, myo-inositol or D-chrio inositol. There’s been studies that have shown that it helps as well as Metformin with blood sugar control, and just wondering if you’ve seen … It might be a supplement that you aren’t seeing as much in your practice, but just curious.

Kara Collier:

Yeah, and I’ve certainly read about it specifically within the context of PCOS, as it’s been quite common in the literature and among people speaking about it. I haven’t seen enough people actually using it to know to be able to confidently say I’ve seen this over and over in the data that it tends to work or not work. From the research I’ve read, it seems certainly very promising with little potential downfall, so I would say try it. Especially if you’re wearing the CGM for multiple months, you can kind of experiment with and without and see if you notice any difference, but it hasn’t been super clear of a benefit or lack of benefit from just the amount of people we’ve seen using them.

Amy:

Okay. So if you’re interested in trying this CGM experiment, tell us how we can get started.

Kara Collier:

Yeah. So it’s as simple as going to our website, which is nutrisense.io, and you fill out a quick health questionnaire, and then we take care of all of the other work for you. So as I mentioned, we have a few different options that basically just differ on commitment length. We have a month to month that is no commitment. You can cancel at any time. And then we have all the way up to a three-month minimum, six-month minimum or 12-month minimum commitment, and it gets cheaper the longer you commit. That’s the main difference between our plans, and all of them come with the two CGMs a month and the dietician support in the app.

So, if you just kind of want to try it out, you’re not sure, you could do the month to month so that you could cancel or transfer to a different plan if you ended up liking it. But if you know you want to experiment with diet, you know that maybe you do have high glucose values and you want to work on bringing them more to optimal, I would recommend at least a three month minimum to give yourself enough time to kind of experiment and see what’s working and what’s not working.

Amy:

Perfect. And I will make sure that all of that information is in our show notes and link to your site, and you can also take a look at the transcript at pcosdiva.com in my podcast section. So I’m just so grateful, Kara, that you came on to share this important tool with PCOS Divas.

Kara Collier:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Amy, and I hope that it helps some people out there.

Amy:

I’m sure that it will. And, PCOS Divas, thank you so much for listening. I look forward to being with you again very soon. Bye-bye.

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