Any non-diabetics wearing a Dexcom CGM?

If so, I was wondering if anyone has ever tried drinking 1/4 cup of maple syrup and as a result had their BG spike at all? I just think if anything can make your BG go up the fastest it has to be maple syrup, right? I am a type 1 diabetic for 6+ years so I wonder about these things about non-diabetic’s… I am jealous! :smiley:

Well, there are spikes and then there are spikes. Non-PWDs don’t experience the kind of spikes we do, because once their BG starts to rise their healthy pancreas clobbers it with insulin right away. And unlike the exogenous insulin we use, the body’s own insulin is very fast acting, almost instant. That’s why a non-diabetic person’s BG will seldom exceed 120 or so, no matter what they eat.

As for a non-diabetic wearing a CGM . . . I can’t imagine why someone ever would, unless they are suspected of being diabetic and their doctor has them doing it for diagnostic purposes.

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I’ve read about non-diabetics wearing a CGM for a medical study. I’ve also read about parents of child diabetics wearing a CGM to show allegiance with their children and also to see what a non-D’s line looks like.

As @David_dns says, the internal release of native insulin acts in a much more timely way. The release from the pancreas is first felt by the liver. With an abundance of insulin from the pancreas, the liver can gather up a lot of post eating glucose and store it for later release. Subcutaneous insulin dosing is very crude when compared to healthy natural insulin metabolism.

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Thanks for amplifying, Terry. Insulin produced by the pancreas is released into the hepatic portal vein, from where it is conveyed directly to the liver (a distance of a couple of inches). That’s why the bulk of endogenous insulin is used directly (and immediately) by the liver.

What the liver doesn’t use continues on to the peripheral vascular system, where it is available to the muscles which then absorb the glucose that the liver didn’t. That, by the way, is one of the reasons exogenous insulin is slower to act: it starts out in the peripheral vascular system and doesn’t go straight to the liver first, as the body’s own natural insulin does.

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Oh, I see! Thank you for the in-depth information! Very interesting!

I was tempted to wear my daughter’s Dexcom CGM while she was at diabetes camp this past summer (CGMs are not allowed at her D-camp) but I’m cheap and didn’t want to “waste” a sensor. By the time she goes to camp next summer, we should have amassed a bit of a surplus of Dexcom sensors (in preparation for the Zombie Apocalypse) and I plan on wearing the Dexcom while she is at camp. I do not plan on drinking any maple syrup, however…

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sorry already drunk maple syrup. when i was in College. don’t think i will try it again.

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I’ve used maple syrup to treat lows. It didn’t end well. One quarter cup has 53 grams of carbs. It’s too easy to over-treat!

Lol. I have also! Definitely always over-treat when using syrup… I prefer juice boxes ^^

Maple syrup is my go-to for middle of the night lows. A couple teaspoons of that high octane sugar fuel is usually just about right.

There have been a number of posts of how a non-diabetic responds to a meal. I posted the graph below earlier this year.

https://forum.tudiabetes.org/uploads/default/32013/bcbc6a26afc39914.jpg

As to maple syrup, it isn’t the best for treating a low fast. Maple syrup is basically table sugar (sucrose) which is composed of equal parts glucose and fructose. While the glucose will act quickly the other half (fructose) has to be processed by your liver and contributes little to raising your blood sugar. Sugar is sweet but not as potent as pure glucose. Look for pure glucose, sometimes called dextrose or corn-sugar.

ps. Corn syrup which is the precursor to corn-sure actually predated High Fructose Corn Syrup and is still made in varying levels of glucose all the way up to 95% glucose.

I remember a couple years ago there was a link to an article where a diabetes researcher / expert was wearing a cgm and discussed how much elevation he could see on his cgm after eating carb heavy meals… TUD members seemed to be in some disbelief and sort of insisted that world renowned diabetes expert (I don’t remember who it was) must have diabetes and not know it… I thought that was funny.

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Sure sounds like a classic case of denial. I guess medical people aren’t immune, either.

I think it’s unfortunate if that’s the sentiment people take away from his expert opinion…

I think it’s unfortunate that that IS his expert opinion.

You think it’s unfortunate that an expert has documented that non diabetics can have significant short term variability in the blood sugar levels? Not sure I follow…

Sorry, thought I made my meaning clear with the word “denial”.

I think it was pretty much universally accepted that non diabetics can have varying blood sugar levels until Bernstein came along and insisted its always 83 all the time in people without diabetes… A claim that most other experts don’t agree with at all… Don’t they still consider an oral glucose tolerance test as diagnostic for diabetes to be only one in which bg levels rise above 200 after ingesting 75g of glucose? I honestly don’t know but do believe that was the historical standard… And a lot of non diabetics are eating far far more carbohydrate than that multiple times every day…

I tend to be more willing to listen to and learn from renowned experts rather than just call them names based on the group-think of internet forums full of laymen such as myself… Which is why I remarked that I found the whole exchange funny… Perhaps that’s a shortcoming of mine.

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Groupthink has nothing to do with this. When two “experts” take diametrically opposite positions, cherry-picking to decide which one to choose to believe and which one to dismiss doesn’t make either one right, or wrong. What it does mean is that the individual has to apply his or her own judgement, and casting snarky asides does not contribute to understanding, nor to civil discourse.