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March 29, 2026

What a CGM Can Teach You About Type 2 Diabetes That Your A1C Doesn’t Show - 98

Show Notes
Transcript

Type 2 Diabetes and What Is A CGM And How Do You Use Them

This episode is for driven men with type 2 diabetes who want steady energy, better blood sugar, and clear data they can act on.

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur in your 40s or 50s, this conversation connects your metabolic health directly to your energy, focus, and daily performance at work and at home.

Your A1C gives you a three month average. What it does not show you is what your blood sugar does during a stressful work call, after Tuesday night dinner, or between 4 and 7 AM while you are still asleep.

A 2025 study in Nature Scientific Reports confirmed that glucose variability, the daily spikes and drops, drives oxidative stress and long term tissue damage independently of what your average blood sugar looks like.

That means two men can have the same A1C and be in very different situations inside their bodies.

We walk through what a continuous glucose monitor actually shows, including five things no lab test will ever reveal, and why the ADA's 2025 and 2026 Standards of Care now recommend CGM for type 2 diabetics on oral medications.

Research shows that every 10 percent improvement in time in range, the percentage of the day your blood sugar stays between 70 and 180, is associated with meaningful reductions in kidney, eye, and nerve damage risk.

That is a number you can move in weeks and watch change in real time.

Brian also covers the dawn phenomenon, the stress response visible on a CGM trace, and a simple three step plan to start using this data without obsessing over every reading.

Main topics covered in this episode:

-Why A1C alone misses the daily glucose swings that drive long term damage (Nature Scientific Reports, 2025)

-What a CGM shows that no blood test can, including meal response, stress spikes, sleep quality, and the dawn phenomenon

-Time in range as a daily metric and why 70 percent is the ADA target for most people with type 2 diabetes (ADA Standards of Care, 2025 and 2026)

-How cortisol from high pressure work situations raises blood sugar without any food intake (PMC Daily Life Stress and Glucose Study, 2025)

-How poor sleep changes your overnight glucose and morning fasting number

-A three step plan to use a CGM without getting overwhelmed

-How to bring your CGM report into a more useful conversation with your doctor (Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 2024)

This breaks down blood work in plain language.

A1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and what affects them.

Here’s the scorecard you asked for.

https://brianparana.short.gy/improveyourbloodpanels

Book a free private lab review at brianparana.short.gy/privatelab.

This is a one on one session with Brian where you bring your most recent blood work and he walks you through exactly what the numbers mean, what is trending in the wrong direction, and what specific steps to take first.

It is built for driven men who want a clear, personalized read on their metabolic health rather than a generic plan.

If your labs have been confusing or your doctor has not had time to fully explain what they mean, this is where that conversation actually happens.

Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?

Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.

Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:

www.thecalltorise.com

To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com

Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.

Here's a simple question most men never think about when it comes to type 2 diabetes. If your A1C comes back at 7.1 and your doctor says you're doing okay, are you actually doing okay? This episode of Driven for Health is brought to you to help guys with families, with careers that are busy in life, that are also suffering from this chronic illness, type 2 diabetes, that want to improve their health.
The honest answer to this question is maybe, but the A1C gives you the 3-month average of your blood sugar. But an average doesn't tell you whether you spent those 3 months at a consistent level or you've been bouncing up and down with highs and lows every single day. Situations can produce the same outcome in the average and they do two very different things to your body.
Right now, your situation probably looks like this. You get one number every 90 days. You still wake up to fasting numbers that are up, down, and all around. You still feel more tired than you want to be in the middle of your day when you get home from work, especially at bedtime, where you can't actually probably fall asleep cuz your mind's racing about all the things you need to do.
You're putting in effort into trying to eat healthier and going to the gym or at least packing your bag and putting in your car. You but you're not managing this disease. This is Coach Brian again, Driven for Health episode 98. This is an extension of other diabetic related related episodes of 89, which was I just got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Now what? I walk you through the complete from the I didn't realize I had it to signs and symptoms to going to the doctor's office to what happens immediately after to a 3-month plus timeline on what to do. There's episode 91. I go through 95 as well. Talk about various other issues. 91 was on erectile dysfunction. Yeah, guys.
Type 2 diabetes affects blood flow and circulation and that's kind of what needs happen there. So, you can listen in 91 if things don't feel right. In episode 95, I talk a lot about how the liver is sabotaging you. Your morning blood sugar levels spiking up still way higher than 100-ish on average.
150 or more, you have problems. Okay? And this is another one. How to use a continuous glucose monitor and help to start actually solving this metabolic health issue that you have. So, glucose monitors have changed the way my clients understand their own bodies and I want to walk you through what an A1C can and cannot show you.
And what a continuous glucose monitor or CGM, you will see them referred to as, actually reveal. And there's a three-step plan that you need to follow in the next 90 days to put this effort forward to actually show those numbers and have an actual plan of what to do about it. Let's go. What your A1C actually means.
So, what what is it? Well, your A1C measures how much sugar has attached to your red blood cells over the past 90 days. Your red blood cells live roughly 3 months, so the test gives you a snapshot of your blood sugar levels and where they've been sitting over that time frame. A reading below 5.7 is 5.5, 5.3, 5.0, you're good to go.
All right. But, between 5.7 and 6.4, you are in the in quotations pre-diabetic range. This is should be throwing alarm bells and waving red flags at you and slapping you across the face or pouring cold water on you. Something to wake you up out of the coma that you're living in that called your day-to-day life and whatever the heck you're putting in your mouth or however you're not moving your body or drinking any water.
Because things get worse. When you're at 6.4 or 6.5, when we're on that line, then we're you're labeled and identity has changed into a type two diabetic. I don't know about you, but I don't want that labeled attached to me. I don't want that carrying on and getting dragged through my life, being a diabetic and all the things that that means.
Most doctors use seven as the the target to for men to be diagnosed. These are useful numbers and it tells you the direction you're trending and it tells you whether the last 90 days of effort have moved you in the right direction or not. And it's uh definitely a part of your metabolic health overall. The problem is that this the only one part of the picture.
Think of it this way. Imagine you drove from Cleveland to Miami. I live near Cleveland. I'm in Akron, Ohio, home of LeBron James and Goodyear world headquarters, right? There's some rock and roll Hall of Fame and the football Hall of Fame somehow we got too. But let's say we're going driving from the Cleveland area down to Miami over 3 days.
When you arrive, someone asks you for your average speed. Well, you did the math and you came up with the 55 mile an hour and you're driving a little slower than the speed limit, which is cool. But that sounds easy and reliable, but the average doesn't tell you that you spent 4 hours stuck in traffic barely moving and then 2 hours doing 90 on an empty highway just trying to make up time.
I have driven my family to Florida to the Clearwater area in Orlando too many times. We haven't driven all the way to Miami, but we've flown to Orlando and drove to Miami and back a couple times. Well, we flew into Miami and drove through the Keys and back and I've been in Miami a couple times. I love Shark Tooth Valley where you can go to see the the alligators just hanging out on the side of the the cart path.
Uh there in the Everglades. Pretty cool little park and search it up and you'll see what I mean. It's just they're just literally laying on the ground right next to you and you say, "Are they going to eat me?" And they don't, shockingly enough. They just don't. I have if you haven't heard been listening, I've I've traveled all 50 states, multiple countries, continents with my family.
I am blessed to be able to do that. I appreciate my wife Amber who's a travel enthusiast. So, that's what she does for a living too. She sends people on these. All right, back to not travel, back to understanding this because yes, I have driven 85-90 overnight trying to make up time and then nobody's on the highway because I knew once I got to 95 in Florida, things were going to slow down quite a bit, especially at that 10:00 11:00 noonish time when I'm getting ready to go through all of Florida.
So, these averages of going really slow and then getting stuck to going super fast, they're hiding the extreme ranges. And for your engine, your brakes, your fuel system, the gasoline usage, they are what determines the wear and tear of your vehicle and what it looks like. And that's what the A1C does with your blood sugar.
It gives you an average but doesn't show you your swings. Now, why do the swings matter? This piece of advice and information changes how you actually think about blood sugar management and what what does the mean mean? How you look at if if you're a type 2 diabetic, you have to pay attention to where your blood sugar levels are.
And we want to get them into say an average of 100 just for an easy number here. But when they get up to 120, 150, 200 and some or I've seen people with 300 plus, holy cow, you're in trouble. Research shows that glucose swings, uh the spikes up and drops down, produce more oxidative stress on blood vessel walls and steadily elevate your then steady the the drops up and down, those spikes challenge you more than just having consistent elevated blood sugar levels.
That's what I'm trying to say. So, uh going up and down is no bueno. Going 95 and then stop is no bueno on the vehicle, on your body. That oxidative stress is say internal rust inside your body, inside your blood vessels. It's what happens when unstable molecules damage the lining of your blood vessels over time, and this causes a lot of other problems.
Think of say cholesterol. If you have type 2 diabetes and cholesterol and the diabetes is damaging your inner lining of your blood vessels, guess where cholesterol might hang out. In those damaged parts, which can then start building up arterial sclerosis and you're walking heart attack now. Most men know that high blood sugar causes this kind of damage.
And what most men do not know is that up and down pattern of poor food behavior around especially around sugary or high carb meals, those glucose swings appear to cause more than just being high. Two men can have identical A1C readings and completely different levels of vascular damage, that damage done in your veins, in your blood vessels.
And it depends on how stable or volatile your glucose patterns are. The man whose sugar swings from it's beeping at you in the middle of night, it's like 20 or 30 to 60 when you wake up to 240 repeatedly throughout the day or night, 24/7 365, you're really doing a lot of damage to your blood vessels. And just someone just saying at 150, which is higher, 120 is the break line of getting too high, so this is a problem.
This doesn't show up in your standard A1C result, but it's only visible when you actually look at the glucose patterns of behavior, the movements, the up and down spikes. A study published in 2025 confirmed this connection when glucose bounced up and down repeatedly, the body accumulates more specific chemical markers that researchers measure to long-term sugar damage in your blood vessels, your tissues.
Think of it like scar tissue left by years of sugar exposure. The science The study found this damage was particularly higher in men with those volatile those up and down high lows patterns of glucose and blood sugar levels. So, what is a CGM or a glucose continuous glucose monitor actually is? Well, this it's a small sensor.
You might see them on people's triceps, the back of their arm. They're about say a quarter wide, maybe about 2/3 quarter stick, and it attaches to your upper arm, and it reads like a blood sugar measurements every 5 minutes around the clock. And then there's usually an app on your phone, and then you can see the glucose levels at any particular moment, and then watch it how it raises up after a meal or after a particular food that you eat.
This could be where say the glycemic index comes into play. If you have just a carbohydrate alone, you can see that blood sugar spike. If you have high sugary foods without any protein or fiber, you're going to see it go up quite a bit. And then you're going to watch it go up and down depending on what you do after that or even say how it drops around exercise.
Now, I will throw this out there. Some people at exercise raises their blood sugar. So, it's something to be conscious aware of, and it's something that just happens occasionally. The two most common options available right now are the Dexcom and the Freestyle Libre. These things you can find at even Amazon.
Okay? And hopefully maybe your insurance can provide you with them and you'll have to pay out of pocket. But do note that insulin and glucose monitors, all these things out of pocket will cost a significant amount over a long time if you have to deal with it or it might cause your insurance to go up which then cost you more time and money.
Things that you don't want to spend time or money on is poor health. It costs way more to be reactive to it than proactive. If you want some proactive tips, go back to episode five through 11 where I have the nutrition pyramid and talk about science-backed simple nutrition protocols for you to implement on and take action too.
Now, these are designed for type 2 diabetics to help manage their their blood sugar levels and through oral medications rather than insulin. The Freestyle Libre 3 is available over the counter without a prescription in many states as well. So, which means that you can try one for 14 days without waiting for your doctor's appointment to get you a prescription for one.
The American Diabetes Association updates its standards of care both in 2025 and 2026 to specifically recommend continuous glucose monitors for adults with type 2 diabetics on glucose-lowering medications like metformin. Even those not using insulin, but say metformin is a very popular one cuz it will help you manage and balance out your blood sugar levels very quickly.
And for years, these CGMs were considered a primary tool for people on insulin, but the guidance is now caught up with the actual data and the support than what it shows. Time in range and what that number actually tells you. When you're wearing the continuous glucose monitors, most important number it produces is called time in range.
Time in range is the percentage of the day your blood sugar spends inside the target zone that you want it to be in. For most people with type 2 diabetes, that zone is between 70 and 180 mg per deciliter. The American Dietetics Association recommends aiming for at least 70% of the day inside that range.
In practical terms, that means that roughly 17 out of 24 hours you're hanging out there. It's pretty straightforward for that target, but men who are new to using these glucose monitors are often surprised by how much of their day they spend above the limit without realizing it. The meal that they ate felt fine. They don't They're not didn't think it was too many carbs or too many calories or whatever.
Or a stress at the work day, a bad night of sleep. Uh all these show up as time spent above the range and that no A1C result will actually reveal when it comes test time. And these glucose monitors will peg you down and say, "Hey, here's all these times that you've been above these numbers and this is causing you long-term health damage.
" Research also shows that about 10% improvement in time and in range is associated with actual reductions to damage in the kidneys, your eyes, and the nerves in your feet and your hands. That's important because you want to keep your 10 little piggies that went to the market. You don't want one to run off. Cuz they will.
Or you don't want strain on your kidneys to then turn into some form of a kidney chronic kidney disease. It's a big issue. A man who moves his time in range from 55% to 65% has made a real measurable improvement. And he can watch those numbers change one week over another on the same device that shows you where your trouble shoots, your problems are.
And this is a excellent feedback loop that you're able to watch the data and see it respond in real time. When you change your behaviors in ways that allow you to see the balancing, the stable numbers. I have had clients just man- manage it with food and their blood sugar levels are super consistent in a normal range, lower than 150 or even 120 consistently throughout the day based on what they ate.
Now, most guys I work with who start wearing the continuous glucose monitors have uh the same reaction the first 48 hours. They see a number they didn't expect. A meal that they'd been eating for years, they're completely shocked. Uh they always felt it was reasonable, it wasn't too many carbs, they thought. It had some protein in it.
Had a little vegetables. But it sends their blood sugar levels over 200, like 220. And their first reaction is they're just in disbelief. They just don't believe what the heck just happened. They did the same thing 6 months ago and their doctor said that they were fine. So, what's the difference? Well, the problem was always there.
It was just it the their A1C hadn't caught up to it. This experience is one of the most valuable points of having a continuous glucose monitor for you to have. The first time you see that number go up and down, you have an actual choice and you see it immediately what happens next. It's in your body, it's on your phone, it's your own personal data with your name on it, not somebody else's that you think that what they ate about the food was good or bad.
The guys who stick with habits, long-term healthy habits that we work on in my Call to Rise program, are almost always are the ones that start to see it stabilizing and we actually talk, really communicate. It's just like I talk to them and they talk to me. We share what those numbers are, what their morning blood sugars are.
What when was the spike? What caused it? We go through a variety of different questions of Q&A to help them understand what is causing the issues in the first place because if you understand what's happening, then you can make better choices. Just like in episode 95, I explained a lot about some mechanics around how the body is managing, releasing blood sugar levels, blood sugar into your body from your liver.
This when you understand what is happening, then it makes more sense. Now, what a continuous glucose monitor shows that nothing else really can. Well, there are five things that show up on the continuous glucose monitor that trace that no blood test or no A1C or no finger stick can ever reveal. It's the meal response pattern of behavior.
You eat something and then something goes up. This is number one. Different foods spike your blood sugar differently in different people even. White rice might send one guy up to 190 and barely in another person. It's just like having one person can eat 2,000 calories and struggle to lose weight and another person eats 2,000 calories and it's falling off them.
Or somebody can eat 3,000 calories and easily maintain their body weight while someone is gaining 2 lb a week at 3,000 calories. Everyone's body is different based on their genetic makeup, their movement and beyond. The glucose monitor shows you a personal response to actual meals and not a generalized chart in a textbook.
You literally can start seeing and after 2 weeks, always about 2 weeks is the learning curve for you, then you start to understand what types of foods are causing it to go up, what types are maintaining it and how to build better food combinations. The overall protocol I've ever told you is from eating a protein, fibrous carbs and a little bit of starch.
Yes, being a diabetic you can still eat starchy carbs, you just have to portion it out appropriately. Number two, the post meal walking uh effect or even exercising around your food. Moving your body, doing squats. Episode 95, we talked about why walking after meals pulls blood sugar from the blood directly through muscle contraction.
Squeezing your muscles is using energy stored carbohydrate called muscle glycogen. Now, when your muscles squeeze, it burns energy and your body will then pull in the blood sugar to use it. That's why sport performance 101 always suggests having carbs and calories to be able to eat in your levels of activity when they go up.
Now, with the continuous glucose monitor, you can see your blood sugar levels rising and then coming down after you get done walking. And you can start tracking at what degree they fall and how fast they fall, how long it takes to get to a normalized blood sugar level while still digesting food. That's good. You'll see it literally on your phone as you're doing it.
And this makes it more it reinforces better behavior. The next one is the stress response. Cortisol, the hormone your body releases during stress. And we all have it, probably too much of it going on in our on-demand instant gratification world that we're living in. It tells your liver to release sugar in your blood.
This happens whether you are eating anything or not. A A guy just sitting through a tense meeting and or has a difficult conversation with their spouse or their kid, uh runs a high-pressure call, can watch their blood sugar level go up 20 to 40 points in the next window of time after without even eating anything.
This is your body's just turning on this extra blood sugar. Think fight or flight. When you had this intense stress, the cortisol released blood sugar so you could go run or fight. Uh we don't have that in an office. No matter how much you might want to spite someone. Most guys don't even have any idea this is happening.
And but, when they see it on the mon- the glucose monitor, they can start to connect their stress, the events, the activities with their blood sugar control, and this is real way to manage it. Sleep quality. Super important. Poor sleep raises cortisol stress in your body. And it reduces how well your cells can actually respond to insulin the following day.
So, you have to release more insulin, which gets you into insulin resistance. And we talked about that in episode 95. A man who sleeps 8 hours, but wakes up three times during the night, will often have a a rougher morning blood sugar pattern than a man who slept six solid hours uninterrupted.
This is This might Results may vary, of course. But, this is a generalization that is stands true. A continuous glucose monitor picks up the overnight pattern and the morning fasting levels in a way that you Again, your sleep quality doesn't tell you this, but those will. Lastly, we have the dawn effect. This is something important to understand.
Go through this a couple times is that when you see it happening the first time, you'll be pretty surprised. And you'll see it again on the glucose monitor inside your blood panels uh on the app uh of the sugar blood sugars. Every morning between 3:00 and 7:00 a.m., your body will release hormones as a part of the natural wake-up process.
Cortisol gets released. Growth hormone gets released. Those are the main chemical hormonal releases that are going on. One of these hormones will is signals the liver to release sugar into your body to prepare it for the day. So, you wake up and you can get moving. In a man with healthy insulin function, the pancreas responds quickly and blood sugar stays in control.
In a man with type 2 diabetes, that liver release of cortisol happens, but the insulin response is slower and weaker, so blood sugar keeps rising during those morning hours without you eating anything. So, it just keeps going up. The body won't absorb the blood sugar levels and and the insulin to slow it down.
When he goes to bed at 1:05 and he wakes up at 1:38, he's blaming the snack that he had 4 hours earlier or the night before the meal that he had, but it has nothing to do with that. It's just a hormonal process that actually happens. Again, it's called the dawn phenomenon or dawn effect, and research estimates that roughly half of people with type 2 diabetes experience it.
I've had plenty of clients who have dealt with it as well. When you see it on your your app there, you can watch it climb in that smooth curve between 4 and 7, you know this is causing the issue. Now, you you put the glucose monitor on the first week. Let's talk about what that actually looks like. We'll walk through the the how to do it.
Well, we've got putting it on. We got the Freestyle Libre 3 sensor comes in a small round applicator. You clean the back of your arm, the tricep area, with alcohol swab. You want to make sure you clean. You press the applicator against your skin and push down until you hear a click. Most men don't really feel anything or maybe a a small faint pinch uh that lasts a few seconds.
It's like a a really small needle. The sensor sits flat against your skin and is held by usually tape. Now, you strong adhesive tape that covers it over so it does not move and fall out cuz they do cost money. If you your insurance is only going to cover so many if if you keep losing them. It'll easily fit over underneath any clothing, shirt sleeve.
You might see it visible on there. Uh you can shower with it. The adhesive will cover over it pretty well. You can work out with it. And we just can't just go long drinks in the pool and is and can't swim for hours on end during the time that you're wearing it. Once it's on you, you open up the app to the phone and the hold the phone near the sensor and it connects Bluetooth style.
And within the first hour, you have live glucose readings on the screen. Sunday night, day one. You apply the sensor before bed. Your blood sugar at 10:00 reads 112. Okay, we're cool. You watch it for a few minutes, set your phone down, and go to sleep. This is the first time in your life that you actually see your blood sugar level while you're sleeping.
Here comes Monday morning. And let's wake up and see what's going on. So, we went to bed at 112 and you wake up, check your phone, and it's at 138. Is there anything you looked at the overnight graph and you start seeing this general upward curve coming around like 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning? That's the dawn effect that we just talked about.
The morning work call. Your Monday morning work call. You have your hands on all hands on deck and you grab your coffee and you get to the first call meeting. 40 minutes later, you glance, your blood sugar is 138, now it's 171. You had a black coffee. You didn't eat breakfast. And the call was a challenging one, and there you go.
This is you were frustrated a vendor who's not been doing and following through with what they said they were going to do. And that cortisol is driving your liver to release sugar in real time. It's not food. Not a snack. It's that stress that's coming on your body. And you're seeing that number for the first time, you stop to think, like, what the heck is going on here? Tuesday dinner.
You eat the same chicken and rice bowl that you've been eating every Tuesday for the past 2 years. You always thought it was so a good choice. And chicken and rice bowl is sure, why not? Why wouldn't that be healthy? By 7:45, your blood sugar is 218. Holy moly. You sit with that for a little bit, trying to check, and you know that your A1C has been 7.
2 for three consecutive quarters. You know now why. This one data point can help change your next grocery shopping trip to make sure that you get more vegetables in. It'll also change your behaviors immediately more than general nutrition advice does. That's one of the reasons why I talk so much with my guys about their nutrition because it's so important for them to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Thursday evening. You eat a large dinner, larger than usual. You're just hungry. It's been a busy day. Somehow you missed lunch. You're hungry. Your blood sugar is at 184 by 7:30. And you remember this we're having that to walk. All right, after you get your shoes on, you're 12 minutes in, 15, 20 minutes in, you come back and your blood sugar's at 151.
And you can see the graph in a downward curve. Which it started around 4 minutes into your walk. Okay, this is you don't need any willpower or motivation. You literally see that when I walk after I eat, I can control my blood sugar level. So, it's got nothing to do with those. It's everything to do with your behaviors. End of week one. You open the app and you look at the time of the range of the week and it reads 58%.
That means that 42% of your waking and sleeping hours were above 180 points. Your A1C is 7.2. It told you that things were not good. But the glucose monitor shows you exactly what's happening and what's causing it. And how much your day you are being affected by this. This is the difference between a quarterly average and a real-time picture to picture, right? 3 months over literally hourly feedback.
Now, sometimes men avoid this and there's a reason why a lot of men resist wearing the continuous glucose monitor. It's the same reason they don't check the scale every week or get their labs done on on a regular basis going to the doctor. And knowing is scarier than not knowing, right? If you just don't know, it's ignorance is bliss, they say.
As long as the data is invisible or your head's in the sand, you don't have to believe what the truth may be. And that continuous glucose monitor removes that error. The number on the phone shows up every couple minutes whether you're on track or not. And I I want to say something like pretty direct about it.
The men I worked with who found data the hardest to look at were always the ones who needed it the most. Meaning they see these huge spikes up and down and all around, they needed to see this so that they can make change. That's the only way that change actually happens. The glucose trace that makes you uncomfortable when you see the glucose going up and that spike, that's what it's costing you.
It's costing you a long-term health, your long-term life of living on this earth in this life that we have with people that you love. Wearing the glucose monitor for 14 days isn't going to fix everything on its own, but it will show you exactly where your problems are. A man who knows the problem has something to work on.
You can go do something about it. And the guy who avoids data and managing something he can't see, and this disease is going to run all over him and in a really bad way, causing major damage and it's going to show up even years down the road. How to use the continuous glucose monitor without losing your mind or checking your phone every 5 minutes.
The goal is to observe it. Okay, you're not going to fix everything in a week or day. It's going to take 2 to 4 weeks to really get into the habit. And there's three simple steps that you can follow. The number one, wear the monitor for 14 days and you could totally change nothing in the first week.
Eat, work, sleep the way you normally do and let the device show you the true picture of where you're at. I certainly can listen to all these things or join my program or coaching and get direct so that you literally see blood sugar level stable because that's what happened. I recently had a type 1 diabetic.
He started working with me and he went down nine insulin units on average over the course of the first week per day less because we controlled his blood sugars with food, better portions, better combination, which gave him more energy and more confidence and saving him money one way or another whether his insurance pays for it or not.
If he's using nine less units of insulin, he's less of a liability and a risk. All right, his life insurance will go down a little bit or something. Hopefully, right? Fingers crossed. Step two, at the end of the week, check your time in range and pick one thing to change. Look at what you might might what might be the biggest challenges for you.
Uh is it the meals? Is it your stress in days? Is it your sleep? Is it the mornings? Now, go from 70 to 180. What pushes you outside of that range and less focus on that one thing first. Third, bring your monitor and report to your doctor next time you visit and go over what the next steps are with them. And use these patterns of behaviors and the spikes to help you show what to do, how to do it.
And let's talk about how to actually live in that plan. Well, week one, you're wearing it and your only job is to watch and you eat normal, you understand, you take notes. For the love, please take notes. Okay? You don't need to optimize everything in the first week. But then after that, you can start seeing when to actually take action and what is causing those that drives further motivation and direction on improving it, changing one thing at a time, and then as you start to do it, then we start seeing levels average out in a much
better. And the time that you're in range is going to really help make sure that you wear the the actual patterns of behaviors appropriately so that you're not killing yourself for wearing out your blood vessels and causing, you know, a lot of oxidative stress because of blood sugar levels and stress accumulating in your body.
This will be huge. Now, what changes when you actually see your own data? And I've seen this time and again. Men who make the biggest changes to their metabolic health are almost never the ones who received the best advice. Unfortunately, their doctor gives them some a slap in the face basically with some bad news, and they are the ones that who saw consequences to their choices in real time. This is a reactive state.
It always happens. No one comes and like, "Hey, I just want to keep living a healthy life." No, everyone comes when there's problems, and then we have to unwind them, but everybody has a short attention span or instant gratification. It just doesn't work like that. You can't be building toward 10 years worth of getting diabetic in 3 months getting out of it.
It doesn't usually work that way. But, in 3 months you can actually lose 0.5 to 1.5 point off of your A1C to start moving you down. So, by the end of the year, in a sense, you can get to a much more normalized lifestyle, and that usually results in managing your stress, managing your weight, and helping you do a lot better there.
So, the A1C matters. It's a huge warning flag, but then the glucose monitor helps record those points. All right? Three actions to take this week. So, you wear it, you get the Freestyle Libre 3, get it at a pharmacy, CVS, Amazon. Wear it, then report in. You can even email me. I have a private lab review that I can leave in the show notes.
And I also have a improve your blood panel scorecard. It tells you what your blood markers are and blood panels are, what those numbers mean in simple terms, and then has a 3-day meal plan that allows you to be able to eat in a way that helps naturally improve diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, body weight, energy, body confidence, all this stuff.
All right? So, those will be inside the actual show notes below. And if you actually need support beyond that, I do have my men's 100-day program called The Call to Rise. You can check it out at the calltorise.com. The goal is to lose weight in those 100 days. The goal is to improve your blood panels, improve your A1C if you're dealing with that, since this is what this episode is about.
Literally, you get nutrition structure, exercise, you get support from me and the brotherhood of guys. The five pillars are your identity changes around not being a type type 2 diabetic. It changes to you being a man who takes responsibility for his health and ends up being healthier and happier when he's 50 or 60 than he is at this current point of you listening.
We've got the forge, which is exercise. We clean that up. We get you exercising in an effective, efficient way in your into your schedule. We get the fuel. That's the nutrition piece. We eat the right foods at the right times in the right amounts. Number four is your mindset. You're going to think differently.
You're going to see things different around taking care of your health of your health so that it's no matter how busy you are or how challenging things are, we can always find a better way out, a better solution for you to be healthier and happier. And lastly, the fifth pillar is the brotherhood. These are support from me and other men that are in my program that help you.
You are the some average of the people you surround yourself with. So, if you're around motivated guys, then it will be helpful. As we wrap up, the A1C is a useful number to help really slap you in the face and get you to realize what's going on. I'll tell you the 3-month average and what the long-term direction of your health is.
Certainly, we have to track that and keep bringing it up to your doctor. The continuous glucose monitor shows you the story behind those numbers. The the meal that you had on Tuesday, what happened after stressful work call, what's happening in the morning of your day-to-day life so that you are seeing if you have that dawn effect in the blood sugar rising when you wake up.
Remember, you don't need to fix everything immediately. We need to do it one thing at a time so that you get to the next best step. What's the next best thing you can do for your health? And eating healthier foods, more vegetables, leaner protein, stop eating garbage, junk food, and and all that stuff. And drink some freaking water, guys.
Geez. That will help you. And I appreciate you. Uh we will certainly have some more episodes on diabetes as we move forward and other chronic illnesses as well. Hope you get a lot out of these and as always, this is Drew from Alpha. Thanks so much for joining me tonight. Off we go.