Exploring Continuous Glucose Monitors for Non-Diabetic Health Benefits

Continuous glucose monitors, small in size, promise health benefits but raise questions about their usefulness for non-diabetics.
Hype or helpful? The truth behind devices that monitor your blood sugar

The buzz around continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) is hard to ignore. These small devices, about the size of a quarter, are marketed with promises of health transformation. “You can revolutionize your health,” claims one company.

Notably, Dr. Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is a strong advocate for CGMs. She co-founded a company that distributes these devices, paired with an app designed to assist users.

The device itself is a painless patch that adheres to the skin, transmitting blood sugar estimates to a smartphone app every few minutes. It measures glucose concentration between skin cells, which correlates with blood sugar levels. Users can log their meals in the app, tracking how food affects their glucose.

Research indicates this technology has significantly improved diabetes management. “It has revolutionized their and their families’ lives,” says Elizabeth Selvin, a diabetes researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

In a landmark move in March 2024, the FDA approved CGMs for nondia betic individuals. Two companies, Dexcom and Abbott, currently manufacture them. Each patch, costing about $50, lasts two weeks, making monthly monitoring approximately $100.

The pivotal question remains: Can CGMs benefit those without diabetes or prediabetes?

The Theory

Normally, after consuming carbohydrates, a person’s blood sugar rises, peaks, and falls back to baseline. Nutritionist Sarah Berry, a professor at King’s College London and chief scientist at Zoe, explains these fluctuations are typical for non-diabetics. “We do not need to flatten these curves,” she notes.

However, issues can arise when these peaks are too frequent or high, increasing the risk of obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Type 2 diabetes, studies show. Berry suggests that glucose monitoring could help identify meals causing extreme peaks, enabling dietary adjustments to improve health.

The Findings

Two significant studies tested this hypothesis using randomized control trials. Participants wore CGMs while logging their meals in an app. Researchers then crafted personalized diets to stabilize glucose levels, comparing them against standard low-fat or Mediterranean diets.

The results were mixed. At the Weizmann Institute of Science, the CGM-based diet did not outperform the Mediterranean diet in weight loss but did better in lowering blood sugar, as reported in Diabetes Care (source).

Another study at New York University found comparable weight loss and minor blood sugar improvements between the CGM-based and low-fat diets, according to JAMA Network Open (source) and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (source). However, Collin Popp, a study leader, points out the individual variability in responses. Some participants experienced significant weight loss, while others gained weight.

When Glucose Monitors Might Be Useful

1. If you’re highly sensitive to carbohydrates

Nutritionist Karen Kennedy has observed that CGMs can reveal a heightened sensitivity to carbohydrates, even healthy ones like whole grains. “They eat brown rice, quinoa, beans, rice or oatmeal, and their blood glucose consistently goes really high,” she notes.

By adopting a lower-carb diet, users can effectively manage their blood sugar, potentially losing visceral fat and feeling better.

2. If you need extra motivation to eat healthier foods

The immediate feedback from CGMs can motivate individuals to make healthier dietary choices, providing a tangible incentive to follow nutritional advice.

3. If you need more awareness about your diet

For some, simply tracking meals in an app led to improved diets and glucose levels, highlighting the importance of dietary awareness and accountability, whether through technology or traditional methods like notepads.

Before You Decide to Buy the Device, Experts Say, Be Aware:

Many people find the data confusing and unhelpful.

“Many people come to me and say, ‘I have been using the device for three or even 12 months, and I have all this data, but I don’t know what it means. I don’t know how to lower my blood sugar or improve it,'” Kennedy says.

People really need to be educated about what the data means, Popp agrees. But that education will go only so far because at this point, some of the data is still mysterious to scientists and doctors.

If you’re staying within a normal range, say about 70 mg/dL to 140 mg/dL, scientists still don’t understand what the peaks and troughs mean.

“There’s no real standard guidelines about what’s a good peak or a bad peak in nondiabetics,” Popp says.

The data can be misleading.

Firstly, the devices aren’t super precise or accurate, and our bodies don’t always respond the same way to the same food. One recent study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the same meal on two different days gave very different readings. Another small study, in the same journal, found that the continuous glucose monitor overestimated people’s blood sugar levels compared with directly measuring it in the blood.

Secondly, the data can make people worry about — or even stop — eating healthy foods that cause normal blood sugar fluctuations. For example, Popp has a friend who started to worry about blueberries because they made her blood sugar rise slightly and then decline.

“You don’t want to start tagging foods as ‘unhealthy’ just because it led to what I perceived as a minuscule blood sugar spike.”

Thirdly, some people can have what looks like normal blood sugar levels but still have insulin resistance, Kennedy explains. In this case, their bodies compensate by overproducing insulin. To figure this out, you would need to see a doctor and have your insulin levels checked.

“Continuous glucose is a handy metric,” she says. “But it’s only one metric, and you have to use it in the context of lab results and other signs and symptoms.”

Edited by Jane Greenhalgh

Copyright 2025 NPR


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