Has Continuous Glucose Monitoring Peaked?
Nondiabetics are using the devices more than ever in hopes of losing weight and boosting energy. But some of the tech’s earliest adopters are already quitting their CGMs.
In November 2020, marketing consultant Sarah Eade Bengard was in St. Barts, mingling at a venture capitalist friend’s beach party, when she noticed something strange. A number of guests had small circular sensors dotting their upper arms. They were continuous glucose monitors, medical devices usually reserved for diabetics who need to track blood-sugar spikes and plunges.
“It was definitely the type of group that cares a lot about fitness,” Bengard recalled. “I was counting the number of men who were using [CGMs] and was astonished.”
Bengard’s experience, captured in a droll 2021 tweet, announced the arrival of a new era of optimizing, when a legion of tech executives, medical influencers, Hollywood celebrities and other quantified selfers began plugging CGMs into their deltoids like the newest hot wearable.