Again, not a doctor and not sure if this is accurate, but this is my very limited understanding
Archaic humans had access to plenty of wild that were high in sugar and tubers that were high in complex carbs. They even had access to concentrated forms of sugar like sugarcane and honey.
They obviously didn't have refined sugars like we do but that they had access to limited sugar in the form of berries is a persistent myth.
However, this study seems to compare freshly baked bread to a frozen/toasted one.
I'd guess that the difference will be smaller when regular store-bought bread is used instead.
A diagnosis today that is imminently manageable like asthma was far more readily in a world without antibiotics, steroids, or even medical oxygen.
Even something like a CPAP that many of us take for granted has only been readily available for 30 years or so.
Plus, diabetes is much like AIDS in that it’s more of a systemic thing than acute. It doesn’t really have symptoms that kill you. It just slowly weakens your body until your heart gives in, or you have a serious infection, or something like that. No one dies “of” diabetes, they die with it.
The needle is only used in the application of the sensor. It’s spring-loaded and retracts after the sensor is attached. I hate needles, but I found that the tape on the sensor provided enough stimuli to overwhelm my brain and not really feel the needle when it went in.
Having said that, it's no bug deal for 90% of people.
Think of it as a 5mm thick patch and ignore the tiny tube sucking your blood.
But this does sounds like an interesting thing to try, if only to get a better idea of how my body works.
I've been tracking walking vs. resting heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen levels, and sleep for a few years using the Apple Watch, and while I know these measurements are imperfect, they've helped me better understand the impact of certain choices.
There's something that seems really beneficial about feeding my brain data about myself as a way to do the healthier things I've always wanted to want to do. The more data I have, the easier it feels to implement positive habit changes in a way that doesn't involve sheer willpower. There's something very satisfying about seeing the very tangible changes on a graph over time that indicate better health, even when it doesn't feel like the changes have done anything noticeable yet.
Absolutely, there are a lot of companies trying to cash in on this new-ish market, and they'll do anything to their products to get the net carbs down to 0-2g "per serving" -- scare quotes around that because this is a particular annoyance of food labeling in the States: food labels declare the amount of various nutrients per "serving", but 1) they get to choose the serving size [0] and 2) they get to round numbers, so if they just pick the serving size such that it's 1.499g of carbs per serving, they get to put that it's "1g", and so on.
It makes it impossible to compare food labels between different items even among the same manufacturer (and even the same SKU but different/later packaging, because they don't have to issue a new SKU when they change the food label). If instead they were required to show amounts in g per kg (or ml per l for liquids, or whatever), they could be compared more easily.
[0] The FDA provides "Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed" and asks manufacturers to refer to them when deciding their serving sizes, but (from [1]):
> FDA's guidance documents, including this guidance, do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities. Instead, guidances describe our current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations [...]
so really they can pick almost anything they like
> [...] unless specific regulatory or statutory requirements are cited.
unless the food is medicinal in some way, I guess?
I did this experiment as well, and the main thing it did was completely stop me from snacking. My habits got better because I could see how my BG could never return to baseline if I allowed myself to snack between meals.
Other than that, it was also interesting to see certain things would badly spike my BG and other things wouldn't, and they weren't always what you'd expect. A lot of "keto" and "diabetic-friendly" products are terrible for most people's BG and were for mine. I found that some things, like black tea, actually made my BG drop as well.
Overall it's worth doing at least once.