Sano Releases World’s First Wearable Glucose Monitor

With a good bit of research indicating the negative impacts that sugar and carbohydrates have on health, there’s been growing interest outside of the diabetic community to gain insight into blood glucose levels. Specifically, a new trend in health shows that many people are increasingly interested in examining the response that their bodies have to certain meals throughout the day.

For ketogenic dieters, who opt to maintain stable, low insulin levels as part of their health and weight loss goals, having continuous insight into how their meals impact their insulin response would be a considerable and unique advantage in targeting foods that may be intolerable. Up until now, devices used to monitor your blood glucose on an ongoing basis have been unavailable outside of diabetic monitoring and involve keeping a rather uncomfortable needle under your skin for the majority of the day.

Sano: Continuous Glucose Monitors

Having received a $6 million investment from fitness tech giant FitBit, the San Francisco startup Sano, is poised to develop the world’s first practical continuous blood glucose monitor. Aiming to bring insight into the way meals impact our blood sugar levels, Sano has developed a wearable patch that creates snapshots of your blood glucose levels throughout the day and presents them in a simple app for monitoring.

Needless Blood Sugar Monitoring

The keystone to the wearable nature of Sano’s blood glucose monitor is that it’s based on needleless blood testing technology. The tracker itself is a smooth, thin disc that receives a disposable sensor containing 400 microneedles, which bear a similar texture to sandpaper. The sensor could be worn for several days, but replaced to reduce the risk of infection from contamination. With a rough, sandpaper texture on the sensor, application may be slightly prickly, but nowhere near as uncomfortable as traditional methods of inserting a needle under the skin.

Tracking Sugar as a Trend

With FitBit’s investment in Sano, other tech giants like Apple and Google are making moves to incorporate blood glucose monitoring into their own device product lines. This trend comes on the heels of an increase in obesity, diabetes, and a more conscious look at how sugar affects our body processes.

From a ketogenic standpoint, the idea of wearable tech to track insulin spikes and blood glucose levels is a tremendous advancement. Aside from the insights regular dieters can gain from seeing the impact of that bowl of pasta has on their blood sugar, keto dieters could use the device to examine how certain foods, like artificial sweeteners or hidden carbohydrates, create a response. Each of us is unique, and every person’s response to certain foods is equally as distinct. Having a practical, wearable way to tailor our diets to suit our own metabolic needs is the kind of advancement the keto community has been waiting for.

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD

This article has been medically reviewed by Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD.

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD is an aesthetic medicine specialist whose work focuses on patients who are treated for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other weight-related issues through nutritional analysis, keto diet programs, and supporting medications.

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Allison Lee

Allison is a freelance writer, fitness expert, and long-time advocate of the ketogenic lifestyle. Once overweight, she contributes her success in losing over 75 lbs to both a low-carb, high-fat diet and moderate exercise. Residing in Tacoma, Washington, Allison enjoys getting out to explore the Pacific Northwest with her two children and taking in baseball games on lazy Sunday afternoons.

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