Qualy #26 - What is Peter looking to achieve and monitor with his blood glucose monitor?

**Peter Attia** (0:05)
Welcome to The Qualys, a subscriber-exclusive podcast. Qualys is just a shorthand slang for a qualification round, which is something you do prior to the race, just a little bit quicker. The Qualys podcast features episodes that are short, and we're hoping for less than 10 minutes each, which highlight the best questions, topics, tactics, et cetera, discussed on previous episodes of The Drive.
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**SPEAKER_1** (1:05)
What exactly are you looking to achieve and monitor with your blood glucose monitor? Your CGM, your G6, another product you probably love.

**Peter Attia** (1:15)
I love the G6, and I'll talk about it all day long without receiving advertising dollars to talk about it.
You know, it's funny, the G6, along with the Oura Ring, which I've talked a lot about, are these, and I've worn every wearable that there is, but they're the only two that seem sticky enough that I can't stop wearing them. Like if I, like a month ago, I went to charge my Oura Ring, and I forgot to put it back on my finger when I went to bed, so I slept without it, and I woke up the next morning and realized I didn't have it, and I didn't have the data, like it made any goddamn difference in my life. I was so pissed.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:45)
The horror.

**Peter Attia** (1:45)
I was like, God, how could you forget to put your ring on last night? There's probably a whole separate issue with that. And the same thing with the continuous glucose monitor. I just, it's hard for me to imagine I used to not know my glucose in real time.
So there are a couple of things from it. The first is, it's a great way for me to control my behavior. And I know it's tempting to wanna believe that I'm somehow impervious to the forces of bad food, but the reality of it is I am not. There was a day, I think, when I had a remarkable resilience and willpower, and I could do anything. Eat this, don't eat that, exercise like this, exercise. I was a robot for so much of my life until three years ago, and something just happened in 2015, and I just fell off the rails, and I've never got back on. I simply do not possess the intestinal fortitude to be a robot anymore. And I could speculate on several of the reasons for that, which I don't wanna get into, but the long and short of it is here I am, I am in an environment where, like yesterday, I was on a plane, and they were handing out shit, cookies and bullshit.
I really wanted a cookie. I think the only reason I didn't eat that cookie that was bigger than my head is because I knew I'd have to look at my CGM data after.
So there is no more powerful behavioral tool for me than my CGM, because in the end, I'm kind of a competitive person internally, much more competitive internally than externally, by the way, and I just can't stand to see spikes of glucose. It just drives me nuts. And so, which is not to say I don't go off the rail sometimes, I absolutely do. We were in Fenway Park the other day, and I had fries. Now luckily, I'd fasted all day and worked out, so I didn't actually experience a spike of glucose from the fries, so I got to have the fries without the badness. But I was sort of ready for it. I was kind of bracing myself, like, oh, you might get a little testy seeing this thing. But that actually gets to the second point, which is it has allowed me to very eloquently calibrate how to tether activity levels, nutrient deprivation, the consumption of treats, and minimize the damage.
I don't know that I could drive a race car very well without seeing my RPM tach. Like, if you plugged my ears so that I couldn't actually hear the rev of the engine and you took away my RPM tach and said, drive, could I still drive the car? Yes. Could I drive it half as well as I can drive it when I know exactly where I'm shifting at every moment where I need to shift? No, there's simply no way. Like, we're feedback machines. We need feedback. So, I'm a huge CGM advocate and really looking forward to what the next few years will bring when these things can become a lot more affordable and a lot more accessible. And the question is, can that be done without them remaining as medical devices? So, the one I wear now, the DEXCOM G6, is a medical device. It's an FDA-approved device, and it gives you a number that is, in this case, incredibly accurate. It's probably plus or minus two or three percent, specifically for the purpose of someone with diabetes being able to dose their insulin.