I wore a low-cost, OTC continuous glucose monitor for two weeks – what I learned

There are plenty of meal-tracking apps that help you understand your diet. But logging three meals a day, assessing your calorifc intake, and reflecting on how your nutrition impacts your overall health can only go so far. After all, apps such as MyFitness Pal or LoseIt! aren’t hooked up to your body and don’t monitor the minute details of how your food impacts your energy or sleep. 

These apps don’t sense the sugar in your bloodstream and detail your blood sugar’s rises and falls throughout the day. A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) does, though. 

How CGMs work 

It’s almost silly to call a CGM a meal tracker. But at its core, that’s what it does. CGMs were initially made for prediabetics and diabetics to track their blood sugar levels and alert them of spikes or lows. However, the device is increasingly used by fitness and health enthusiasts to understand body chemistry and nutrition. Olympic marathoner Abdi Nageeye told Reuters he used a CGM to monitor his body’s energy ahead of last summer’s Paris Olympics. 

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Glucose influences everything from your mood, weight, and sleep to energy levels and disease predisposition, and research shows a connection between low glucose levels and disease prevention. “It is clear managing glucose levels could benefit the general population. This inspired Abbott to develop a product that would bring our glucose monitoring technology to an audience that traditional healthcare companies don’t usually target — the healthy — to help them stay healthy,” Pamela Nisevich Bede, global nutritionist for Abbott’s Lingo business, wrote in an email to ZDNET. 

Dexcom Stelo, the first over-the-counter (OTC) CGM, was approved last year, paving the way for other OTC CGMs, like the Abbott Lingo, to follow suit. As a health wearables enthusiast, all this CGM buzz from athletes and body optimizers made me curious about testing one for myself. 

So, when Abbott sent me its Lingo, a CGM designed for people aged 18 and up without diabetes interested in tracking their blood sugar, I decided to try it out. I wore the CGM on my arm for two weeks to understand what this wearable could do for the average fitness enthusiast and whether the device could replace my smartwatch or smart ring. Keep reading to find out. 

My experience with Lingo 

CGMs aren’t like a smartwatch or smart ring that slips on and passively monitors your vitals. The CGM device inserts into the back of your arm and a tiny needle takes your blood glucose — it’s more invasive than a typical wearable. Even so, the application process was quick, aided by ample instructions on the Lingo app, and didn’t hurt to apply or remove — to my surprise. 

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Once I secured the CGM to my arm, it took the device time to calibrate before beginning to monitor my blood sugar. Then, it was business as usual. I’d log my meals and see how my diet choices and exercise coincided with glucose rises and falls. 

Every glucose spike added more data to my “Lingo Count,” Abbott’s scoring system that translates your daily spikes into a number. The objective is to hit or be below that number. The fewer spikes, the better. In the first week, the app set a Lingo Count of 60 for me to aim to stay below. For the second week, it adjusted to a lower Count of 37 based on my data. 

One day, I ate a few dates as a snack, which led to a surprising spike that added 19 points to my daily score. A heavy Valentine’s Day dinner of scallops, salad, potatoes, and rice pudding boosted my score by 17 points, helping to create a total 49 Lingo Count for that day. 

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One morning, a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon added 20 points to my score, while some beef stew made a smaller impression with only 7 points later that day. Another day, I ate chicken salad for lunch and barely experienced a spike. The key, Lingo tells you in its app, is to prioritize protein and healthy fats — choose vegetables over fruits, exercise regularly, and opt for savory foods over sweet ones to avoid spikes.

Across two weeks of wearing the device, I learned that most of my meals fell within the suggested blood sugar range of 70 to 140 mg/dL. Carb-heavy meals, like rice or pancakes, would create the biggest spike. 

The app also connects to your Apple Watch, so every time you exercise and log it through Apple Health, the data pops up in your day’s timeline and shows your glucose level’s reactions. I loved this feature and the compatibility with other apps, which saved me steps in the Lingo app. 

What I’d like to see in the Lingo’s next update

The app didn’t have much trouble loading, but viewing historical data could easily make the app glitch and send you back to the most recent day’s data, which was frustrating when trying to understand your historical spikes. I hope users get further insight into the foods they’re logging in future app versions. 

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When I logged my rice, I didn’t get any insight into the ingredient itself, or how often other users experienced spikes when logging white rice. These insights can place the context of diets into a greater perspective and teach people — beyond a simple Lingo Count number — what foods to avoid or consume. 

The most helpful insights came in weekly reports that detailed my average glucose, my weekly median Lingo Count, how many days I was within the Lingo Count, when my glucose spiked the most during the day, and the meals with the highest counts. On a daily level, I didn’t find the app super useful because I was normally within the target range, but the weekly snapshots provided helpful context I could apply to next week’s diet. 

I understand why Abbott created the Lingo Count for glucose spike interpretation. However, a number without any context or comparison pushes the analysis of charts and data on the user, instead of on the software developers who could’ve created a more digestible and useful app experience. 

For example, more context in the app could look like a daily report that takes the food a user logged yesterday, summarizes what spiked their glucose the highest, and provides recommendations in the morning on how they can pair that food intake with say, a healthy fat, a vegetable, or more protein, to keep the spike lower. 

One of the harder parts of using the Abbott Lingo was remembering to log every snack, meal, glass of wine, or morning cold brew. Let’s say you tracked every meal you ate for a year with the Lingo. You’d be responsible for 1,095 meal entries, not including snacks or dessert. That’s tedious work. 

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Not that you’d use the Lingo for an entire year. Two weeks of glucose monitoring will cost you $49, four weeks is $89, and 12 weeks is $249. If you used the Lingo for a whole year, it would cost you $1,083. The Abbott Lingo is a temporary device that could provide context into your diet for a short enough time to make meaningful changes and see results, but maybe not enough to document a whole year of blood-sugar highs and lows.

I asked Nisevich Bede if she thought CGMs like the Abbott Lingo would one day replace smartwatches or smart rings. She said that while fitness trackers provide several health metrics, they don’t capture the insights that spark behavioral changes in the way that a CGM can. 

After testing the device for myself, I understand where she’s coming from, but disagree. The smart rings I have tested provide me with sleep and energy scores that encourage me to get better sleep and exercise more to raise my scores. I’ve been so obsessed with getting my Oura Ring’s resilience level to exceptional or a high 90 sleep score that I’ve found myself leaving parties early or missing social events to get to bed on time. 

That focus is not because I watch my sleep or heart rate graph morning, noon, and night. It’s because Oura tells me I’ve leveled up from a “strong” resilience score to an “exceptional” one, the highest level you can get. Numbers are great, but data-led storytelling is crucial in this era of wearable technology. 

ZDNET’s buying advice

For $50, I’d recommend the Abbott Lingo to anyone who wants to understand how diet impacts their blood sugar. Maybe they want to see how their intake of sugar and carbs impacts their energy. Maybe they want to know why they need a nap every day after lunch. A two-week CGM is affordable enough for the bio-wearable-curious. 

However, if you’re generally healthy with a good exercise regimen and eating habits, the device might only affirm what you already know.