A tiny needle-patch tracked my blood sugar. This is what I learnt

February 17, 2026 — 6:16pm

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Regular readers might remember the problem I devoted a column to trying to solve late last year: why was I so ravenously hungry by 6pm? Could a 3pm chocolate be to blame?

I concluded it probably was, causing a surge in my blood sugar and then sending it nosediving until my brain demanded calories.

That was a guess at my glucose metabolism. Technology now promises to make it possible to know. Many companies will sell you a continuous glucose monitor – a tiny needle-patch that samples your blood sugar every five minutes and transmits data to your phone via Bluetooth.

The monitors are most typically used by diabetics, but more and more wellness companies, such as Vively (which supplied mine) are promoting them as a way of seeing how your body responds to different foods.

I wore it for two weeks, and then took the data to several blood sugar researchers. Here’s what I learnt.

Think about the body as having short (glucose), medium (glycogen) and long-term (fat) energy storage.

When digested, carbohydrates in your food (think oats, bread, fruit, vegetables) produce glucose, your front-line fuel. As glucose enters the blood, the hormone insulin is released in response, which triggers cells to absorb the glucose.

You can see that clearly in my monitor’s data: I eat, my blood glucose rises, insulin rises, and it is quickly cleared.

The muesli, fruit and coffee I had for breakfast produced quite a large increase in my blood glucose. That’s simply because the meal was high in carbohydrates – not........

© The Sydney Morning Herald