Dr. Jane Levesque: If we're talking about your hormones overall and the cascade of hormones, blood sugar does not work alone. So like the way that your insulin works and glucagon and all those hormones that are responsible, even like leptin, that are all responsible for blood sugar regulation and your appetite, and they're also dictating inflammation and that's going to dictate cortisol and that's going to impact ovary ovarian hormones such as progesterone, testosterone and estrogen. Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change that. I'm doctor Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 09:00 a.m. for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right, you guys, today I want to talk to you about continuous glucose monitoring. I signed up for a trial with nutrisense and basically it's like a nutrition and a continuous glucose monitor all in one. And you're going to enter your food things that you eat, and then you're going to scan your sensor and you put your sensor user usually on like the fatty part of your arm, the tricep, and it's going to read your glucose through the entire time. So you have to scan the sensor about every 8 hours because that's how long the data can hold. And then the goal is to really figure out and understand what's going on with your blood glucose on a regular basis. Because when I get into testing my patients, so blood glucose is super, super important for fertility. We want to have controlled insulin levels. We want to have controlled blood sugar levels because when we look at hormones, you guys, a lot of the times women will come to me and they'll say, oh, my estrogen is out of balance from my progesterone. It's testosterone or thyroid. And I don't. Unless you have issues with a blood glucose and it's been checked and monitored and it's high, then you start talking about it. For the most part, people think that their blood sugars are fine. Where in reality, they're far from fine and they're very, very, what? I would say, suboptimal. Because if you look at, for example, just the HBA one C, the range is really high. It's like 4.5 or like four to six or four to five point. If you're above 5.7, you're considered pre diabetic. If you're at 6.4, you're considered diabetic. And usually that's the only measurement that we do. Now, when I do blood sugar measurement, I do the HPA one C, I do the fasted glucose. You want to test fasted insulin, and you might even test the homa ir, which is the insulin resistance test, to see if that number is elevated. Because sometimes blood sugars can be really tricky to catch, which is why I wanted to try the continuous glucose monitors. And I've had a lot of practitioners, my colleagues, talk about how insightful it was. So obviously I wanted to jump in on the trend and figure out if this is something that's really valuable. It turns out it is very valuable, because, for example, the HBA one C, ideally, I want it at five or even below five. So 4.5 to five would be an ideal range for your HBA one C. Most people are not there, and even myself. So every time I test it, I'm at, like, 5.45.3, which to me, I'm like, why is it high? Like, I'm exercising, I eat well, you know, filling the blanks. I take my supplements, I sleep, I manage my stress. And so when I monitored it through the continuous glucose monitor, it was eye opening. It was eye opening, the things that was triggering my blood sugar to go up. So there were some nights, I'll give you kind of what I learned from mine, and then I'll talk to you about why it's important to manage the blood glucose. So what I learned from mine is, hey, there was times where my blood glucose was really low at nighttime. And usually that's a sign. Like, you could just see it, there's always a little bit of variance, but you could just see that I was dropping at nighttime, and that's usually a sign that you're not eating enough throughout the day. And it was definitely the days where I would forget to eat lunch or I was too busy to do x, y and z. So those were the nights where I found that my blood glucose was low. Again, not good. You want this nice kind of perfect balance. And then the thing that surprised me the most is what spiked my blood glucose, and it was actually fruit for me. So what I did is I played around with a couple of different options when I would eat breakfast, and my standard breakfast is eggs, some sort of potato or grain, depending on what we have left. Like today I had buckwheat, but a lot of the times it's like leftover rice or, and then we have a veggie. So whether it's your cauliflower or broccoli or cabbage with the eggs, with some sausage, and I have a protein shake and then a sourdough piece of toast, I played around with eating those in different ways. So I would eat the bread first versus the protein first, or, you know, the grains and the drink, the protein shake first. And honestly, every time I eat my breakfast, I, it barely ever raised my blood glucose. That honestly didn't even look like I ate. But when I would go in for lunch and I remember, I was like, I'll have a couple of cherries while I'm preparing my salad. And my blood sugar went through the roof. Like, it went into the red range, and then it came right back down after I had, because I had, you know, like ten cherries, I think. And then I had my salad, and of course it was high protein. My dressings are all clean. Like, it's just olive oil and vinegar with some lemon juice and lots of protein, lots of fiber. The blood sugar came right down, but it spiked, and I was like, well, that's interesting. Let's see if I eat the fruit after. If I eat the fruit after lunch or dinner, for the most part, I would do okay, but it would still get into, like, the yellow instead of the reds. So again, I was like, well, that's interesting. I guess my body's really responding to the sugar now. It vary the sugar in the fruit, but it also very much depended on how much I ate. So if I had five cherries, it would be controlled. It would still be on the higher end, but it would be controlled in the green. If I had like 10, 20, 30 cherries, even if I had it after a meal, or berries, even if it was blueberries or strawberries, raspberries, you name it. Like, I'm not eating bananas after a meal or something. That's really, you know, tropical, like mangoes. It was low glycemic fruit. And it's funny because I messaged the nutrientsense nutritionist, I'm like, what do you think this is causing this? And she was like, oh, I think it's the dressing in your salad. I'm like, no, my dressing is really good because I didn't. I just put dressing, but I didn't put the details in that. So you should put as many details as you can because it will help you understand what's causing the spike. And she was like, no, I don't think it's the fruit, because it's like berries and cherries and blue boo. Like, all those things are low glycemic. And I was like, okay, but I'll keep testing it out. So the amount of fruit that I ate really mattered. If I ate just a little bit after a meal, it was okay. If it was more than ten cherries, let's say my blood sugar would still go out of whack. My blood sugar would go more out of whack with fruit than it would with, like, a piece of cheesecake or ice cream cake, which I thought was crazy. But when I think about, you know, the content of something like a cheesecake or ice cream cake, it's not very like, yes, there's sugar, but it's also really high fat and a little bit of protein because it's dairy. So it almost just helps to soak up that sugar for me and wouldn't spike it up, the fruits did. And honestly, I was a little bit upset about it because I love fruit. But now when I look at my hb one c and I see that it's at, like 5.4 or 5.5, my blood sugars on a regular basis are fine, but if I have fruit two or three times a day, I'm creating these really big spikes in my system, which is causing inflammation. Right. When there is spikes, even though that spike comes right back down, it's still little bursts of inflammation. And so that brings me to the, why is it important to track this for somebody who I'm not struggling with excess weight? I don't believe that I'm struggling, right, with any blood sugar regulation, but there's definitely room for improvement. And there is levels of. We all have some level of inflammation in the body. And so if I want to optimize that, blood sugar is kind of the next thing. And if we're talking about your hormones overall and the cascade of hormones, blood sugar does not work alone. So, like, the way that your insulin works and glucagon and all those hormones that are responsible, even like leptin, that are all responsible for blood sugar regulation and your appetite, and they're also dictating inflammation, and that's going to dictate cortisol, and that's going to impact ovary, ovarian hormones such as progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen. And, you know, for males, it's their testosterone. They still produce estrogen and progesterone, but not as much, obviously. And of course, that's going to impact your thyroid. And so every no hormone in the body and really nothing in the body works on its own. And so the blood sugar hormones are just as important to understand and control as your estrogen and progesterone and your testosterone levels or your thyroid levels or your cortisol, your stress hormone. And I think that was. I mean, I've known that as a practitioner, but to actually really piece it together and see that, whoa, I am creating spikes two or three times a day. So, like, I obviously noticed it right away, so it was like two times a day for the first little bit, and then I was like, whoa, I gotta, you know, I can't have fruit every day, or I can like that much fruit every day because my system is just not now. If I made a smoothie and I put a ton of protein in it and a ton of fiber in it, it didn't do the same thing. But just, like, fruit on its own doesn't do well or in high volumes, which, you know, let's face it, like, when you're going in the summer, it's like, who doesn't just crack open a thing of cherries when they're in season? And you're just kind of go to town because you're like, it's cherry season, and it's so good for me. So it was really good for me to do it at that time because it, like, it helped me to understand a little bit of that self control. And actually, whoa. Okay. I'm causing these inflammatory spikes throughout the day. Now, my body can buffer that inflammation pretty good because I do a lot of things that are anti inflammatory. And, you know, the castor oil packs, the saunas, all the supplements that I take in my diet, for the most part, is anti inflammatory. But when we're looking at someone who's struggling with infertility or you're struggling to lose weight or you're struggling with your hormones in general, like, your estrogen is out of whack or you have endometriosis or you have pcos, I truly believe that getting a continuous glucose monitor is like a no brainer. And I heard this from one of my colleagues, and I very much am recommending it to all of my patients at the right time in their journey to do a continuous glucose monitor for at least a month. So you can understand what's happening with your blood glucose levels, because one of my patients right now, that has it on her, and we know that she struggles with blood glucose because she has extra weight to lose. There is a lot of inflammation, and her HBA one C is on the higher level. It's like 5.85.9. Been in the sixes before that. When I see her continuous glucose monitoring, she doesn't go in the reds, but she. Her average is really high, so her average is like 100 versus 70. And so that's a high difference that her blood sugar in general is just always a little bit elevated. And even though it is within the range, we need to get her average down. And so, of course, there's pcos. Like I said, there's inflammation, usually thyroid issues with ovulation. And I think that everybody would absolutely benefit from running, like, getting a continuous glucose monitor, because a lot of the times we're disconnected from what we're eating and how it actually, our body responds. Like, I was with fruit because I thought that it was healthy for me, and it's not that it's not healthy for me, but it's understanding when to have it, what kind of fruit to have, and how much to have. So my body is going to tell me. And honestly, the reason that I think that I'm so sensitive to fruit is because I grew up in Russia. Like, I literally grew up in, like, the tundra, where we grew our own food. But we grew mostly, like, a lot of potatoes, a lot of cabbage, a lot of carrots, a lot of. Right, like, tomatoes, cucumbers, that kind of stuff that you could pickle. And we had fruit for a short period of time, mostly berries, right? We had some strawberries. We had a lot of currants, and currants are like, blackcurrant are, there's. They're bitter, they're not super, super sweet. We had some blueberries, but they were very small. They were in big. Again, in the tundra, you're just not going to have the same fruit as you do, let's say, in BC or in California. And so I don't think my system was ever really used to this high dose of fruit and definitely not tropical fruit. And my parents are, you know, the same. When we first came together, I was like, look at all this fruit, and we could eat it. And now my parents are both struggling with blood glucose because we could see it on their blood work. And I'm like, you guys are constantly eating fruit, so that's one of the first things that I'm getting them to do is like, hey, you gotta put in this continuous glucose monitor because maybe it's not that your blood sugar is spiking a lot, but maybe your average is just really, really high for what it should be, right? What it should be. During the day, we're never seeing any lows where there should be lows, not too low, but there should be lows when you're not eating anything and there's some fasting windows, right? Especially like at nighttime. If your average at nighttime is 100, that's really high. That's still high, even though that's quote unquote not outside of the range. So interpreting the results is important. And you know, the reason that I like nutrients is because you have this nutritionist. When my patients are working with nutrients, the reason that I like them is because I can log on to, on the back end and I can see everything. For the most part, I know my cases way better than the nutritionist for the, in the nutrientsense program, but they're still really helpful and they can give you a lot of really good advice. So whether you decide to go with them or just get like a libre to freestyle glucose monitor and just enter in your information and you can start to see and piece it together again. If you're my patient, obviously you're just sharing that information with me so that I can see it. But if you don't have anybody that you're working with and you're curious, I highly recommend doing something like nutrientsense because at least you have some guidance instead of, oh, I saw this on the Internet, we, the whole point of doing the continuous glucose monitoring is because my husband did it at the same time and he did not have that same reaction with fruit for sure. When he ate, you know, whether it was some chips or something that was like on the sweeter higher carb, carbohydrate side, his blood glucose would go up. Or when he did his run and he's doing a lot of snacking during the running, you know, his longer runs, then his blood glucose would stay elevated, but it's almost designed to stay more elevated because the body's under stress. So it's just being able to put all those pieces together is quite a bit. So I highly, highly recommend that you guys go through it. It was very insightful and eye opening for me. And when you do decide to do it, and I'll have a link for nutrients down below, I have a discount code as well. If you guys want to use it and decide to go through nutrients. I do believe they actually have insurance coverage as well. It depends on your insurance company, but you guys can contact them and figure that out. But the whole point is that you play around with certain foods that you eat on a regular basis or when you go on vacation or anything. So it's not about being super strict during the time. There's going to be a time to be strict, but at the beginning, you just want to figure out what your blood glucose levels are doing. And like, for me, I realized that, hey, I'm hitting these spikes. So I ate like a piece of toast with jam on it and worked out right after and that spiked me, but it was almost like, again, it's normal because I ate the jam and then I worked out and it was an intense workout. The reason that that's still really insightful is I have a lot of you ladies who follow me who do a lot of intense activity, and then we eat the carbs. And then you don't have any issues with weight, so you assume that your blood sugar is fine, but you have other signs of inflammation, like pcos or endometriosis or brain fog or pain in the body, just painful periods in, you know, swollen joints, moodiness, those are all still signs of inflammation or even acne, right? Like acne eczema, though that is an inflammatory condition and blood glucose is going to be 100% contributing to that. So I used to, I don't have the toast with jam a lot, but now I'm like, hmm, I probably don't need that and I probably don't need the fruit. I could just do the toast with butter on its own. And that's enough good carbs for me. Make sure that I have my protein with it. And so then the glucose spike shouldn't be not as high. And if I'm doing a high intensity workout, I'm only going to do that once in a while, because if every time I do a high intensity workout and I do that three times a week, I get a spike, that's no bueno, right? Even though it's quote unquote designed over the long, like that's the high intensity workout is stress on the body. So your body is going to break down glycogen and it's going to pull out glucose. Like that's what your system is feeding on, especially during the high intensity workouts. But if you look at it over time, I'm spiking blood glucose, I'm spiking my blood glucose and that's inflammation. Right. I'm not giving my body the opportunity to heal. If you're an athlete trying to do, I would still do it to become aware, because it's going to bring that. That inflammation up and that's going to impact the way that you recover. But from, like, a fertility standpoint, you want to make sure that blood glucose doesn't go out of range. It goes out of range as little as possible, essentially. And then for those of you who start to do, and like I said, one of my patients, it's like, oh, your average is just really high. That's a problem. So the average is high, but you're not going out of range very much. Great. But we need to bring the overall average way, way down, and we need to increase the amount of fiber that you're having. You know, you need to increase your walking to help bring that inflammation and that weight down, and therefore bad blood glucose, because that's going to impact your thyroid, that's going to impact your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, your cortisol, and literally every single hormone in the body. It just doesn't work as one. For those of you who are struggling with endometriosis, this is also really powerful. Uh, one of my mentors that she just specializes in infertility, a phenomenal practitioner out of Australia, she's working on her second PhD. I just feel really fortunate to be working with her. But she wants blood glucose at like, the HBA one C at 4.5. So that's a tight blood glucose control. So your green range is going to be a lot smaller because if you want to keep it at 4.5 over three months. Right, HBA one C is your measurement over the last three months. It has to be below 100 basically the entire time. So keeping a really, really close look at those blood glucose, making sure that you are eating enough, but the foods that you're eating are not causing any spikes. And usually it's a lot of fiber, it's a lot of high quality protein. The fat usually gets in there and then we have to really watch the carbs. You're having some carbs, but the kind of carbs you have and, like, definitely no refined carbs for some, it's going to be no fruit. Like, for me, I would be in that category. And really high quality grains. So I have this flour from better basics. I love her flour. It's really good. I feel amazing when I eat that versus when I eat, like, even sourdough bread with regular flour. I can tell that it's more sugary, more starchy versus the real thing. So the quality of the food that you're eating is going to, you know, really, really matter. So I will put a link into nutrientsense the other. That's if you want to go in with a nutritionist. And like I said, I would highly recommend that if you're not working with anyone else, like, if you're just listening to this podcast, and hey, I've been really curious about continuous glucose monitoring versus just ordering one yourself. Because a lot of the times if you're staying in the green, you're like, okay, good, I'm in the green, but you're not really going to learn anything. Whereas if you have a nutritionist that you're jumping on a call every week or every second week that you can like, look at the diet, look at the lifestyle, look at what's going on and change, that will be really, really powerful and it will absolutely have a positive effect on all of your hormones and just general levels of inflammation. And I promise you, you do not have to be overweight. You do not have to think that you have light glucose. If you've ever had your HBA one c tested and it's above 5.0 ever, then I would highly recommend just running and doing about continuous glucose monitor, because this is information that you'll just learn for the rest of your life about you. And, you know, for my parents, for example, my mom is post menopausal and she's had such a hard time losing weight. It's like the weight just doesn't move. If she has the continuous glucose monitor that reminds her. And be like, you're constantly putting food in your mouth that's causing inflammation. Like, that's why you can't lose weight. And sometimes we're replacing, you know, when we're quote unquote on a diet. And this is the way that my mom grew up, it's like, oh, but like, fruit is healthy, obviously. That's how I think as well. And it's not that I don't think food is unhealthy, okay? Just FYI. It's that there's a time and place, and for everybody, it means different things. This is why we want to do individualized medicine versus general generalized advice. But my mom went from eating, let's say, like a chocolate almond croissant or a piece of cake to eating fruit. In reality, the response in her body is the same. Obviously, the fruit is better for her than the cake. But the reason that she's not losing weight is because that inflammation is still being triggered because the blood glucose is still being triggered. And I know that because I've done that, you know, through myself and I'm trying to get. The hard thing with my parents is trying to convince them to do something that it's going to. They're going to get the benefit from it, right? Because again, hesitation. Older population, I don't really need to do it until it's, oh, maybe that's the only way out. But like I said, I highly, highly recommend you guys. I will put that link down below for you to check it out. Share my page. Just comment, message me because I have another different link with a little bit of a better discount code if you're my patient and for the rest of you, I highly recommend that you do it. If you've been struggling with pcos, endometriosis, any inflammatory conditions, brain fog, fatigue, pain of any kind, it will be absolutely eye opening what you will learn. And you don't have to do it for that long month, three months, like some of you maybe decide to do it for longer. But I find after a month, like I was done tracking, I will probably do it again, though, because there's a couple things that I didn't test out and I really would love to know that information. So I'll probably do it again in a short period of time. The question that I'll probably get, so I'll answer that now before I log off, is, can I do this during pregnancy? Like nutrients, for example, they do not recommend you to do it during pregnancy. I, when I work with my patients, that is, and I'm worried about their blood glucose levels, I will absolutely do it because then I'm monitoring them and, and we want to make sure that those blood glucose are good through the pregnancy because obviously there's different dangers that are important to avoid when we are pregnant and in preventing gestational diabetes. But I do find that there is a tremendous amount of value to understand how your body responds and what we can do to support blood sugars, even through like diet, lifestyle, but even some supplementation. So then we can get that blood glucose controlled and, you know, keep the baby happy and healthy for until time to come out. And then that will help to reach, to set the metabolism for the baby as well. Right. When the mom has gestational diabetes, the chance of the baby to develop that later in life is much, much higher because of that blood glucose already being elevated. So I hope you guys find this helpful. Please use the link. It was so opening for me and I hope that you do do it. When I say that everybody would benefit from it, it's like 100%. If you're trying to change your health and you're trying to figure out like, this is probably one of the biggest needle mover things that you can do, and it will be eye opening and it will make a really big difference in your health. All right, that's it, you guys, for this week. I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit drjanelevesque.com podcast. And if you're getting value from this episode, I'd love it if you took two minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review@ratethispodcast.com. doctorJane the reviews will help with the discoverability of the show, and who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and let's make your fertility journey, your healing journey.