Abbott Lingo Continuous Glucose Monitor Review: Easy and Clear

To put on the Lingo, you have to unwrap it and put the cardboard in the dispenser. Click the dispenser on your arm, which sends the thread under your skin, stings only faintly. It feels like being stuck with a finger. Is it way less painful than pricking the finger with a needle until you bleed, several times a day, and I was an idiot and should have done this earlier.

The sensor itself is fine. I don’t feel it most of the time, unless I change my clothes very vigorously and leave, in which case I have to be careful. You can choose where to put the sensor; most people choose their non-dominant arm. It is water resistant, so you can swim and shower with it, and you won’t have to charge it.

Once I had the sensor, I opened the Lingo app, registered, and held my phone nearby. Done! I was ready to start monitoring.

Sugar Rush

If you have never monitored your blood glucose continuously, you are probably in for some surprises. Eating in a way that makes sense for a glucose monitor doesn’t always mean eating healthier, objectively. For example, consider a typical lunch for me, which is a bowl of homemade carrot soup and whole wheat bread. Because carrots and bread are carbohydrates, this spikes my blood sugar to an alarming extent. An ultra-processed protein peanut butter bar, however, barely moves my blood sugar, even if you’re healthy, one isn’t necessarily better than the other.

If you reduce the number of carbs you consume, you will get there ketosiswhich is when your body starts burning body fat instead of your readily available blood glucose for energy, because you don’t have any. This is different, and less dangerous, than ketosis as a complication of diabetes, but I still hate it.

I put the Lingo on during CES, where I made an alarming discovery: I was going way too much for the amount of food I was eating, and I was going hypoglycemic during the night. I thought my sleep disturbances were just due to work, stress, and being away from my family, but no, I was fully at bottom.