Recently, I interviewed Laurie Villarreal, and we discussed her thyroid journey, the role of stress in blood sugar regulation, the benefits of using continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to track blood sugar levels, how to use heart rate variability (HRV) as a tool for assessing stress, tips for managing blood sugar, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am excited to chat with Laurie Villareal, as we are going to talk about blood sugar imbalances. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I’m going to dive right into Laurie’s impressive bio here.
Laurie Villareal helps high-achieving, mission-driven women regain control of their weight, health, and hormones in midlife, so they can have more energy to pursue their bold goals and active lifestyles without restrictive diets, stacks of supplements, or overhauling their lives.
Her unique method artfully blends the science of real-time biofeedback with innate body wisdom to help zoom in on the unique triggers and tweaks that support your body in turning down physiological stress to turn up restoration and healing.
With a client list spanning the globe and over 20 years of experience in the health and wellness space, you may have seen her in publications such as Self Magazine or Thrive Global or sharing the stage with known persons such as Dr. Joe Dispenza or JJ Virgin.
She is also a national board-certified health coach, functional nutrition provider, and long-time endurance athlete and movement educator turned hormone specialist after being challenged with her own hard-to-solve hormone health issues. Laurie not only understands her clients’ journeys and challenges, but she has been there, too. Welcome, Laurie.
Laurie Villareal:
I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Looking forward to this.
Dr. Eric:
Same here. This is going to be a great conversation, talking about blood sugar imbalances, continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). I want to talk about your background because you have your own thyroid journey, which led to you focusing on what you help people with now, correct?
Laurie:
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Dr. Eric:
Let’s go ahead. If you could give a little bit of that story.
Laurie:
Sure. It’s probably similar to a lot of people you’ve worked with, maybe even yourself. I struggled for a number of years actually, where I didn’t exactly know what was going on with my health. I was an athlete, an endurance coach, and trainer. At the time, I understood a lot about health, balancing stress, recovery, eating well. I paid attention to all of those things for decades. That was a really important piece of being an endurance athlete.
For two years, I was noticing small, insignificant symptoms at first that eventually became debilitating. It went from me having regular periods for decades to suddenly having uncontrollable periods that I didn’t know what was going on. As an athlete, sometimes I would run for several hours, and I wasn’t able to manage that, that I was bleeding so uncontrollably.
I wasn’t recovering well from even my easiest workouts. I say I wasn’t recovering well, but I was not recovering. It would take me what felt like weeks sometimes to recover from easy workouts. I needed naps all the time. I was exhausted when I woke up.
I began having memory issues, where I couldn’t remember an appointment I saw in my calendar only an hour before. I was having debilitating anxiety that I had never experienced before.
Same story, like a lot of women or men. My doctors said I was fine. There was nothing wrong. Even though previously I was functioning at a very high level, they thought, Oh well, you’re not doing too bad. But I was nowhere near where I was before.
I definitely took this journey of trying to figure things out on my own. That eventually led me to studying functional nutrition. From there, I ended up learning a lot about balancing blood sugar and stress and all the things that you learn in functional nutrition. I had already studied nutrition, so I knew a lot about it.
Because I had a family history of diabetes, both my dad and my mom had diabetes, I had been very interested in blood sugar since I was a kid. I didn’t want to get diabetes, and I also wanted to help them take better care of themselves and their diabetes, which they were not that interested in doing. Now I know they have got to want it themselves as well.
I went down this journey of learning a lot about blood sugar. I got really curious for myself the connections that that could have to some of what I was experiencing. Eventually, I figured out it took some time, but I had made some connections that led me to think it was my thyroid. I ended up working with a practitioner who had said yes, it is, but it wasn’t showing up when the doctors were just measuring TSH. They were looking at it more deeply than that.
In addition, because I was so curious about blood sugar, and I had been using blood sugar devices since I was young, I started paying a lot more attention to that, trying to get curious about what was going on with my blood sugar health.
I started treating my thyroid and figured out I had hypothyroidism. I realized that some of what had been going on with me was related to stress. I should say a lot of what had been going on, that perhaps had led me to that thyroid journey. Certainly, some of these discoveries were the things that helped me unravel my thyroid healing and get better.
At the time, when I discovered that I did have something going on with my thyroid, I didn’t want to go straight to medication initially. I wanted to figure out what was actually at the root of this.
Also, I wanted to take care of my body from a more holistic approach, which definitely studying functional nutrition had helped with that. Getting extra curious about the relationship to stress and what was going on with my blood sugar and inflammation and all of those pieces. I took a deep dive in that area.
Like I said, I had that family history. I really wanted to better understand that piece. That is a big part of what brought me to what I’m doing now.
Dr. Eric:
When talking about blood sugar, a lot of people are aware of the impact of diet. I don’t think people think enough about the stress, especially with blood sugar. Let’s say if someone is eating a wonderful diet, whole, healthy foods, minimizing refined foods and sugars, or even completely avoiding them, but they’re stressed out all the time, not getting sufficient sleep, can they still have blood sugar dysregulation? Even if they are eating a really good diet?
Laurie:
Absolutely. I have experienced it for myself. Not getting quality or the quantity of sleep your body needs to recover can have an impact on your glucose levels. At the same time, stress has a pretty big impact on your blood sugar levels separate from food.
Also, when you’re eating while you’re stressed, those foods are going to react very differently from when you have a meal when you’re not stressed. Stress definitely is a huge factor when it comes to blood sugar regulation. It’s one of the biggest ones that the women I work with, maybe it’s not the food; maybe it’s something else I have been ignoring for a while or are just not aware of. Sometimes, we are not aware of the stress we have going on in our body.
For me, some of the stress I had in my particular situation, I wasn’t aware of it.
Dr. Eric:
It could go beyond emotional stressors. If someone is overtraining or other physical stressors as well.
Laurie:
Absolutely. I like to say there are a lot of different stressors, but they all go into the same bucket. Your stress bucket at the end of the day can have stress from all sorts of things, like physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress, and physiological stress, which we often don’t consider, like infections. There could be a lot of things going on that are creating stress in our bodies. We add a little bit more, and it overflows our bucket.
Dr. Eric:
When I dealt with Graves’, I was underestimating the impact stress had on my health. That, and also overestimating how I handled stress, too. Double whammy there.
Laurie:
It’s very common.
Dr. Eric:
Exactly. Definitely want to talk about measuring blood sugar, blood testing, CGMs. Do you also recommend measuring adrenals? Do you just take the perspective of most people have adrenal issues, so rather than testing, making the assumption that someone has an adrenal problem?
Laurie:
I wouldn’t say I make the assumption, but because- I usually just start straight off with the bio sensors and see what those say. We can right away start making tweaks with them. Later on, down the road, sometimes, we look more specifically into the adrenals, say with cortisol testing is what you’re probably talking about.
Usually, with things like a CGM or HRV, we can see already where their stress is at. At least enough to start making some changes.
I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody who I’ve worked with who was like, “Your stress is fine.” But of course, there can sometimes be things going on that need a closer look, such as through the data with the bio sensors that I like to use.
We can sometimes see something going on where maybe they have high cortisol in the evenings when it should be low, or they have low cortisol in the morning when it should be high. In this case, I would probably look sooner than later.
It’s not that I don’t think it’s important to look at the adrenals right away. It’s more that I think it can be just as effective to start working on stress via the bio sensors and then help women start feeling better and get the results versus going to that testing, waiting for the result to come back, and doing it in that path. I just do it the other way around.
Dr. Eric:
Okay. We’ll talk about the bio sensors. What are the consequences of having blood sugar imbalances, whether it’s insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, etc.?
Laurie:
It can be different for everyone. They show up differently in different bodies. It could look like feeling like you’re on an energy rollercoaster. It could look like being moody and irritable, having brain fog, having cravings, especially for carbs and caffeine. It can look like waking up feeling sluggish, increased stress, feeling less resilient.
It could show up feeling like you have other things going on with your hormones. In my case, I had really heavy periods. You can notice changes in your menstrual cycles. Maybe you don’t cycle at all.
It can show up as skin issues. Strangely, that is actually one of the things that women tend to see the most when they work with me on having a blood sugar imbalance. “My skin issues have cleared up after years of struggling with this.” They had just thought this was their new norm.
Dr. Eric:
Is it more common for people with blood sugar imbalances to have problems staying asleep than falling asleep?
Laurie:
I certainly see the quality of sleep. The more dysregulated the blood sugar, the lower the quality of sleep usually because blood sugar would tend to be less stable at night if it’s less stable during the day. That instability at night creates poor quality sleep. I see that a lot.
Whether or not the person is getting the right quantity or going to bed easily or waking up easily, that seems to vary. Certainly, I would say if your blood sugar is dysregulated, your sleep quality is not as good as it could be. You’re likely waking up feeling sluggish.
What I also notice quite often is in the middle of the night, if you have blood sugar instability, blood sugar can tend to dip down low and wake people up. Either dip down low or increase, depending on what they had for dinner or how the rest of their day went. I can also see highs and lows happening that wake people up and disrupt sleep. There could be a lot going on with sleep and blood sugar. You probably see that, too.
Dr. Eric:
Yeah, definitely. I see a lot of disrupted sleep or poor sleep quality.
Let’s talk about diet. You probably would agree that there is no diet that fits everyone perfectly. There probably are some do’s and don’ts that you recommend when it comes to foods that you would eat. Obviously, refined foods and sugars probably would be a no-no.
Can you talk more about that? Certain foods that you recommend eating and certain foods that you recommend avoiding in general to have healthy blood sugar?
Laurie:
It will look different for every person. And a few things we know that are very supportive are whole foods. Whole foods versus processed foods versus highly refined foods, especially when it comes to carbohydrates. Anything that will go in the blood sugar quickly. The more refined, the more processed it is, that is usually the case. It’s going to raise your blood sugar more quickly, which usually leads to a blood sugar crash afterward.
However, we do notice that when you pair your foods in a certain way, when you order your meals in a certain way, you can actually change that up a little bit. Sometimes, it’s not always about the food, but it’s about how you eat the food.
As I said earlier, even the state of your stress at the moment you’re eating your meal.
Absolutely, nutrition is important. Also, having fat, fiber, and protein with whatever you’re eating can help quite a bit to stabilize your glucose levels. That would mean, say you’re having an apple. It might be helpful also to have some nuts with that apple. It might even be more helpful to have some nuts before you have that apple. Once the apple is broken down, that can help the glucose release slower in your bloodstream. That can be more supportive.
In addition, usually people discover that there is this carbohydrate tolerance. Fats and proteins are having less of an impact on blood sugar most of the time than, say, carbohydrates. Especially refined ones. They’re all going to react differently in your body depending on how they are prepared, whether they’re raw or baked or blended. All of these things do matter.
In general, if you’re eating a whole food diet, and you’re paying attention to eating fat, fiber, and protein at the same time, you’re eating the rainbow, you’re getting lots of different nutrients that can be supportive for blood sugar health, I notice that to be- In terms of what works for most people, I would say that can be quite helpful in helping stabilize blood sugar.
Dr. Eric:
You use the CGMs as well?
Laurie:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
Can you talk about that? How do you use CGMs to determine what foods people could get away with, not get away with eating- How their body reacts from a blood sugar perspective. Also, tie that into the HRV that you use as well.
Laurie:
Just as an example, before I started using these with clients, I was using the prick monitor for years. I was also using CGMs for myself before I started using them with clients about 10 years ago.
I would also use it on my husband. It was interesting to see. I have diabetes in my family, so I have the genetics for more likely to have blood sugar issues. We can be so different between him and me in how our body reacts to things. We have worn them together for a few months at a time. Dang, you can eat that, and your blood sugar is fine? I don’t get it.
We really are so different when it comes to how our body responds to foods. It’s not just our body. It can be the environment. There are a lot of things that play in. Inflammation in our body. What we’re exposed to. How we pair and order our foods.
When we’re able to wear a CGM, we can not only see how those things are influencing our glucose. We’re seeing in real time that you eat an apple, and you see what is happening on the CGM when you eat it. You’re not just seeing it, but you’re also feeling what your body feels like when your blood sugar does this.
Sometimes, a woman will eat an apple. It will go up to 200. I have seen this recently. They don’t feel so well. Then the next time, they eat an apple with some nuts, and it bumps up to 140 instead. They don’t have that same aftereffect that they had when they ate it on its own. By using a CGM, you can also begin to see what tweaks and tricks can work for you. Do they actually work for you?
Also, I could say to eat some nuts with your apple. Maybe your blood sugar is still going to spike, and it will still have an impact and create symptoms for you. I like to use it in a way not to say so it’s good and bad to have your blood sugar at certain levels. Yes, certain levels can be more inflammatory. I like to have a specific range that women are in.
Also, we pay a lot of attention to how that makes you feel when your blood sugar does X. For some, they can have symptoms right away. They feel tired. For some, they feel cravings 30 minutes later. For some, all day long, they have been tired and hungry. For some, it interrupts their sleep. I really get to pay attention to not only what the CGM is saying with your meal, but also how you feel afterwards, how you feel before.
We also get to learn what your baseline levels are. If your baseline levels are in the healthier zone, or maybe they are in the prediabetes zone, we know more about if you need more adjustments to help you get into that healthier zone. In that case, there might be some more healing protocols that help to heal your body, so it is responding better to your foods, and your baseline levels are coming down to a healthier range.
It really depends on where the person is at when they start using the CGM. There is so much information that it can give you, such as how well it’s going while you’re sleeping. How are the foods you’re eating throughout the day, especially at night, influencing your blood sugar throughout the night? How is that affecting your sleep?
Are you waking up feeling recharged? If you’re not, are there some adjustments you can make and notice at the same time how that impacts your glucose levels? Does that help you have better sleep? It’s just about making connections. Does this help you or not?
I find that I love data. A lot of people I work with love data. It can be really helpful to see it versus just feeling it.
Dr. Eric:
That makes sense. For those who are not familiar with CGMs, how do you know what your blood sugar is in the middle of the night? You’re tying it into an app, correct? Then you can look at the app and see the data. Some people say, “I know if I look at it during the day, I can tell. How do I know throughout the day when I’m not looking at it? In the middle of the night?” If you could talk more about the app you use.
Laurie:
We used to have the prick monitor. Now there is a CGM that monitors your glucose pretty much 24/7, especially the newest ones that have just come out. Used to be that you’d have eight hours of data, and it would have to connect with an app on your phone or a little reader. Now via Bluetooth, most of them will send the data straight to an app on your phone. From there, you can see continuously over 24 hours what is going on with your glucose levels. You can see it in the middle of the night and in the day.
For a lot of people, I often recommend at first just to collect the data without thinking too much about it. Let it collect in the background, and you can look at it later.
When you are looking at it, you are also in this self-editing state. You are seeing it, but you’re also wanting to fix it. When you’re sleeping at night, it can be nice to see the data and see what’s going on.
Dr. Eric:
I use the CGM for a couple weeks. I didn’t realize when I used it that you have to have it on Bluetooth all the time. If someone is crazy about that, how about the EMFs? Is there a way around that or not really?
Laurie:
Yes. I use the Abbott one. Abbott used to have a 2 where you need Bluetooth. Sometimes, you can find the 2; you don’t need the Bluetooth. In that case, you have to scan it every eight hours. You might miss data if you don’t do that. You can do the same thing with the one that has the Bluetooth. I do recommend turning that off at night.
It does have an alarm. You don’t want the alarm waking you up at night if your glucose is going low. Chances are, if you’re not a diabetic, it won’t be life-threatening.
You can turn that Bluetooth off. Then you have to turn it back on in the morning, so it can connect and send the data.
If you’re someone who doesn’t like having Bluetooth on, because I don’t, I just turn it on occasionally and let it connect and sync the data and then turn it back off. You don’t have to have the Bluetooth on continuously. It is on the censor.
Now that you have asked that question, I don’t know a lot about what it’s doing when you have your phone off, but it’s on your arm. I will look into that.
Dr. Eric:
Definitely let me know. I’m curious about that. How about HRV? What do you use to mention heart rate variability? I have had other guests talk about it, but in a minute or two, if you could explain what HRV is.
Laurie:
HRV is a measurement of your heart. It’s the space in between the beats of your heart and how far apart they are. We want more variability. The more variability there is, the more resilient the body is. The less variability, the more rigid.
The HRV is a measurement of your nervous system. When we look at HRV, and we see HRV going up or going down, it depends on how you would use the measurement. You can use the measurement in a number of different ways. For example, if every day you are taking a baseline measurement at the same time.
Usually, if you use a device, it will give you your daily HRV score. You can use that score from day to day to see how well you’re recovering. Are you restored? Is that number going up or down or staying the same? That says a little bit about your stress levels in terms of how well recovered you are. That’s how I use HRV.
Before I used HRV, I used heart rate. It was also a measurement you can use to see when you wake up the next day, is your heart rate going up, down, or staying the same? If it’s gone up, it’s a sign that your body isn’t as well recovered. If it’s gone down, you’ve recovered a little bit. Of course, it could mean other things.
If you are just using the measurement for how well recovered you are and what your stress levels are like, HRV can work just as well as heart rate. And it can also show us other things. Everybody will be different in terms of HRV.
There is the Oura ring. I like it. It’s my personal favorite. There is also Woop. I have that as well. It measures HRV. Even the Apple Watch measures it. They all measure it a little bit differently.
A device like the Oura ring will show you daytime HRV. You can also see when your HRV is going high. It’s typically a sign that your body is more restored and in a more relaxed state. When it goes low, you tend to be more in the parasympathetic, upregulated, more of a stressed state. We can use HRV if you have access to it throughout the day to see your daytime stress.
I do like it in a similar way that I like the glucose levels throughout the day because it gives us information. Maybe you didn’t recognize when you had that meeting, your HRV was way low. At the same time, your glucose went way high. There was a stress piece involved maybe. That can be interesting.
If nothing else than just telling us about how we’re recovering from day to day, HRV can be quite helpful for that.
Dr. Eric:
Did you say Woop?
Laurie:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
What is that? I know what the Oura ring is. Is Woop an app?
Laurie:
Woop is similar to Oura, except you wear it on your wrist. It doesn’t have a clock or face that you look at. It’s designed for athletes, so you can do heart training with it on and not get it damaged. At least not as easily as your more delicate Apple Watch.
It does have Bluetooth on the Woop as well. I’m pretty sure you can turn it off. That’s why I like Oura the best because it has airplane mode.
There is the Woop. There is also Garmin, which has a pretty nice feature with HRV called the Body Battery. For someone who is just starting, it can be easy because it takes the data like HRV and heart rate and sleep and give you an estimate on how well recovered you are the next day. That can be a fun place to start for some people. But I do love the Oura ring the best.
Dr. Eric:
Are those the main two bio sensors you use?
Laurie:
I use those two. The other one I love is Heart Math Inner Balance sensor. Have you tried that?
Dr. Eric:
Yes, I do use it. I love it as well.
Laurie:
You get that real-time data when you’re doing the training to see the impact it’s having. Also, the improvement you’re getting when you continue to do it.
Dr. Eric:
All right. Do you rely on the CGM, or do you also look at blood sugar markers, like hemoglobin A1C, fasting insulin?
Laurie:
I typically recommend doing a fasting insulin. You could also do a hemoglobin A1C. Why not a fasting glucose. We can pretty much see that in no time using a CGM. The hemoglobin A1C is nice to have if you are going to go down the route of using CGMs. You can see where you start, so it’s a good baseline. After you have been wearing CGMs for a while, it also gives you an estimated HBA1C, which is similar to what you would get if you had the bloodwork done.
I do like fasting insulin levels as well as a baseline. I like to use these to test before and then use the CGM and make adjustments personalized to you as you try to do the work to balance your blood sugar levels and get your baseline levels down if you need to. As you do that, it’s nice to have that to check in on later. How is my insulin now after I have been doing this work? How is my HBA1C now? That can be quite helpful.
Dr. Eric:
What would you say the optimal ranges would be for hemoglobin A1C and fasting insulin?
Laurie:
As I’m saying this, I always have different numbers in my head. EU and US. I think that’s the same, under 5.1 for hemoglobin A1C.
Dr. Eric:
Yes.
Laurie:
You’re saying yes, so I must have that correct.
Dr. Eric:
Yep. I think 5.6 is the upper limit. If it’s over that, 5.7, you’d consider prediabetic.
Laurie:
It’s the same EU and US. With fasting insulin, under 7. How about you?
Dr. Eric:
I would agree. Dr. Mark Hyman says less than 5 for insulin. I’m with you. If someone is a 6 or 6.5, and if hemoglobin A1C is looking good, I think it’s okay.
I don’t know if you ever see this. Insulin looks good, like insulin might be a 5 or even a 4, and hemoglobin A1C is in the upper end, so it contradicts each other. If hemoglobin A1C is 5.5, 5.6, but their fasting insulin is looking good, I don’t know if you’ve seen that. If so, do you rely more on one or the other in that scenario?
Laurie:
Yeah. It’s interesting with fasting insulin because I have also tested insulin throughout the day, and it can vary a lot. This is similar to glucose.
I get curious when I see that number. Is that really telling me what’s going on in their body throughout the day? HBA1C is an average, so it’s more reliable, I think. That’s why I like to go look at what’s going on on the CGM with glucose levels.
If someone is able to achieve pretty regulated glucose levels, they’re in a healthy range, their baseline is in a healthy range, their insulin is 7, and they have been able to improve tons of symptoms and feel great, I would say that they’re doing all right. If they don’t have anything else going on. I look at that first.
Because of the rise in cortisol in the morning, and probably some other things going on in the morning, women’s blood sugar can be moving up a little bit. The rest of their glucose levels are stable and nice and beautiful and not creating symptoms for the rest of the day.
I have also experienced where I have ridden my bike to go get my bloodwork done. Different factors will affect it differently. If you’re riding your bike, and maybe you’re a little bit stressed out. You’re quickly riding there through traffic. Your insulin level might look different versus if you were just sitting at home when you woke up that morning.
I don’t really pay attention to it as much as I do with the CGM. This can give me a lot more information.
Dr. Eric:
I’m sure you get a lot of questions about fasting, intermittent fasting. How helpful can intermittent fasting be for someone who has a condition such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes?
Laurie:
Well, I think fasting can be helpful. And I have also seen it not be helpful. I have experienced that for myself when I was going through that thyroid journey, trying to figure things out. I had gained a bit of weight. I decided I wanted to try fasting. I tried keto. I tried several things. When I noticed that my blood sugar was very dysregulated, it made it even more dysregulated. There was a stress factor going on that I hadn’t quite yet recognized. Those things were creating more stress in my body.
Usually, I recommend it to people when I feel that they have gotten a little bit of a better control over their glucose levels and their stress, so we are not adding more stress. I usually like to use a CGM while they’re doing it, so I can see the impact that it’s having. Is it positive or negative? Fasting too long for women in particular, especially when they’re menstruating, we can see a lot of negative effects on the CGM.
It’s very personal. The ones that tend to have more success in my experience tend to be the ones who are already on the healthier side in terms of metabolic health.
Maybe because we are on a thyroid podcast here, I’d love to know what you think. Also, I would say for those people who do have a history of thyroid health issues, I would find it much less supportive. How have you experienced that?
Dr. Eric:
Like you, I think it depends on the person. I will say I do work with people with Hashimoto’s, but I also work with a lot of people with hyperthyroidism and Graves’.
When I dealt with Graves’, I lost 42 pounds. I definitely would not have wanted to incorporate intermittent fasting at that time. My adrenals were taxed. There were a number of reasons why I don’t think I would have been a good candidate for intermittent fasting back then.
Yeah, I would say it depends on the person. I do agree that some people do it extremely. I have had people do it on their own, where they are fasting for 20 hours, and they only have a four-hour eating window. The question is first of all, the stress that is putting on their body on a daily basis. Potentially on their thyroid as well. Also, are they getting enough protein? Nutrients overall?
As far as a 16-8 fast, which is pretty popular, I think it depends on the person. I can’t say that I recommend for most of my patients to fast. If someone is in a good state of health, and they want to do it on a wellness routine, that’s one thing.
If someone is healing, I can’t say it can’t help with healing. I’ve had Cynthia Thurlow and other fasting experts on the podcast. I’m sure many would say it will help with healing and autoimmunity. There is a time and place for that.
I think it’s really individualized. It does depend on the person. You bring up a good point with the CGM. Just another way to see from a blood sugar perspective how their body is handling it.
Laurie:
HRV can be helpful, too. Is it increasing stress? Is it helping you recover? If it’s not getting better, if HRV is going down, then that’s a sign that healing is not going up. I do look at that as well.
To your point about nutrition, absolutely. When women are fasting and trying to heal, and they are not getting enough nutrition, they are not getting the nutrients they need for that healing, fasting is not typically working very well.
Dr. Eric:
Yes, agreed. Before we wrap this up, one more question that you probably won’t be able to answer. I know you use HRV, but when are they going to come out with a continuous cortisol monitor?
Laurie:
I am looking forward to that. I think a continuous insulin monitor would be amazing. I heard recently that’s probably not happening for some reason, which I don’t remember.
I do not know. That would be amazing. And at the same time, I think we’re getting into a period where these are going to become more available to us. I think it’s very cool actually.
And I think it’s even better when you can work with a practitioner who really knows how to use these tools. A lot of us have access to HRV and other metrics on their watch, but they don’t know what to do with them or how supportive it can be. It is nice to go down the avenue of learning about it for yourself.
Wouldn’t that be great if we had a continuous cortisol monitor?
Dr. Eric:
Maybe in the near future. It wouldn’t be a shocker with all the technology they have coming out. Stay tuned, I guess.
For those who are looking to learn even more about balancing blood sugar, how to use CGMs, HRV, where can they find out more about you, Laurie?
Laurie:
My recommendation would be to take one of my quizzes. You can easily get to my site by typing in YourHormoneQuiz.com. Even better, YourBloodSugarQuiz.com. This conversation is about blood sugar. You might want to check out how your blood sugar is doing. Take the quiz, and you will get on my mailing list. You will get all of the details on how you can stay in touch.
You could also visit me at YourBetterBalancedBlueprint.com. You can find me there as well.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you so much. I’ve had other people talk about blood sugar, but this is the most we’ve gone in depth with regards to the CGM. It was great tying it into the HRV as well. This was a wonderful conversation. Appreciate you being on the show.
Laurie:
Thank you so much. Lovely being here. Wishing you and your audience all the best.
Dr. Eric:
Thanks! Same to you, Laurie.