Then, you put the stamp on your arm and depress it until you hear a loud click. You try to find an out-of-the-way spot on the back of your arm, ideally in the little pocket between your triceps and deltoid, and you clean the area with an included alcohol pad. The disk-shaped sensor comes embedded in a larger, round plastic stamp. Each one lasts for 14 days, so you have to swap them halfway through.

The gadget accounts for much of the cost of the Levels program.

Instead, it works with a product called the Freestyle Libre, made by Abbott. These products themselves aren’t super new, and Levels doesn’t actually make this one. The disk that’s stuck to me is a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). We may all respond differently to the same exact foods, exercise, or sleep routines, and while some rules of thumb may hold somewhat constant, the only way to know for sure is to experiment and track the results, which finally brings us back to the thingy on my shoulder. What causes a spike in me may not cause a spike in you. The TL DR version is this: High spikes in your glucose levels are bad, but every body is different, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that works for humans. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, Levels wrote what it calls its Ultimate Guide to Metabolic Fitness, which is a fascinating read and goes into more detail than I can here. This is all a fairly high-level breakdown.

The glucose monitor has a probe that inserts into your arm. According to a 2018 study from UNC at Chapel Hill, only about 12 percent of Americans are metabolically healthy, which is a frighteningly low number. This can lead to a whole host of medical problems, including type-2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and potentially things like cancer, Alzheimer’s, reproductive issues, fatigue, brain fog, and much more. Big doses of glucose can also cause your pancreas to make too much insulin, which can lead to something known as “insulin resistance,” where your cells start ignoring the insulin and take up less and less glucose over time, which means more and more glucose stays in your blood. It may damage your liver, brain, and other systems. It may get stored in fat cells as triglycerides. Your muscles can’t take it all up, and bad things start to happen. When there’s too much glucose in your blood, it sort of overwhelms your system. The problem is that there can be too much of a good thing. When that happens, your pancreas gets a signal to release insulin, which is a hormone that allows the cells in your body to take up the glucose and use it as energy (every cell in your body uses glucose). Your digestive process breaks down the foods you eat (especially the carbohydrates, but fats and proteins, too) and converts much of it into glucose, which it puts into your bloodstream. You might think of glucose as the primary building block for energy inside your body. Casey Means, the company’s co-founder and chief medical officer.īut let’s back up a little and talk about glucose itself. “Levels is currently a general health and wellness program not intended to diagnose, manage, or treat any health conditions,” says Dr. But Levels is marketing itself as a wellness product for anyone to use and isn’t making any diagnostic claims. Glucose monitoring devices like these are traditionally used by diabetics, who need to know their blood sugar levels and when to administer insulin or treat for low blood sugar. It’s aimed toward athletes and the health-conscious who are looking for everything from optimum performance to simply staying healthy. It’s sort of like a Fitbit for your metabolic health, and it currently costs a hefty $400 for the one-month program.

Levels Health is a new product and service - currently in late-stage beta but gettable by the public - designed to monitor your body’s glucose response to different stimuli, like exercise and stress and especially the foods you eat. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to cyborg status. Under it is a smaller plastic disk, with a little thread that is actually sticking into my body and analyzing my ever-changing blood-sugar levels. It’s round, about two inches in diameter, and it looks like a high-end Band-Aid. For the last 30 days, just barely peeking out from under the sleeve of my T-shirts, there has been a big black sticker. “What is that thing on your shoulder?” has been the question I’ve been asked most frequently for the last month.

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