Blood Sugar & CGMs | S3E8 (E028)
Traditionally we gain insight to our glucose levels through standard bloodwork or by using a glucometer and lancelet to poke a finger multiple times each day. In recent years, Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) have been available to diabetes patients and now companies like Nutrisense, make CGMs more widely available. For those looking to fine tune their health, their hormones, their metabolism a CGM can be a hugely valuable tool. This week, Toréa and Evie talk with Catherine Staffieri, a Dietician at Nutrisense to learn more about this cool biometric technology.
In This Episode
About Nutrisense as a company (02:19)
Working with a dietician (03:01)
Glucose and Insulin imbalances (04:40)
Ease of the CGM (06:29)
Difference of fingerstick vs CGM (08:21)
Big glucose influencers that are NOT food (11:45)
Imbalanced glucose leads to other hormone imbalances (12:46)
Discover more data than just glucose (16:29)
Top 3 ways to balance blood sugar (21:03)
Avoiding disordered eating triggers of tracking food (24:34)
Surprising foods that don’t create blood sugar spiks (27:47)
Resources mentioned
Nutrisense CGMs Use code TOREA25 or EVIE25 to save $25
Nutrisense Blog (lots of science backed info)
Catherine Staffieri’s Instagram
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 0:08
Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. I am your host, Toréa Rodriguez. And I’m joined by the lovely co host, Evie Takacs. Both of us are Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners and we love working with women from all over the world, through our virtual programs, helping women not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves, they’ve been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Now, please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you like what you hear today, we would love for you to hit that follow button, leave a review in Apple podcast, share with your friends, and keep coming back for more. Let’s start today’s adventure shall we?
Toréa Rodriguez 1:09
Welcome back, everybody. We are excited because today we have a guest. I personally have worked with Catherine. Catherine is with Nutrisense. And a lot of you know that both Evie and I really love getting data from something called a Continuous Glucose Monitor. But before we get started, Catherine, why don't you introduce yourself, tell us what Nutrisense is and then we can go from there.
Catherine Staffieri 1:31
Sure. Thank you guys for having me today. I appreciate being able to talk about all things, Glucose, Nutrition, everything. It's really sort of a happy place for me. So I'm happy to be here to talk to you guys about it.
Toréa Rodriguez 1:44 Cool.
Catherine Staffieri 1:45 Well, I'm a Registered Dietician and it's a second career for me. I used to work in finance, and then switch gears went back to school was like, this is really what I want to be doing with my life. So I happened upon Nutrisense. I've been working for them for about a year and a half and it's just been an incredible journey, particularly for people in that Nutrition, Dietitian fields, we really get to geek out with science, and we get to help people on sort of that functional level that we really feel is super cool in order to help people reach their health goals so.
Toréa Rodriguez 2:18 Super cool.
Catherine Staffieri 2:19 A little bit about Nutrisense, Nutrisense is a, I guess it's a company, it's a mindset, it's a, it's a whole movement to help people really reach their health potential. And by doing that, you can use a Continuous Glucose Monitor, that's the hardware and then the software is the app that we have created tons of data, you can just really geek out with all the data that we give you. And then the extra special part that I love is you get a Dietician, you get someone to guide you through the whole process to help you interpret your data to help you reach your goals to help you set goals. Maybe you don't even know what goals you want. But you get an absolute professional total rockstar to help hold your hand the entire way.
Toréa Rodriguez 3:01
That was something that was so attractive to me when I stumbled across Nutrisense. So I've known about CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) for years and before probably about five years ago, now maybe six, it was a big deal, you'd have to get a prescription from a doctor, the doctor would have to prescribe it, the hardware was clunky, you'd have to attach it to your belly or some someplace like that and the data you were getting was it was okay. But it wasn't really showing you the kind of data that Nutrisense shows in their app, and so I think the thing that really made it attractive to me is number one, I would get a heck of a lot more data a lot more granularity and have somebody teach me how to interpret this data. And that was something that I really enjoyed about it. So curious, in terms of the data that we're talking about, let's talk first about Glucose. Why do we care about Glucose? And what are the other traditional methods of getting a glucose reading, and then we can get into how Nutrisense diverse?
Catherine Staffieri 3:59
Sure. So, Glucose is super important. We are not anti-glucose, Glucose, like runs basically everything. So glucose is the main source of fuel in your body, particularly your brain. Really important. The body can also run an alternative fuel source Ketones, but that's a whole nother conversation or you could dive into it with your dietitian.
Toréa Rodriguez 4:21 Yes.
Catherine Staffieri 4:23 But, glucose is super important, right? But what we want with Glucose is to be in sort of homeostasis, kind of in a good balance with your glucose. So glucose is something that you generally take in through food, generally through carbohydrates. We're talking sort of high level stuff.
Toréa Rodriguez 4:39 Yep.
Catherine Staffieri 4:40 And the body can break down carbohydrates. And it's that simple building block, right? That really fuels everything in your body. So it's definitely something that we need. What happens is over time, we get out of whack so when you take in glucose, your body will then produce insulin inside and those two we have a bunch of visuals that we use Just like a locking key, or maybe a boat or stuff like that. So what really the insulin is the key that unlocks the cell and allows the glucose to go in. If you don't have enough of the keys, you can’t open up the doors, right? If we're out of whack here in terms of how much glucose we're taking in, and how much insulin we're producing, or maybe the key isn't working, that's that resistance, the body is out of balance and that can lead to other health issues. So what we want to see what the goal is, is that we want to see those things sort of matching up the amount of glucose that we're taking in and all the various forms, and the amount of insulin that our body is producing, are matching up to each other, and the body has those natural rises and falls in the glucose levels.
Toréa Rodriguez 5:43
Yeah. And so traditionally, we could measure glucose through a blood panel through our doctor and then there's the old fashioned, I call it old fashioned, it's actually still very forward, and prevalently used, which is using a finger prick device. So you're literally taking a pin, or a special device landslip device to cause a blood spot to show up on your finger, and then you're using a strip to measure the glucose from there. And then we have something that's called a continuous glucose monitor. So can you explain a little bit about how the continuous glucose monitor functions? Like, we're not poking our finger all day long, right? And this is one of the benefits of it. But can you describe a little bit about how it functions, and then why we want that 24 hour insight as opposed to just a few data points throughout the day?
Catherine Staffieri 6:29
Definitely. So what we're using is a little sensor, it's about the size of a quarter, right was not super big, not very thick. I think the hardest part, the hurdle is just putting it on.
Evie Takacs 6:41
It's a mental game. It's not hard at all, it doesn't hurt like I don't feel a thing. It's just like, you're because you're aware of what's happening. I think that makes it worse.
Toréa Rodriguez 6:50
There. So, let me just describe this for viewers and listeners who don't quite know. So this quarter size sensor that's on has an applicator, a plastic applicator that places it onto your arm, the visual of that applicator is the most mentally daunting thing because it looks like it's a needle, but it's not a needle, and it doesn't hurt at all. But we have this experience of like, ooh, all needles hurt. Therefore, I'm terrified to do this thing. I remember it took me probably half an hour to build up the mental gumption of like, okay, I just, I just kind of just, I just got to do this. And finally did it. And then I was like, Well, that was anticlimactic.
Evie Takacs 7:29
I know.
Toréa Rodriguez 7:30
I didn’t feel a thing so. Yes. So that's the little daunting part. But do do tell us a little bit more.
Catherine Staffieri 7:35
Yeah. So it's it is it's a mental game. And it really, I think the finger sticks hurt more than that. Because there's even more nerve endings in your finger. You put the CGM on the back of your arm where you have some extra padding, most of us have some extra padding back that you don't feel a thing. There's, you know, there's nothing back there. So the sensor is a little sort of white desk very thin and on the middle of it is a tiny filament, a little tiny sensor. And that's what's going into you and sticking into and it's measuring this is one of the differences between the fingerstick and the CGM. It's measuring your Interstitial Fluid, right. So it's not sticking into a vein or anything like that, if it fell out, you know, blood doesn't come gushing out or anything like that. So it's,
Toréa Rodriguez 8:18
It's not dramatic at all.
Catherine Staffieri 8:21
And but but there is a difference, then for some people who are well versed in the fingerstick versus the CGM readings is that what you're going to get in a blood glucose reading from a finger stick, there's actually a little bit of a lag time between what you're getting from that reading versus the reading on the Interstitial Fluid from the CGM. And that's just a matter of sort of the the glucose making its way sort of through your system, kind of like a train, we sort of compared to a train chugging along, and it doesn't get there until a little bit after what you're seeing on your finger stick. But the main thing is just like you said, it's continuous, it is 24/7 for two weeks, that's the life of the sensors two weeks, and you get readings while you're sleeping. When you're stressed out in a board meeting, if you are running around doing errands, if you are relaxing, and watching Netflix, you get continuous glucose readings, all you have to do is just scan it, the data gets downloaded to your phone, it stores up to eight hours of data. So you really only have to scan like three times a day. So people get nervous, like, do I scan before a meal after a meal? I said don't worry about it just as long as you do it within eight hours. So it's very user friendly. It's very easy. And you get all of this data to really see well not just how am I doing before a meal or after a meal. But how am I doing all throughout the rest of my day based on all the other parts of my life? Not just my meals, right? I think you guys both got to see how many other parts of your life influenced your glucose readings, right?
Toréa Rodriguez 9:49
Yeah, absolutely.
Evie Takacs 9:51
Yeah, that was one of the coolest things that I picked up on by using the CGM from Nutrisense is because I was doing finger pricks and you know, Toréa kind of got me on that. And I had gotten really interested because I was diagnosed with insulin resistance at some point and so it was always in the back of my mind, my family, there's type two diabetes and you know, older family members and so you know, I'm like, that's very preventative. I don't want to get to that point, like, what can I do and so, it's been this awareness. And I always thought it was just food. I was like, it's just the food that I'm eating. And what I noticed was that I would have different changes and elevations and spikes in my glucose, regardless of if I ate or not, it had nothing to do with my food. And I give this example and I've shared this a lot with clients, and I shared it with Toréa. But there was one day in particular, where there was a lot of stress, I'd kind of, I'd call it more like an acute stress day, like just there was a crisis, right? And I had this CGM on and you know, I didn't pay too much attention to it that day, but I, you know, I was eating fairly normal. But then the next day look at my glucose was like, over 30 units higher than normal just in that day and I'm like, the only thing that was different was that I was extremely stressed and I had so many things I had to get done, and just all of this, like emotional stress, but nothing else was different. And that was a huge, like, light bulb for me of how many of us that have high blood sugar, or we go to the doctor, and we're told, like, Oh, you're you're trending towards this and they don't cover anything else that could be contributing, and maybe the person's nutrition really isn't the biggest culprit. And so that was huge for me. So I'm glad that you share that of that's a benefit to having the CGM is it's not, it's taking other considerations. And same with cold plunging Toréa and I love doing cold plunges. And so we'd see really interesting fluctuations when we do a cold plunge that I never would have known. And so it was just cool to see how these different things that have become day to day, or normal or abnormal actually influenced my glucose. So then I don't feel so bad. Like when things are a little off. I'm like, Well, maybe that's because I have been stressed this week or whatever it might be.
Catherine Staffieri 11:45
Totally, totally, I think the stress, the exercise the sleep, I think those are the ones that people are these, like lightbulb moments like any, you kind of come to this thinking like, Oh, I'm not going to eat the Doritos because I know what's going to happen. But like, you're like, I didn't realize everything else that was going on. And I think that also speaks to, you know, we have different sort of levels in terms of time lengths that you can sign up for and I just think that it's so impactful to see over time, you know, not just sort of this one, two week period in your life, but like overtime over the past three months, or whatever it is, like, you know, what have I been able to shift? And what can I see in those time periods, like, you know, maybe we had a vacation one week, and then you know, I started back in a new job another week or something, you can really see how your body responds to stuff over time. And for women, particularly also your cycle, just your menstrual cycle wherever you are in life, and you can kind of see how those hormones are playing a role. And that also was helpful over a month to month and week to week that you can really see some patterns start to emerge,
Toréa Rodriguez 12:46
Hands down. And I would say something that I learned a lot through this experience of understanding the CGM is that if our blood sugar is out of balance, or if our insulin levels are out of balance, good luck balancing your Cortisol Hormones, good luck balancing your sex hormones, right. So there's so much out there of like, oh, I'll just do a hormone panel. And then I'll just take some supplements and I’ll balance my hormones, but if your stress is out of whack, and your blood sugar is out of whack as a result, I mean, you're only going to get so far. And it makes that protocol kind of subpar, in a way. So it's almost like really getting back to the basics of looking at blood sugar, and how your overall experience in life, right? It's like it's more than one factor, like what Evie was saying. It's like it's more than just the food. Like we really want to look at a lot of other factors and take that 30,000 foot view. And this is a device that we can use to get that information and get that mass of information. Like so many light bulbs had gone off when I worked with you, Catherine, because you were my assigned dietician and one thing that I found fascinating that I never knew about our body's ability to manage insulin and manage glucose had to do with eating after sundown. And that was something that you taught me that there's a whole Circadian Rhythm to the way that we eat food that's reliant upon where the sun is in the sky and that was a huge learning for me. So now I try and eat all of my evening meals as close to or before sundown as much as I can. It's gonna be challenging this winter, but let's see what we can do. Right?
Catherine Staffieri 14:21
Yeah, totally true. I think there's like really, really cool research about this Chrono Nutrition and some people call it early time restricted feed you know, there's all sorts of different you know names or wathever.
Toréa Rodriguez 14:32
Oh wow that sounds complicated when we’re talking about it. But, Yeah. Okay.
Catherine Staffieri 14:36
But it's I think it really is when you think about just sort of how our bodies have adapted and kind of, you know, unfortunately our modern lifestyle doesn't help with eating early. Right? We work late, right? If you have a family with children, you know, you're running around like a crazy person. Maybe you volunteer at night. I mean, like, it's not a sun up to sundown lifestyle that we lead it's a before sun up to well past sundown lifestyle that we lead, right? And I think.
Toréa Rodriguez i 15:02 Yeah.
Catherine Staffieri 15:03 You know, working on ways to, you know, we just aren't as sensitive to insulin later at night, which is what we talked about. and so when you are having a dessert or alcohol or a higher carbohydrate dinner at 8pm, your body just naturally cannot handle it as well as it could if you had it at, say, 5pm or if you had maybe all those things at lunch instead. I mean, it's really interesting to do those different kinds of tests. I always tell people, I say, I'm not against dessert, but have it after lunch, you know, switch it up, have an afternoon ice cream or something as opposed to a 9pm one when our body's like, Oh, that's really hard for me to handle right now.
Toréa Rodriguez 15:41
Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting, because, you know, this tool allows you to do those kinds of experiments and see, like, well, what does my body do? How does my body react under these different scenarios, so that you can see exactly what you might need to shift and it's, in a way, it's giving us more data to enable us to results faster? Yeah, because we could, let's face it, we could prick our finger all the time, it gets really hard, because it gets a really sore, but it takes a much longer period of time to infer all of that information. Whereas we're getting a lot more data, tell us a little bit about neutral sensor itself and the app and the kinds of data that you get, because it's not just a glucose reading.
Catherine Staffieri 16:29
What we do so when you're, if you're wearing the sensor, or you've got it on your arm, you scan it, your data comes in, And the first thing that you see is that is the dashboard, and it gives you kind of, you know, that that a lot, you know, connects all of your stuff into a graph and we slice and dice it 17 ways to Sunday. But at a high level, a lot of people get like, you know, they can get really lost in the weeds are very, you know, on a high level, we give you a daily glucose score. So if you just are stressed, and all this data is really like overwhelming, you just look at your daily glucose score scale of one to 10, right. And we have green, and red and orange and all kinds of colors to kind of help you figure out where you are on that spectrum, right? We want to aim for 10s. But the other thing about our app is that we have it with set defaults in terms of maximums and minimums. But everyone is different. And we really you work with your dietician right away, and you set those upper levels and those lower levels that work for you.
Toréa Rodriguez 17:28 Yeah.
Catherine Staffieri 17:29 Right. So we don't, you know, if someone say has type two diabetes, or is pre-diabetic, or just you know, is really having high blood sugar levels, maybe their bandwidth is going to be a lot wider than someone else's, that's okay. Maybe someone just runs lower than someone else. That's okay, too. So our app is meant to be adjusted to meet the individual wherever they are, and to help them meet their goals. So that's the other thing I think, so people can get a little bit overwhelmed and like, oh, it's not perfect, or, you know, they fall into this, like, I need to win mindset or something. It's just about you, the individual and your own data, and your own goals. And then we really break it down, you can get a score for your meals. So you can log your meals in there, and you can see, Ooh, let's see that breakfast was a six. Let me try this and maybe I can bring it up to an eight tomorrow. So you can see that kind of on a high level and then if you really want to dig in, we've got you know, 7 day averages 14 Day averages, we've got macros, we've got standard deviation, we can you can really dive into it as much as you want.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:33 Yeah, super cool.
Evie Takacs 18:34
And I will say that information. I think Toréa and I talked about it. I think for some people, it's really good. Some people it's a little too much at first, but I will say that, when I first looked at it, I have a background of counting macros. I mean, I've done all that sort of stuff. So I was like, Oh, this is actually really cool. But how do I put like, how do I apply any of this but my dietitian was the one that sent me like a weekly summary of this is what all these numbers mean? And I was like, Oh my gosh, thank goodness for her because that made so much more sense to me. And so it was like instead of me trying to decipher what does this mean? Or what does this average mean? It was a lot easier because she put it off for me, which I think was a really nice benefit to having Nutrisense is because I didn't have to figure out what all these separate numbers meant. And like what the trend was overall.
Catherine Staffieri 19:19
Right? The trends or the the comparison, I think,
Evie Tacaks 19:22 Yeah.
Catherine Staffieri 19:22 The dietitian can kind of pull back a little bit and say, Okay, you're really spiking a lot with lunch. Let's think about this. Let's compare a couple of lunches. What are you doing before lunch? What are you doing after lunch? You're saying you have like an energy crash in the afternoon. Okay, let's think about how we can make these tweaks. You've got this partner kind of helping you decipher what might be going on that you're like, I don't know how to fix it, you know, what I think is really helpful.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:47
And super helpful. I think that was one of the other things about nutritions. Because let's face it, you're not the only CGM company on the market, right? But one of the coolest things about Nutrisense is that you do get that personalized individual attention from a dietitian in the first 30 days that's included and that to me was hands down, probably one of the best features ever. Because I'm not a dietician. You know, it's like I know a lot about food and I know a lot about health and biochemistry. But, seeing that information, and not really knowing how to make the different kinds of tweaks, I think, would have been really, really daunting. So I love that part. About Nutrisense.Yeah.
Evie Takacs 20:28
Yeah I thought that was really good. And I actually had a question about some of the some of those trends and things that we look at, because you mentioned, let's say, something's happening at your lunchtime. And you said, what are things you're doing before and after? So what are things that you could do around meals to, you know, support your blood sugar, because Toréa and I have one that we suggest to all clients we talk a lot about, but I'd love to hear, what are some things that someone could suggest of like, Hey, we're seeing this is running high, or you're having those slumps? What are some things to do support your body after you eat? Or before you eat?
Catherine Staffieri 20:58
We got so many.
Evie Takacs 21:01
Maybe your top three?
Catherine Staffieri 21:03
Yeah, I would say you know, and again, like we said, it's all about testing, right? What might work for someone doesn't necessarily work for someone else. and your lifestyle might not allow for it. Right? So I always I mean, we can talk about food, you know, first we can always say Okay, so let's think about what are you choosing to have for lunch, I like to tweak the order in which you're eating your macros. So some people start with maybe an iced tea or you know, sweetened beverage or something like that or maybe they're starting their meal with some fruit or something. And I say, okay, that's okay, but let's change it around, let's have your protein first, or if this is your first meal of the day, because you might be practicing a fasting window or something like that, let's break that fast with some protein first or a little bit of avocado, a little bit of healthy fats I'm gonna get let's, let's just, you know, tweak that. So we'll talk about the order in which you're eating and I'll look at to see if they're fasting again, at this is their first meal of the day, we'll think about what they're putting in their body first, I might look at their caffeine intake and say, okay, you know, how much caffeine have you had in the morning prior leading up to this? And then the other main one is movement. I'll say, Okay, we'll look back. Okay, did you, did you get a walk in today? Did you exercise this morning? Was today a gym day or a CrossFit day for you? What happened after your meal? Did you walk after your meal, that's like the main thing I try and get everyone I my little stupid saying, after you eat, move your feet.
Evie Takacs 22:34 That's cute. I love it.
Toréa Rodriguez 22:34 I love it.
Catherine Staffieri 22:36 It’s so hard to get people to do, I don't even know like some jumping jacks. You know, run around, walk the stairs in your office, if you can build in that time to move around and give your body the chance to use up the energy that you just took in.
Evie Takacs 22:49
Yeah, and that was a big thing.
Toréa Rodriguez 22:51
Yeah, what's so lovely about that is there are a lot of cultures that have that built into their culture. So the first time I visited Italy, for example, when we would go to these villages, it'd be post dinner post lunchtime, and every, the whole family, grandparents and parents and little kids. They're all walking across the piazza. Right? They're all doing this little walk after they eat, and you know, at first I saw that, and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. That's a cultural thing. And I never really put, well, I knew the information. So this is a cool thing about the CGM, right is that we can know a lot of information in our head. But, whether or not we actually see it in action with regards to our own body and our own body's reaction, sometimes we won't actually implement that knowledge. And so when I got to see the effect on the glucose post meal, if I just walked down the street and back, like, it doesn't take much at all, but that effect on dampening that response time was mind boggling blowing. And so now it's just become a habit, right? But sometimes we have to see the data in order to actually take the action.
Catherine Staffieri 24:01
It's a huge motivator. I think this CGM, I mean, we talked about you, it can be sort of a blessing and a curse. Sometimes you don't want to see the data. But if you can see the positive results of something like that, you're so much more likely to, you know, grab your dog and go for a walk after dinner instead of just letting them out in the backyard. Or, you know, grabbing your friend and say, instead of getting a glass of wine, let's go for a walk together, you know, or something that you can do at the end of the day to move around is really helpful. I think it's hard in the winter, if you're living in like a colder, darker place, but we have options, we have ideas.
Toréa Rodriguez 24:34
We can all bundle up, right? It's just like, get out that puffy jacket, get your hat on, throw those shoes on, let's do it. Can we talk for a minute about that dark side that you alluded to? A lot of women have had an experience at some point in their lifetime, whether it's through dieting through being really focused on fitness, counting calories, counting macros, that have landed them in the space of disordered eating on somewhere on that spectrum, and I know that talking about the CGM for some of my clients, they're very hesitant to look at the data because they're, they're afraid that that is going to trigger them into that behavior cycle again, what kinds of things can people do differently? Or how can they work with their dietician at Nutrisense to help them not fall into that trap again?
Catherine Staffieri 25:20
Yeah, I think that's a really powerful question and a really mindful way to approach a tool like a CGM. So first and foremost, we do screen for your active eating disorders. So you know, if you are currently, you know, going through something like that, then this is not the right tool for you at this time. Right. So just wanted to put that out there.
Toréa Rodriguez 25:42
And by active eating disorder, Catherine, you mean somebody actively experiencing Anorexia, Bulimia that's out of their control at that time, right? You're not talking about somebody who's just judging themselves based off of what they're eating that day, which is a different style of disordered eating.Right?
Catherine Staffieri 26:00
Correct. Because there's that sort of Orthorexia. So, and that obsession with healthy eating, and all of that, so yeah, you know, we certainly don't want this to be a tool to be used in any harmful way for anyone. But, I would say that if it's something that has been in your past history, and you feel comfortable sharing that with your dietitian, we are all you know, aware of that in terms of our training, and we can absolutely keep that in the forefront of how we proceed together and the goals that we sat and helping you achieve those goals. So I would say as much as you are willing to share that information with your dietician, we are an ally, to help you make sure that anything that could possibly be triggering, you know, we avoid that we avoid that, but I think we have some people feel like CGMs are only for diabetics, or you know, only if you have like a condition or something, should you be using these but I really feel like like any tool, like any tracking tool, it can be empowering, it can be motivating, it can maybe help you expand your ability to eat certain foods that you were very fearful of eating in the past, it can help in a very safe space to make a little test of something with a professional to help you and help you feel comfortable testing potatoes, if you haven't had potatoes in a long time or pasta, you can feel comfortable about it, and you can feel safe trying it out and know that your body is handling it well and that you can feel healthy about when you're having certain foods that might have been perhaps off limits of your own doing in the past. So, like anything, you know, it's a tool, and we hope that it's used for, for good and as a motivation. But, I agree that there are some times where it can be you just see stuff that maybe is hard to handle.
Toréa Rodriguez 27:47
Yeah, yeah, bananas, that was mine, I was afraid to eat a banana because I was afraid it was going to, you know, spike my blood sugar and what I discovered is that it doesn't do it as nearly as much as I had presumed and if I couple it was like peanut butter, it's even less, right. So if I'm combining it, but what's really cool about the Nutrisense app is it does not force you to log your food down to the teaspoon or quarter cup of ingredient, which is awesome. Now, if you want to go there, you have the ability to with that app, right? But you can also get away with just saying, you know, I had takeout from such and such restaurant and you have kind of a reference point of what it was that you ate so that you can kind of see what that food is doing. So I think it's beautiful, that it's flexible in that way that even if you were not really logging your food, you're still able to get so much insight and valuable information.
Catherine Staffieri 28:43
And to that point, if you are doing this and you say, you know, perhaps logging food is not helpful for me and can lead to other behaviors, that's totally fine. We can focus on exercise, we can focus on sleep, we can focus on stress. I mean, you know, there are there are many other ways to approach the data that's coming in, you know, if logging those meals, and you don't have to log your weight, you don't have to do any of that stuff if you don't want to. But there are many ways to improve upon your health, you know, with this data, so we you know, so that we can really meet people.
Toréa Rodriguez 29:13
Yeah. Evie any more questions that you have for Catherine?
Evie Takacs 29:16
No, I'm just really appreciative for you coming on and sharing this with everybody and Toréa and I talked about it and mentioned our use of it on previous episodes and with clients and on social media. So, it's nice to have an official conversation recorded with someone from there and again, thank you for everything that Nutrisense does. It was a really great experience. I'm sure I'll be back. I'm taking a little bit of a break now. But I'm sure I'll be back because my dietitian was also really helpful. So it's a great experience overall. And we've actually turned on some clients to them as well because we love them so much. So
Toréa Rodriguez 29:45
Yeah, so Nutrisense has been great. They're offering a code for you to get a discount. We will include that in the show notes. But Catherine, is there any other way that people can find out more about neutral cents or read more articles or get more educated if they're curious about this,
Catherine Staffieri 30:02
So glad you asked. We have a fantastic website that is chock full of blogs, blog articles, like our blog is so amazing. I mean, anything you want to know about, you know, avocados, you want to know about aging and nutrition, you want to know about metabolic health, fitness. It's really fantastic. And they're bite sized articles. They are research. They are science evidence based, but they are not overwhelming, right? So www.nutrisense.io is a great resource and then also we're on Instagram, and we're all over I think I don't even know if we're doing TikToks yet, but who knows? They haven't.
Toréa Rodriguez 30:43
It's all good. Oh, good.
Catherine Staffieri 30:45
But yes, the website is a great resource.
Toréa Rodriguez 30:47
Fantastic. We really appreciate you coming on and talking to us today about one of our favorite tools to kind of data mine and get some insight into your own personal health. So thank you so much, Catherine. Yes, thank you.
Catherine Staffieri 30:58
Thanks, guys. I appreciate that. Have a great day.
Toréa Rodriguez 31:05
Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. If you’re ready to dig deeper into your health, stop playing the Whack-a-Symptom game, start testing to get better guidance, you can find more about Toréa at torearodriguez.com and you can find Evie at holisticallyrestored.com. Want a peek into what it’s like to work with us? Come join us at our Optimized Wellness Community. You can find the invitation link in the show notes below. And if you have a question for the show, you can submit your question under the podcast section of torearodriguez.com. Finally, if you found something helpful in this episode, don’t forget to leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. They’re gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, see you outside!
