Abbott Lingo Continuous Glucose Monitor Review: Simple and Straightforward

To insert Lingo, you unwrap it and place the carton into the dispenser. The click of the dispenser on your hand, which sends the thread under your skin, stings only slightly. It feels like being snapped with a finger. That’s right way less painful than pricking your finger with a needle while you i bleed many times a day and I was an idiot and should have done this before.

The sensor itself is fine. Most of the time I don’t feel it unless I change my clothes very vigorously and with abandon, in which case I have to be careful. You can choose where to place the sensor; most people choose their non-dominant hand. It’s waterproof, so you can swim and shower with it and you don’t need to charge it.

After turning on the sensor, I opened the Lingo app, signed in, and waved my phone next to it. Done! I was ready to start watching.

Sugar fever

If you’ve never monitored your blood sugar continuously, you’re probably in for a few surprises. Eating in a way that makes sense to 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. Since carrots and bread are carbs, it spikes my blood sugar to an alarming degree. However, an ultra-processed protein bar with peanut butter barely changes my blood sugar, although if you’re healthy, one isn’t necessarily better than the other.

If you reduce the number of carbohydrates you consume, you will reach ketosiswhich is when your body starts burning your body fat instead of readily available blood glucose for energy because you don’t have any. It’s different and less dangerous than getting into 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 walking around too much for the amount of food I was eating, and I was getting hypoglycemic at night. I thought my sleep disturbances were just due to work, stress and being away from my family, but no, I was completely bottomed out.