Ernesto Ramirez

June 3, 2014

Bob Troia was interested in his blood glucose. While he’s not a diabetic and he’s not out of range, he wanted to see if he could lower his fasting glucose levels. He started a long-term tracking experiment where he tested his blood glucose and began to explore the effects of supplementation and lifestyle factors. In this talk, presented at our 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Bob talks about his experiment and what he learned from analyzing his data. Make sure to read his take on what he did, how he did it, and what he learned below.

You can also view the slides here [pdf].

We also asked Bob to answer the three prime questions:
What did you do?
After learning via my 23andMe results that I had an elevated risk for Type 2 diabetes (and having an interest in the longevity benefits of maintaining low blood glucose levels), I began tracking my daily fasting glucose and the effects that diet, exercise, supplements, and stress have on glucose levels so I could take whatever steps I needed to proactively understand, control, and optimize it.

How did you do it?
Over the course of 7 months, each morning I would take a fasting glucose reading using a handheld glucose meter. After establishing a 30-day baseline of daily fasting glucose readings, I began to take supplement called oxaloacetate. It’s been shown to lower and more tightly regulate fasting glucose by mimicking the effects of caloric restriction. It’s a naturally occurring compound found in lots of foods, such as spinach, potatoes, or apples, and it’s as safe as Vitamin C. After several weeks, there was a noticeable improvement in my average values! I then started looking at day-of-week trends in addition to how exercise (in my case, playing soccer) and other things such as travel affected my glucose.

What did you learn?
I learned that I could indeed improve and better stabilize my fasting glucose levels using oxaloacetate – but only in conjunction with intense, interval-type exercise like soccer. My average fasting glucose levels are highest on Mondays (stress of a new work week) and lowest on the weekends. Long airplane travel can adversely effect my glucose levels for several days. Surprisingly, alcohol consumption did not have an effect.