What happens when a Charleston foodie tracks her blood sugar for two weeks?
We know people with diabetes need to keep tabs on their blood sugar. But what if you’re perfectly healthy? Could tracking your glucose reveal something surprising about the way you eat?
Dr. Melvin Brown, who owns CharlestonMD, encourages some of his patients to try continuous glucose monitoring as a way to better understand how their bodies respond to food. The results can challenge assumptions about what makes blood sugar rise. It’s not always the obvious suspects.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring and Everyday Meals
We asked a Charleston food writer to wear a glucose monitor — under $50 on Amazon! — for two weeks while eating her way around the Lowcountry, from eight-course tasting menus to tortilla chips and margaritas.
Then we asked Dr. Brown to review her results and explain what the numbers on the glucose monitor can tell us about our health.
My Glucose Diary
By Erin Perkins
In pursuit of health discovery, I agreed to wear a continuous glucose monitor for two weeks to see how my blood sugar held up as a food journalist. As a freelance writer and editor for my substack Cooter Soup, I try the latest restaurants in the Lowcountry, so my diet ebbs and flows with the latest food and beverage trends.
Wearing the monitor, which is attached to the back of my arm and sends results to my smartphone, will help me better understand how meals, carbohydrates, and other specific foods affect my glucose levels and recognize patterns in my body’s response to eating.
Dr. Melvin Brown of Charleston MD encourages his patients to also try this experiment so they can be educated on how certain foods interact with their bodies, because if they understand that, then it can prevent health problems in the future.
DAY 1: My husband helps me place the monitor. I feel like there’s a more conspicuous place than the back of my arm, like my belly? I suppose I’ll be explaining this new addition to my body at upcoming events (67 mg/dL). According to the app connected to the device, my optimal glucose range is between 70 mg/dL and 140 mg/dL. For breakfast, I have black coffee and a handful of grapes (119 mg/dL). I go for a run, and my glucose goes up (137 mg/dL). For lunch, I have homemade chicken larb (a Thai meat salad) with iceberg lettuce (93 mg/dL).
In the evening, I attend the opening party of the new seafood restaurant Cheeky. At these parties, you usually chase down the servers for a taste of the appetizers. I snag a bite of tuna tartar on toast, a small piece of chicken Milanese, and a teriyaki salmon lettuce wrap. I might have had a few glasses of champagne, too (117 mg/dL).
DAY 2: My day is like yesterday, but this evening I am invited to try the tasting menu at The Restaurant at Zero George. I assume that eight courses with wine pairings will spike my sugar levels, but when I walk out, I am still within normal range (93 mg/DL). This is after consuming fancy snacks, a caviar bump, hamachi on a masa tart, tortellini in ham dashi, halibut covered in thin slices of summer squash, aged duck with Shuler Farm’s peaches, and two desserts. Maybe because the bites are small, they didn’t put me overboard.
DAY 3: After a three-hour hair appointment, I am starving and decide to go to Japanese newcomer Kyn for a late lunch. I order three handrolls—hamachi, salmon, and tuna—and they come with miso soup and a ginger-dressed salad. I think that the rice bumped up my blood sugar (131 mg/DL).
DAY 4: I meet a friend at Mexican spot Santi’s, and I realize a margarita, tortilla chips, and queso aren’t great for glucose levels (170 mg/dL).
DAY 5: I check out the new brunch menu at Leeward, the Lowline Hotel’s recently renovated restaurant. I share fancy deviled eggs, chicken-and-waffle sliders, shrimp and grits, and a goat cheese omelet with a fellow food friend. I take small bites of everything because I don’t like to eat heavy during the day (93 mg/DL).
DAY 6: I’m stuck in juror selection all day. Breakfast is a snack bag of pomegranate vanilla cashews (104 mg/DL). Burbage’s Grocery is nearby, so I have a turkey, Havarti, and bacon sandwich on white bread for lunch (137 mg/DL). When they let us out of the courthouse, I head to Fast & French for a bowl of tomato soup (95 mg/DL).
DAY 9: I’ve mostly been eating boring meals at home, but tonight I’m at a political fundraiser at The Royal American, where pitmaster Rodney Scott is serving his famous whole-hog barbecue. I have a plate with potato salad and an Edmund’s Oast Something Cold beer (115 mg/DL).
DAY 11: Babas is catering a House Beautiful party, so I snack on jamon, caviar, rosé, and a small spring pea tartlet (92 mg/DL). I visit Cheeky for “girl dinner,” which the internet has deemed as fries, a salad, and a martini. Cheeky’s salad copies NYC’s Via Carota version, so it’s packed with peas, crisp prosciutto, and parmesan (104mg/DL).
DAY 12: I cook sweet-and-sour pork lettuce wraps for dinner (93 mg/DL). While changing into pajamas, my sensor pops off. Shame, because checking my app for my glucose levels has replaced my incessant scrolling on TikTok as my favorite iPhone activity.
“A week in your life is kind of like a couple months in everyone else’s life, with different microcosms of different types of eating,” says Dr. Brown as he reviews my results. He isn’t surprised my numbers went up after I ate so many tortilla chips at the Mexican restaurant.
“I always talk to my patients about what food looks like in your intestines,” he says. “When we were all roaming the earth as cavemen and pulling food from the ground, all the carbs were in a fiber-and vitamin-wrapped package. Your intestines had to break all that down to get to the sugar. When you strip those things away, it’s just sugar.”
He explains that when I ate whole fruits and vegetables, my sugar rose gently and then fell back down, but those chips on an empty stomach were a different story.
“When the sugar hits and goes straight across the membrane of your intestines, it’s a spike, and that’s just not good for you on so many levels.”
Dr. Brown says that learning about food can help us all better understand our bodies and optimize our health. If you’re interested in trying it yourself, you can easily purchase a glucose monitor on Amazon.
