so you just bought or you're planning to buy the level's health and their respective continuous glucose monitor in today's video I'm going to walk you through every single feature how it all works how to install the hardware on your body and what the overall experience is like let's get into it if you haven't bought it yet there is a link down below that helps support the channel so I can keep making videos like this what is a continuous glucose monitor it's essentially a little computer chip that goes into your arm and it's going to measure your interstitial glucose so that way we can understand how does our lifestyle and our diet factors impact our glucose levels this is mainly used by diabetics as a medical device but in this scenario I and anyone else who orders it through levels is using it to optimize their health and this is not a medical use case please keep that in mind so more than likely you got the levels health kit in your mail if you're a based in the United States you will need to sign up online give them some of your health details there will be a doctor that will approve your prescription for these continuous glucose monitors you will select from two different options as of today one is going to last you 10 days so you get three of those and the the other one will last you 14 days and you get two of those first we'll talk about the installation process the syncing process and then next we'll talk about the app and how to use the whole levels Health app as well as some calibration steps installation so I installed this levels Health CGM actually yesterday and I put the active cover patch on and on but the most important thing that I would say is I prefer to shave the area that you're going to be applying this on maybe you're hairless and that and that doesn't apply to you make sure to clean it you can typically do this right after you shower or just get some water and and then you will wipe it down with an alcohol swab just to clean that surface area of your skin depending on the type of CGM that you ordered you will get an installation piece that looks something like this one is a circle and one is more like a oval what I like to do is be really diligent on where I'm putting it I put it on the back side of my arm depending on which glucose monitor you get you will get some documents that might say to place it on your lower belly this is not for medical use I just want you to remember that I'm not a diabetic people who are buying this product are not diabetic and this is not for medical use so placing it on this region is not required what I prefer to do then is to find kind of the fat part of my arm so anywhere where there's least amount of muscle and I typically will if I have multiple sensors I will switch arms as I'm doing different sensors and as I remove the sensor and I need to insert the next one I will switch to the other arm but what I like to do is I'll shake out my arm and then I'll Flex my tricep and my shoulder muscle I'll hold it in the mirror and try to find the region where there's the least amount of muscle tension cuz if I'm working out a lot if I'm squeezing and doing a lot of shoulder work it's just going to have more weird Sensations so ideally I try to minimize that as much as possible once I've found that place in the mirror I'll be like okay I'll take the applicator I'll place it over that spot I'll hold it I'll double check and then boom I press it this will actually poke a needle into you and it will send a filament in with it the needle comes right out the filament stays in the filament is flexible it's wobbly and then the filament is attached to another sensor that is reading your interstitial glucose not your blood glucose but interstitial it works the same way with both applicators just place it on over that area press the button boom it's in painless once that is done if you do get the 10-day version you will have a transmitter that will actually go inside of the sensor so you will slide the transmitter in and then once the 10 days are up you'll actually keep the transmitter and throw away the sensor and really make sure to clean the transmitter the transmitter will last you 90 days from the day that you start your first use these are the applicators this kind of what they look like they have codes different ways to put them on the circular version you will have to take the applicator and actually put it inside of here and then once that's prepared then you can applicate it on with the oval option you will have to remove this piece and install the sensor and then place the transmitter in after the fact once you have completed that process levels does provide two active cover patches right you have your oval shape and you have your circular shape so they will send you the proper length you will place this over the sensor I like to keep this part directly over the sensor and then the sticky part will go around your skin try to clean as much as possible around that area as well as get any hair out of the way cuz that will just help with the removal as well as making sure this active cover stays on for as long as possible I have noticed that if I swim a lot I sweat a lot if I go to the sauna a lot it's going to make the active cover start to wrinkle a bit more it starts to slightly come off on the edges and that can happen around day you know 9 10 11 13 14 so be ready for that there was one time where I was swimming super fast and the entire thing just came off depending on your lifestyle the moisture Factor you know this is on your skin and it's not supposed to be there and and things can cause it to fall off if anything does happen reach out to levels customer support they have been super kind when it comes to issues like that there's also other scenarios where I have actually removed it like even right now if I lean back in the chair and I kind of turn my arm the wrong way it can budge up against the edge of the seat and I can feel it if I do it too hard could come out when I'm walking down the hallways I'm a very wide human being and sometimes I don't fit in certain walkways so like if my arm hits up against the door or up against the wall like that can help cause it fall off if I'm trying to put on my shirt and the shirt's kind of tight and I'm like really tugging on it the shirt can also pull on it cuz you know it's not really part of my skin it's supposed to feel like it but there's definitely Parts where things can hook onto it and really pull out so just be mindful you have this in the back of your arm be ready just take a little bit slower on this side you can't just be running into walls like you're Invincible maybe that's just me honestly I don't know these are the alcohol pads you want to make sure that you clean the area before you install this that's really important you are going to puncture a needle into your skin and it's going to take a filament in with it needle will leave but just because you're putting that filament inside make sure the area is clean the next step is pairing the transmitter and the device to your phone depending on which one you get they will have instructions just follow that it's relatively simple uh it'll either be via Bluetooth or NFC if you do choose the Bluetooth option it's going to stream to this app and if you choose the other option it's going to use NFC so you actually have to scan it and you will open up the app you tap scan sensor it's going to pop up right as scan and you'll actually just tap it over the sensor and that's how you will download the data but both of those devices will then send the information to levels oh now once you have gathered that data inside of the CGM app that information will be sent straight to your levels Health app and this is where all of the fun stuff happens all the insights the data entry and it's a big party but before we get into into that I highly recommend you calibrate the sensor I have one of these devices called a keto Mojo but you can buy any Blood pricking finger pricking device this is just cool cuz it has Bluetooth it's smart and I love smart things but what you'll get is this device right here you can set which kind of mode you need it on I think I'm about a four maybe a five honestly my skin is kind of thick I will open this and inside of it I will place a l set which will then puncture my skin just enough I think we might need to buy some more but yeah these blue devices will go inside of the pen from there I will pull out a glucose monitor I think these are Ketone monitors but I will have a glucose monitor I will slide that device into the keto Mojo slot right here and once it's ready I'm going to press this button it's going to know that it wants to measure my glucose I'll prick my finger pop on the side usually and I'll make sure some blood comes out I'll take the test strip put it right on Boom get some get enough blood to fill the line it's going to give me my actual glucose values for my blood and then I can use that number to calibrate the sensor because sometimes it can be off depending on where you put it I've noticed on one arm the overall values might be a little bit higher versus like on my left arm the overall values are a little bit lower so if you calibrate it those charts will essentially align to be at the right place they're supposed to be at I highly recommend you do this cuz you could kind of freak out if you're like oh my God my glucose value is so high but it might just need to be calibrated the graphs are going to be the same the trends but kind of where that starting point of the graph is is going to be adjusted based on your calibration very important highly recommend I'll have this one linked below but you can buy anyone online this is what the levels Health app looks like today it's going to get updated all the time they're very good at making the software better the most important things that I would recom recommend that you do is activate Apple Health what that will do is it will read your start and end times from your workouts your start and end time from your sleep and it will automatically input that information into this graph now how do you do that tap your little face at the top scroll down make sure that it says connected to Apple Health if you're unsure you can go to the health app tap your face go to apps and services scroll down to levels and it'll tell you what things it's reading so the important parts sleep your workouts you know weight's also good too and a whole bunch of other things are good too but I would say those are the most important metrics to measure the other thing I would do if you can depending on the app that you have so for example this one I would go to settings use apple Health make sure that is on cuz then when I write this information it'll automatically save to my Apple health and now I can add it as a favorite and it's always going to be up to date and I know that you know my glucose values over the past few months whenever I use it is on I like to use this every like 3 months so it'll be there and it's saved forever depending on the device you have if you want to calibrate you go to settings here it says calibrate once I've gotten the value I would type that in here boom boom and it's going to calibrate the sensor for me ideally you want to do this in the morning when you're fasted right that's going to give you kind of the most accurate number so now that you connected to Apple Health to read and write Bueno levels I'd love to see the app itself right to Apple Health that'd be so much better one day one can dream uh invite friends to levels I have a link below use that link it'll help support the channel you can manage your subscription settings here uh change any kind of uh notifications as well if you don't want the daily summary email you can turn that off if you don't want to share analytics that's there too you can see your sensor data when it was last synced if you're having issues you can troubleshoot over here if you ever have any issues tap the question mark you can go ahead and find the FAQ or ask them you know send them a little chat hey I'm having a problem I highly recommend if this is your very first time do not install the CGM on the weekend do it on the weekday so that way they can provide support for you if you do have any issues right and since I automatically imported my sleep you can see it logged 10 hours and 34 minutes of sleep if we go to today it says I logged 9 hours and 2 minutes of sleep so it has my bed time my average glucose while I was sleeping and it automatically does that if I work out it pulls in the start and stop times of my workouts if my heart rate is above 150 it's going to mark it as strenuous and it's going to disregard any kinds of spikes cuz I know if I go to the sauna I do like hit or high intensity style workouts my glucose is going to spike that's because your body needs glucose so it's going to send more glucose into your blood to get your body operational and working in these high intense environments and that's okay I think a lot of people think oh I got a continuous glucose monitor that means if there's a spike it's bad that is not always the case this is where the fun and educational component comes in well now I can kind of see overall statistics so my current glucose average my stability my Spike time I had kind of like a oats thing earlier and I know oats will Spike my glucose I can see it's rating it a four out of 10 if I want to dive deeper into my glucose values I can see all right was it a massive spike a drop and then a big wave after or did it stabilize pretty quickly you can see my average heart rate during that time any steps I was taking right I know if I walk my spike is more likely to be a little bit lower so I tend to try to take a 5 to 20 minute walk after I eat something especially when it's heavy oh wow look at this Five Guys we had a nice Five Guys Burger and it's a six out of 10 even better so this is where the behavior change comes in when I eat something and I'm not doing any behaviors to mitigate the glucose Spike if I see a massive Spike that I was not planning on having then I know maybe I shouldn't eat that food as much like I know certain kinds of Oats might spike it more than other kinds of oats for my body specifically right and if you want to dive deeper into the graph you can go ahead and do like a pinch to zoom you can actually get deeper see the sun is kind of when you woke up the little plates are meals uh the little Burgers the burger that I ate you can see the spike if I forgot to add something I can add the plus sign I can add food exercise notes we'll get into that and then here I get to see my stable meals like one of one great job shervin my stable hours I want to aim for at least 12 stable hours so we're we're on par so far healthy habits it's not only food that's going to impact our glucose but how our lifestyle is so if you're stressed if you didn't get enough sleep if you're doing exercise sauna like that's GNA increase your glucose values so I know on days where I don't sleep well and or I'm very stressed my glucose values are going to spike a lot more from the same exact meal so this is where it gets complicated there's a lot of variables it's just being mindful about the most impactful ones for me that's sleep stress diet then you can scroll down and see today's timeline so these are all of the little circle dots that you saw on the graph I can get a score for my food so you know higher is better the more green it is even better I had a little cold brew coffee an egg avocado sand sandwich it's a 8 out of 10 stable response that's really good happy to see that drives positive behavior change if I want to share this photo with someone I can do that press play and I'm be like guys stable response look at me go fun little thing that I could share on social media or with friends we always love sharing things don't we welcome to sh and shares as you do this over time you will start to develop a library of data as well as foods that you eatting so every time you eat something it'll give you some insight sometimes and here you can see all of the insights if you tap search insights it's going to give you a whole bunch of stuff of like really cool information that has told you so far so like quality sleep like I said if you have poor sleep the night before that's where I'm more likely to eat healthier cuz I know unhealthy foods can negatively impact my life even more oatmeal versus chia pudding food swap right you can say hey maybe you should avoid oatmeal and have a chia pudding instead there's a large set of tips that you can follow it's going to start to send these insights on random moments depending on the food that you input so really valuable you can go ahead and read them there if you want to go back and look at different dates so the last time I wore this was in June I can see my daily scores right here I can hop through and see kind of what my Spike times were this is kind of like the overall data you can see the workouts that I did sometimes I forget to input the food you can see the weights are kind of the the workouts that did 1 hour activity of running sometimes I do way too many activities uh if you want to get some recipes for potential options you can tap the Little Fork and plate and it's going to give you a whole bunch of recipes here that you can try out I'm still learning how to cook and probably will for the rest of my life so I haven't tried those yet you have notifications here just in case anything pops up the sensor on and see hey has my sensor synced sometimes it can be delayed you still have to use two separate apps one to capture the data and then it sends it to the level server which will then appear here and sometimes that can take a little bit of time so be patient it might take a couple hours now inputting meals or exercise or notes your exercise can be automatically inserted if you have a smart finish tracker with apple health support but if you don't you can tap the plus sign here there's going to be an exercise option go ahead and tap your type of exercise check if it was strenuous if your heart rate was over 150 if you're confused you you can tap here it'll explain that a little bit further to you describe kind of what you did and then tap done and you can change the time the date as needed if you want to do the start and end time that'll be even more valuable notes if you want to add kind of a generic note with like a photo you can do that last time I did it was November date and time bottom left great if you do add a photo from your camera roll like let's say I picked this one it happened yesterday at 9:02 a.m. it will automatically update the time to match the photo I really love that because if you forget to put in the notes or you forget to put in your food you can go ahead and just select the photo from the past so if you're someone who just takes photos of their food you tap the plus sign you tap the little photo icon you find the food that you just ate it'll add it to your thing it'll add the time yesterday at 134 I can say what it was and then I can move on but if you're like at the meal and you're just about to take a photo of it you can do your Instagram photo first and then tap the camera icon it's going to pull it up let's find this so let's say I just have this drink right here this little Cherry bunde 25 g of sugar so it should Spike my sugar this say 25 g of sugar so I should see some kind of a spike so Cherry bunny juice I put the time in I tap next now I can add in other things like oh here tart cherry juice is definitely that water definitely sugar so you can add in opt ingredients and then hit done now it is there sometimes it will actually give you Insight so if I tap it here so now that I've added those extra analysis points it's going to show me some insights and ingredient breakdowns like sugar they'll tell me a little bit about that juice and the things that I can do based on that tart cherry juice avoid added sugars Zer G of added sugar we're good if you need to edit it you can tap edit and's say you mess up the time you forgot to add a photo you can do that after the fact boom now it is there and then I can just wait 2 hours and it's going to give me a score depending on how my glucose values have changed from eating this if you eat too many things back to back it's going to be hard to tell how it's impacting you so I recommend you know have some space between what you're eating if you're snacking all day it gets even harder to track uh so just be mindful maybe just try to put things together and eat them in two hour segments or just put in all the snacks and then it's going to like group things the next tab is my data on the bottom right if you tap that you're going to be able to to see all of your data this includes your glucose values uh Trends and anything that's been imported from Apple health and they do have a cool metabolic panel that you can order come to your house do a blood test and get some information this is what it looks like these are my last test results essentially within range um what's really neat is I'll do fasting insulin so that's something that I'm not able to get my doctor or like it's really hard I got to push for it but here is easy to order they show up to my house and got it done this is a great way to get some metabolic information if you haven't done it with your doctor please go do it I think you can get once a year usually through your insurance for free so make sure to get that done with your doctor this is great in addition next you come down to all data you can categorize it by 7 Days 14 days 30 days 90 days and I can get my average glucose over the last 90 days I can see how it's been changing or trending luckily it's going down my average meal score right for the things that I ate my Spike count okay it's trending down that's good we don't want it to Trend up my Spike time how much time am I spending at an elevated glucose level my stability score am I trying to maintain as much stability as possible right it's removing all the strenuous exercise factors remember that my walking glucose the exercise time My overall sleep steps and weight being pulled in from Apple health so this is a great spot to kind of see your Trends are you you're trending in the right direction I think it's really reassuring when you're working on something and you get to see that live data change it's really helpful and valuable for me to be like oh my God I'm doing better this is good it's motivating me and it allows me to commit and keep going on the other side of it if your numbers are trending in the wrong direction and you're trying to make it better that can be demotivating but you also need to realize maybe we need to rethink what's going on and just restructure our plan and strategy so use this information as a tool to better improve your health do not let it control your life so overall the most important things are install the chip right at 10 days I will remove this I will save the transmitter do not throw that away I will then swap it out and put in a new sensor with that same transmitter if I have the other device I will throw that away and I'll get a whole new one that one will last me 14 days next make sure to log your food automatically import your sleep and your workouts and then go ahead and check in on the app every day to see how you're performing what can you learn and how can you change your behavior the next day run experiments try new things I've done a ton of videos where I am trying things like berberine for example to see hey does it actually impact my glucose or not if you haven't purchased one yet use the link down below that will help support the channel follow me on Instagram Twitter and straa sherven shares let's be friends online let me know any questions you have in the comments contact love support for anything else because I don't work for them I just love making videos about health and fitness stuff there's any other product that you want me to die in detail with let me know below and I can make that video these videos aren't easy but I hope they're valuable I want to make your life easier we'll see you in the next one peace