How to do your Glucose Challenge

The Glucose Challenge is a key part of your Expert CGM Insight experience. You'll drink a glucose load which will stress your metabolism. Using the CGM, we can see how you respond and recover from this stress over time. Crucially, this "stress test" a better indicator of insulin resistance than static metrics like HbA1c.

Preparing for your Glucose Challenge

We recommend waiting until at least 24 hours after applying your CGM before doing your Glucose Challenge. This is to allow your sensor time to equilibrate fully. It's also sensible to do the Challenge within the first week of your CGM experience just in case you forget to do it before the sensor expires.

You need to fast overnight for at least 9 hours before the Challenge and the Challenge will take 2 hours.

You can work as normal during the Challenge but you can't eat or drink anything other than water and should avoid exercise before or during the Challenge.

You'll need to have your Rapilose solution to hand and your phone to make logs in the LibreLink app and set timers.

Glucose Challenge Protocol

Make sure you've not eaten or drunk anything other than water in the 9 hours before you do the Glucose Challenge.
From the Home Screen tap ADD NOTE and in the comments section write "Starting glucose challenge". This logs your fasting glucose.
Drink your Rapilose solution. You should drink the whole pouch within 5 minutes.
When you've finished the Rapilose, set a timer for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, log a new note in the app - "Glucose challenge 30 min". Set your timer for another 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, log a new note in the app - "Glucose challenge 60 min". Set your timer for another 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, log a new note in the app - "Glucose challenge 90 min". Set your timer for another 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, log a new note in the app - "Glucose challenge 120 min". Set your timer for another 30 minutes.
After the last reading at 120 minutes, you're done with your glucose tolerance test.

So, overall you'll make 5 log entries while doing the challenge:

0 min: Before you drink the glucose
30 min after you drink the glucose
60 min after you drink the glucose
90 min after you drink the glucose
120 min after you drink the glucose

Don't worry if you forget to log one of these points, your sensor will still collect your readings during the Challenge. Logging the time points just makes it a little easier to visualise your data.

Interpreting your results

We'll interpret your Glucose Challenge data and it will form part of your report at the end of your Expert CGM Insight experience.

However, you're probably curious about what a "normal" Glucose Challenge result be:

Fasting blood glucose (your first log entry): less than 5.5mmol/L.
2 hour blood glucose (your last log entry): less than 7.8mmol/L.

Try not to worry too much if your readings are higher than these. The purpose of this experience is to catch any problems with your metabolic health early so we stand the best chance of getting your health back on track.