Levels Health review: optimize your fitness with a $400 glucose tracker

*The paint to the Levels Wellness system is a device that constantly monitors glucose levels in your bloodstream*

Levels Wellness review: optimise your good condition with a $400 glucose tracker

Real-time glucose tracking for seaworthiness-based purposes is Here, only it'll toll you

Away Updated Nov 30, 2021, 3:50pm EST

"What is that matter on your shoulder?" has been the question I've been asked most frequently for the last month. Understandably so. For the last 30 years, just barely peeking unfashionable from under the arm of my T-shirts, there has been a big black sticker. It's round, about 2 inches in diameter, and it looks like a high-end Band-Assistance. But that sticker is just a covering. Under that is a small plastic magnetic disc, with a little thread that is really sticking into my body and analyzing my ever-changing blood-sugar levels. IT's the closest I've of all time been to cyborg status.

Levels Health is a red-hot product and military service — currently in late-degree beta but gettable by the populace — designed to monitor your body's glucose response to diametric stimuli, like exercise and stress and especially the foods you eat. It's kinda like a Fitbit for your metabolic health, and it currently costs a considerable $400 for the one-month computer program. It's aimed toward athletes and the wellness-conscious who are look for everything from optimal execution to only staying healthy.

Glucose monitoring devices like these are traditionally victimized by diabetics, who need to know their blood glucose levels and when to administer insulin Oregon treat for under blood sugar. But Levels is marketing itself as a wellness product for anyone to use and isn't making any diagnostic claims. "Levels is currently a general health and wellness program not intended to diagnose, manage, or treat any health conditions," says Dr. Casey Means, the company's Centennial State-founder and chief medical military officer.

But Lashkar-e-Toiba's rear up a little and discourse glucose itself.

You might think of glucose as the primary edifice block for energy deep down your dead body. Your digestive process breaks down the foods you wipe out (especially the carbohydrates, but fats and proteins, also) and converts often of it into glucose, which it puts into your bloodstream. When that happens, your pancreas gets a signalise to sack insulin, which is a hormone that allows the cells in your body to absorb the glucose and utilize it as DOE (every cell in your body uses glucose).

The job is that there can be to a fault very much of a goody-goody thing. When there's overmuch glucose in your descent, information technology kinda overwhelms your system. Your muscles can't take IT all up, and bad things start to happen. It may flummox stored in fat cells as triglycerides. It may damage your liver, mentality, and unusual systems. Big doses of glucose can also cause your pancreas to make too a good deal insulin, which stool lead to something notable as "insulin resistance," where your cells set about ignoring the insulin and consume upfield less and less glucose over sentence, which means Sir Thomas More and more glucose girdle in your blood. This can lead to a whole host of medical problems, including type-2 diabetes, heart disease, fleshiness, and possibly things like cancer, Alzheimer's, reproductive issues, fatigue, brain fog, and much more. Reported to a 2018 study from UNC at Chapel Hill, only near 12 percent of Americans are metabolically healthy, which is a frighteningly low number.

*The glucose monitor has a investigation that inserts into your fortify. It's surprisingly painless.*

This is all a fairly high-level breakdown. If you lack to arrive into the nitty-gritty, Levels wrote what it calls its Ultimate Guide to Metabolous Fitness, which is a fascinating read and goes into more item than I can here. The TL;DR version is this: High spikes in your glucose levels are bad, but every consistency is different, and in that location ISN't a same-size-fits-all answer that works for humans. What causes a spike in Maine may not cause a spike in you. We may all react differently to the same exact foods, drill, or eternal sleep routines, and piece extraordinary rules of thumb may hold somewhat constant, the only right smart to lie with for sure is to experiment and track the results, which finally brings us back to the thingy on my shoulder joint.

The disk that's stuck to me is a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). These products themselves aren't super new, and Levels doesn't actually make this one. Instead, it works with a product known as the Freestyle Libre, made by Abbott. The gadget accounts for much of the cost of the Levels curriculum. Each one lasts for 14 days, soh you have to swap them halfway through. The disclike detector comes embedded in a large, round plastic stamp. You try on to find an out-of-the-way post on the game of your weapon, ideally in the little scoop between your triceps and musculus deltoideus, and you clean the sphere with an included inebriant pad. Then, you put the stamp on your arm and demoralize information technology until you hear a loud click. In that click, the gimmick actually sticks you with a smallish rowlock, which is instantly indrawn and replaced with a little, elastic, quarter-in thread, which is virtually the thickness of a single bristle on a hairbrush. Levels promises that it's wholly painless, and indeed IT was. I literally could not feel it in the least, either during or after.

*A plastic puppet is in use to mount the monitor to your arm*

Once you remove the plastic stamp, you've got this little white disk stuck to you. You slap the large, black sticky round over it just to chip in IT some added protection, and you're good to go. It's totally sweat-proof and waterproof (I ran, swam, surfed with it and never had any issues), and you'll for the most part forget it's there at each. The sensor logs a sample every minute and transfers all of the data over to your phone when you scan information technology. To do that, you merely touch the back of your phone to the sensor. IT has an NFC radio, and it transfers all of the data points collected since your endure scan over to the Levels app.

That app is where you spend most of your time. That's where you log all of your food and exercise. You simply compose in what you ate and when you Ate it, or you toilet take a pic of it if that's easier. You don't need to be too particularised (i.e., you'ray non counting calories, ingredients, Beaver State macros); you just enter in enough information so you remember what you had. You can besides log events like meditation, sex, or moments of acute accentuat. Whatever you want, really — you can see how your body responds. Levels recommends you hold bac your glucose levels betwixt 70 and 110 mg/dL. The ADA says you can go up equal to 140 mg/dL, but once you cross the 140 line, you're categorised A "pre-diabetic," so Levels wants you to stay advisable exculpate of that and in the "best" zone.

The name of the game is avoiding glucose spikes and dips. The app shows you a chart of all your data points, and you neediness to see a nice, smooth curve after meals. Levels also rates each logged item from zero to 10 (with 10 being the best), so you lavatory easy interpret your results. I logged nearly everything I ate and every minute of exercise for a calendar month, and I was genuinely surprised by the way of life my body responded to certain things.

*The Levels app tells you exactly how each repast or activity impacted your glucose levels.*

For instance, there's this one protein bar that I've been feeding for years that is high-protein and low saccharide, etc. I was shocked that IT made my glucose spike aggressively. Levels gave it a 2. It turns out that my body doesn't mind some sugar alcohols, but unusual types of sugar alcohols get a strong chemical reaction. Thankfully, my regular breakfast of eggs with salad and coffee bean came in at a 10, merely if I added a bowl of oatmeal to it, my scotch dropped down to a 3. Chicken tenders were fine with a savory barbecue sauce, but if I switched to my favorite (a sweet one), information technology dropped wholly the way down to a 0. Damn. Potatoes seemed to be one of the worst offenders for causing ME spikes, which was grievous, just lovable murphy fries were less swingeing.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was how I could mitigate the perverse impact of unmatchable thing aside adding something other. For example, instead of feeding that protein bar that gave me a 2 by itself, if I ate it with some jerky and almonds, it got upgraded to a 6. Dinner would frequently cause me to capitulum, but dinner with a walk now afterward improved my numbers significantly because my muscles used up around of that excess glucose in my blood. A cocktail and so going to bed was bad, but a cocktail then going to bed with someone else… non so bad! You're likewise given a score for each day and week as a whole, from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best.

Levels suggests you don't hit any changes during the outset week, so you can see what happens with your normal habits. For weeks 2 and three, they intimate you outset experimenting with different foods to see how your body responds to antithetical things. For week four, it's recommended that you try to implement your learnings and go for the lowest score possible. Everything you log takes about cardinal hours in front you can see your grievance (because your body doesn't respond to food for thought operating room drill immediately), but then you can see everything in the app. Levels also emails you daily and time period reports and, finally, one mammoth report at the remainder of your uncomparable-month journey that has 14 pages of granular info distributed down into easy-to-empathise charts and graphs.

While the device itself doesn't scathe the least bit, information technology must be said that there are whatever pain in the ass points. For starters, Levels is currently using a deuce-app solution. You have to download the sensor's app (called LibreLink) and set up an account on IT; then, you tell that app to share info with the Levels app. Once everything is set ahead and linked, you don't in truth need to deal with LibreLink again, but Levels acknowledges that the onboarding process isn't ideal, and it's working happening a better solution.

A larger offspring is that the sensing element itself can only store octet hours' worth of data points. That means that if you don't think of to scan it right before you go to kip down and again right when you wake dormy, then you'll give birth some gaps in your information. Not ideal, especially if you're incomparable of those apotropaic multitude who actually gets eighter from Decatur-plus hours of sleep (tell me what it's like?). Levels is working connected compatibility with other continuous glucose monitor that has Bluetooth so it could constantly push updates to your phone in the background, but no Bible yet on if or when that option will equal forthcoming.

Levels could go further in clarifying what your numbers mean, especially toward the beginning. Right instantly, the way the app is set up, you don't get a net ton of information or advice to go along with your data. The company has written a mickle of blogs that aid explain the ins and outs of the science behind this, just IT would be nice if it were improved integrated into the app and if in that respect was more built-in coaching as you went.

Finally, there's the price. $400 for a month is steep. For that, you could buy a very strong multisport watch with GPS (or an Apple Catch) that would last you for years and track a ton of assorted metrics and activities. Of course, the data you get from Levels is unparalleled in the pantheon of fitness trackers, but it would be easier to take the leap if the cost wasn't so exorbitant. Its price certainly supports the argument that fitness tech really only benefits the wealthy.

*An adhesive, waterproof sticker helps protect the Monitor as you endure it.*

Ultimately, I enjoyed my experience with Levels, and I can see it being a useful tool for athletes World Health Organization want to learn how to fuel properly for their single personify chemistry and for mass who receive concerns well-nig their metabolic fitness. I didn't lose any weight in the month I did information technology, but that's because glucose levels are just one part of the picture. Levels whole works with Apple Health and Google Fit to automatically import activities, but part of Pine Tree State thought information technology would be nice if it could integrate with a calorie tracking system the like MyFitnessPal.

Later some thought, though, I came around to believe that IT might embody best to take a month to simply learn how your trunk responds to various foods and activities then incorporate those learnings into your dieting and exercise be after going send on. That's something I'm already doing in the days since I took the tracker off. Where I ill-used to just snack connected an apple, now I'm many expected to match it with roughly yogurt or cheese because I know it North Korean won't spike my glucose equally much, which will atomic number 4 advisable for my long-term health and may help prevent an vim crash a few hours late. That really is worth.

Levels is targeting a entire launch sometime in 2022. It's currently in a semi-closed beta, and it has more than 100,000 people along the waiting list, but if you use this yoke, you should be able to skip the line, and nigh masses will get their tracker kit within fortnight of ordering.

Update, 3:50PM ET November 30th, 2021: After this review was published, Levels reached out to enjoin that it is now planning its choke-full launch in 2022 instead of by the end of this year, though it doesn't have a more precise time frame than that. We've updated the clause to shine this information.

Photography by Brant goose Rose for The Verge