Reading about this research in the clever Guts book filled me with excitement that my family and I could perhaps learn more about how our own individual bodies work and get the key to finding out what foods work best for each of us.
Alas, on the website where you can potentially get your faeces tested and the answer to this question they tell me that this service is not available to UK citizens.
I then watched a you tube from one of the doctors

At the end he suggests that people could discover for themselves what effect different foods have on their system by monitoring their own blood sugar after different foods. So…
Although none of my family are diabetic, I am contemplating buying a freestyle libre glucose monitor so that we can test for glucose spikes after different foods to learn which foods suit who.
Has anyone else tried this and if so did you find a useful list of foods to test and did it work? I think we would have to eat each food in isolation, maybe 1 or 2 hours apart so that just testing a bowl of mixed fruit would take a day! I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks about this or if they’ve done it.

This is a very exciting approach. A diabetic friend has for many years regularly tested his blood sugar level responses and often had surprise results and he individualised his own diet based on his personal results. Thank you so much SueC for drawing our attention to this YouTube video.

Hi, Very many thanks for both of these responses. They are very encouraging about the glucose monitoring.
With regards to Omega 3 I have read that most supplements of omega 3 are not worth taking as they take such a long time to get processed that most are rancid and so not healthy to ingest. I try to eat wild salmon and mackerel twice per week for that reason. How do you take omega 3, how often do you get blood tests to ensure your AA/EPA remains in that range and I don’t understand that >18.0 is not in the range that you detail? Thank you for sharing.

Hi Sorry, I just looked at this again & it does make sense that you say that most people have an AA/EPA greater than 18.00 when it should be between 1.5 & 3.0 Wow that sounds highly significant. Do you have to pay a doctor to test for that or can you self test?

In the book it refers to a company these drs have created to test you Southey can analyse and send you a recommended personal nutrition plan.
Does anyone know their website or if this is launched yet ? Thanks

Readers may be interested in the testing of the blood which shows the result of the food etc. so in addition to blood sugar , and TGL/HDL we also do inflammatory measurements…I expect Michael also does these#

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I saw the TedX talk and your comments and I have to say that I’m not a fan of the approach these people have taken. Measuring blood glucose is not a great way to determine diet nor your body’s response to food. The whole process is far more complicated. For a start, the better measure is your insulin response to food. Insulin is what moves glucose into the cells so it can be used as fuel but it also instructs the body to turn excess glucose in to fat for storage. Additionally, eating foods high in fructose (even if it’s “natural” like fruit and honey) won’t spike your blood glucose nor your insulin. But your liver will convert it directly to fat and store it in the liver – excess build up of this causes non alcoholic fatty liver disease and, ultimately, cirrhosis.

Essentially, there’s a complex metabolic system that the blood glucose measurement technique doesn’t capture.

My personal experience has been with a low carb high fat diet and intermittent fasting. I’ve lost 20kg in 6 months and come off most of my diabetes medications (blood glucose lowering ones). I’ve also reversed my diabetic maculopathy so I have much less chance of going blind. I can’t recommend this approach highly enough.

My partner and I (both health professionals) have been to Israel and had our microbiome analysed. We’ve then compared the predictions that the DAYTWO app gives with actual glucose spikes using the Freestyle device which gives a minute-by-minute accurate blood glucose reading. We were then able to modulate our diet to avoid glucose spikes. If glucose is kept low and steady then insulin levels are likewise kept low. This is key to the entire metabolic syndrome – all the major killers of western society (diabetes; cardiovascular disease; dementia; cancer). I cannot overstate how revolutionary this has the potential to be

I agree with gpennefather: fructose doesn’t raise insulin so the approach has to be minimise fructose which is uniquely toxic. Eat fruit in controlled quantities and not as “smoothies” which remove the insoluble fibre while concentrating the fruit sugar (ie fructose) and increase micro-nutrients as well as insoluble fibre in the diet. As he says, type2 diabetes and the entire metabolic syndrome are rapidly and relatively easily reversed with the right strategies of diet/exercise and SLEEP which is also extremely important

I believe you saw the predictions eventuate but you’re looking at the proximal cause and not the ultimate cause. It’s most (and highly) likely that, if your blood glucose wasn’t high from eating some carbs, then your insulin was. You see, unless you’re eating a low carb diet, if your blood glucose is low, it’s because insulin is keeping it low – the exact opposite of your assertion. Prolonged exposure to high insulin levels will most likely lead to insulin resistance and, ultimately, type 2 diabetes. Forget blood glucose levels, they’re not the problem (heresy, I know, but true nonetheless) it’s insulin you want keep low. Doing so reduces or stops fat storage, allows fat burning, allows autophagy, reduces IGF1, reduces oxidative stress, reverses insulin resistance and produces ketones (especially BHB). Plus some other goodies I’m sure I missed. I’m afraid that creating a diet based on blood glucose response is fraught with danger. I get it, glucose is much easier to measure but taking shortcuts is counterproductive in this case.

Not quite! While I totally agree, the ultimate cause of the metabolic syndrome is insulin resistance in response to excess of carbs and sugar (probably an over simplification) in fact insulin is normally pulsed. So when we don’t eat (eg overnight) our insulin levels drop allowing the body to consume the sugar stored as glycogen. When glycogen runs out (which generally takes 24-36 hours) the body burns fat stores. Totally agree about the low carb diet (yes we eat low carb). but its surprising and counter-intuitive as to what spikes sugars. Sugar spikes of course lead to insulin spikes. I do think you have a point: if we had 24hour insulin level monitors it would give some greater insights. Agreed, we are using blood sugars as a proxy. But it works. Take a look at #sugarfoodtest (twitter). The advent of the ability to monitor 24h blood sugars (I use Freestlyle Libre device) could be revolutionary in preventing/reversing type2 diabetes

I am fascinated by all of these ideas. Measuring blood glucose is so easy now and feedback is so very motivating. My husband & I had been under the illusion that quite large quantities of fresh fruit consumption was a healthy way to start the day. When we monitored our blood glucose response it was a window into our body’s responses to foods labelled as healthy by the current misguided outdated guidelines. One of the main spikes we saw was my husband’s response to an M&S ‘low carb meal’ containing white rice. Slowly this led us to discover the absolute joy and liberation of trying a ketogenic diet which has become our way of life. It has liberated us from the slavery of carb hunger and subjectively improved our overall health by 20%. My husband is now lighter than he has been for several years with no calorie counting and his visceral fat is visibly reduced.
I feel less stressed by life events and calmer all round and we spontaneously exercise more. All important as we are in our 60’s and keen to prolong our health span as long as possible.

White rice is one of the worst things – very high GI/GL (glycaemic load and glycaemic index) pretty much guaranteed to spike sugar and therefore insulin!