On this page, you find a few select products that I recommend.
Please note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links, either through the Amazon Associates Program or Veri, a vendor of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). This means that if you purchase a product through a link on this site, Nourished by Science will receive a commission, at no extra cost to you.
Please rest assured that Nourished by Science will continue to maintain its strict conflict of interest policy, and will not engage in affiliate marketing, sponsorship deals, or consulting arrangements with companies in the food, supplement, or pharmaceutical industries. Therefore, we will only engage in affiliate marketing and sponsoring relationships for products that (a) we would use ourselves and would recommend to our closest friends and family; (b) do not pose a conflict of interest in relation to our content; and (c) offer a benefit to our audience.
Measure and Understand Your Chronic Disease Risk Factors
Maintaining normal blood sugar levels and avoiding frequent blood sugar spikes is a cornerstone in the prevention of blood glucose-related chronic diseases, including diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease.
I myself wore a Veri CGM for about three months, and some of my experiences are documented in a video on how to avoid blood sugar spikes. And even as a long-time clinical researcher in the area of nutrition and blood sugar regulation, I learned a lot about my body’s responses to certain foods. I have since heard many similar stories from others, including from my colleague, Dr. Penny Figtree, who describes her use of a CGM as ‘life-altering’,
Veri is a fairly young company based in Finland. What I really like about their product is the very clean and intuitive app design that makes it easy to understand the data. I also like their evidence-based messaging around the definition of blood sugar spikes, and their general approach of how to think about blood sugar in relation to nutrition and other chronic disease risk biomarkers. I do think that you will benefit from wearing a Veri CGM for a while, and enjoy the process. I really thought it was fun.
If you’d like to learn how I define blood sugar spikes, I recommend two previous blog posts: one that discusses normal blood sugar levels throughout the day and defines a blood sugar spike, and another that outlines the health risks associated with regular blood sugar spikes. Also of interest may be the blog post and video on How to Use a Continuous Glucose Monitor for Maximum Benefit.
Blood glucose can also be checked by a traditional blood glucose monitor, such as the one linked here. Unlike a CGM, these monitors require a drop of blood for each measurement, which needs to be obtained by a finger prick.
To monitor the blood sugar response to a meal, suggested test times would be before the meal (baseline) and again at least 30 min, 60 min, and 120 min after the first bite had been taken.
An elevated blood pressure is a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease as well as chronic kidney disease. And the generally recommended best approach to monitor blood pressure is to conduct regular measurements at home.
I measure my blood pressure about every 2-3 weeks using this exact Braun blood pressure monitor. I take three separate measurements, and record these in a phone app so that I can track changes over time.
Recommended Books
This is one of my favorite books of all time, and it certainly has had a concrete positive impact on my life.
This book is all about changing our daily habits, and doing so one tiny (‘atomic’) step at a time. The argument is that if we manage to make many tiny positive changes to our habits that are sustainable, it can have a huge impact on the quality of our lives and our ability to achieve our goals.
I am posting this here as a suggestion because, ultimately, this site is all about providing you with information to – ideally – optimize your diet and lifestyle, and I do think that the teachings in this book can greatly help with that.
Also great as an audiobook, read by the author himself.
This is a fascinating book about the processed and particularly ultra-processed food industry, and the common practices within the industry to make foods hyperpalatable (irresistible), and their marketing strategies to maximize sales of junk foods.
As I discuss in two separate blog posts, regularly consuming ultra-processed foods is likely one of the factors that causes us to chronically overeat and gain weight, and may very plausibly be one of the key contributors to the global obesity epidemic. I guess no one thinks that processed foods are healthy, but I do feel that most people do not understand the degree to which ultra-processed foods are harmful to our health. Along with the numerous potential health risks associated with the large number of food additives, including emulsifiers, artificial flavorings, colorants, taste enhancers, thickeners etc., it is important to be clear that these foods were designed to make us overeat.
A fascinating book that I really enjoyed. Mr. Schatzker, a renowned science journalist, is on a quest to understand the obesity epidemic. Much of his journey is focused on understanding why the obesity epidemic has firmly gripped some countries, such as the United States, but not others, such as Italy. A common explanation is that Americans eat too much fat or too many refined carbs, or simply that food in the United States is too (hyper)palatable. But when he takes us on a trip through Northern Italy, and describes the rich culinary traditions, the obsession with the perfect recipe, and, yes, the common consumption of fat and refined carbs, he expresses his doubts about the supposed factors that make Americans obese and Italians much less so.
What he comes up with is a fascinating idea that is partly supported by clinical research, but that partly also remains a hypothesis to be – hopefully – tested further.