Should Healthy Kids Wear Glucose Monitors?

Dr. Wendy: The FDA just cleared a blood sugar monitor for two-year-olds. Two. And one questions the rationale. Let's talk real quick. I'm a pediatrician and I specialize in family relationships with food, body, and especially each other. Well, I am a physician. I am not your physician. This is not medical advice. It's actually about having frank conversations, about the deluge of information. That is coming at parents and professionals alike every single day in the media, the headlines, just in our culture. then making more informed ⁓ towards from the inside out. So today going to look at what's actually going on here because I don't think it's the headline that's the scariest part. So the headline just June twenty twenty six. The FDA cleared the first over the counter continuous glucose monitor for kids. We may call it CGM. Okay. two and up, ⁓ prescription, no doctor needed. You can just go out to your local pharmacy and buy Bring it home. And it's marketed for kids who don't use insulin. which means kids anywhere on the spectrum of being healthy. ⁓ Maybe it's kids ⁓ who are a bigger than their or their peers, ⁓ or kids whose parents are worried, perhaps whose parents have had concerns about their own blood sugar and diabetes over time, and their children do not. You can simply slap it on your child, ⁓ and Keep an eye on their blood sugar every 15 minutes from a phone. the surface, ⁓ may sound helpful, like getting more tools and info direct to the hands of families. And yet, before you run out and grab one, we gotta talk about the concerning part. Clear does not mean what you think it means. When the FDA clears a device, they're saying it's safe to use and that the readings are accurate. it. They are not saying this makes your kid healthier. There no study showing that putting this on a healthy child improves a single thing about their health. They're simply saying it's accurate, it's safe to wear. Okay, fair enough. But whether it helps, nobody has demonstrated that. What to do with the data, the highs, the lows, the trends, well, there's no info provided either. And whether the information can actually harm your child's relationship with food, with their body, and well, let's be honest, with you, nobody has demonstrated that either. Nobody has demonstrated that. ⁓ Welcome to Family in Focus. I'm Dr. Wendy Schofer, the pediatrician helping parents lead meaningful change without harm. Here we focus on the connection and practical shifts help families thrive at every size. Let's get started. It is specifically mentioned ⁓ that those who have a history of disordered eating or an disorder should discuss with their provider before the use of the monitor. And I'll add from my practice experience ⁓ that a very large proportion of families today have experienced and are experiencing disordered eating. In both the children and the parents. This is a really large population who could use the resources of being on a team for their health. So if it doesn't make kids healthier, why are we putting these on them? Well, we gotta follow the culture. CGMs, continuous glucose monitors, for people with diabetes, that is a wellness trend. Right now Today, these are being sold to adults as weight loss tools. You know, you track your glucose, you tweak your diet, you shrink your body. This FDA clearance reeks of wellness culture going straight to consumer, right into your house, and to your child. There is no one else there with you. And that's really such a huge part of my concern because you have no dietitian, no pediatrician. No one to say, here's what this number means, or this is what it doesn't mean. And you're just there kind of like monitoring your phone and seeing this number that goes up and down all day long. well, that's the point. I think we need a reminder about this. Blood sugars are meant to go up and down all day long. They are meant to go up more with certain foods. That's just what the body does. That doesn't make those foods bad. It doesn't mean that those foods need to come out of the diet. And ⁓ gosh, I I can see what happens next because I see it in my practice. A number on the screen. makes you worried and you want to do something. You want to help and intervene. Say your kid eats a the number goes up. Bananas are fruit. Fruit is good. But now the number went up, so does that mean the banana is bad? Multiply that by every meal, every day for a growing kid who is eating a variety of foods. Many eating disorders start as a desire to eat healthier, often wrapped up in the idea wanting a bit of control. And then it escalates. We know parent weight talk increases disordered eating in kids. We know hospitalizations for eating disorders are climbing in kids under 12. And the FDA's own release ⁓ says with a history of disordered should talk to their doctor first. But this is over the counter. Who's doing the talking? Who's doing the listening? Who's checking in? Nobody. Nobody's putting the brakes on wellness trends becoming household tools. So there's a word ⁓ when the pursuit of healthy eating tips into something that stops helping us. ⁓ called orthorexia. And It doesn't start as a problem. It starts as as wanting the best for your child, wanting to get it right. But when we zoom ⁓ all way in on the macros, ⁓ the the blood sugar response, we lose the whole point. We lose the big picture of health. We lose the with food, with our bodies, and with each other. So a CGM can be a short-term tool. Ask a specific question, get specific information, and then move on. Here's something that I've taken from my years in clinical practice. I am always very aware of the question that I'm asking with any test. Not just, well, what does it say? What's the answer? But what's the real value here? What does this number actually mean for this child in this family right now? So if we have a tool or a test without a question about the value that it's offering. That's just providing us numbers. It's just a number generator. if you have a number generator that's pointed at your child every single day, ⁓ setting yourself up for struggles because it's honestly not just the kids. Orthorexia shows up in parents too. And when it does, it can really ⁓ us towards products and monitoring for our children that carry real risk. We reach for the tool because we care. And that's ⁓ what makes it hard to see what is actually happening behind the use of the tool. The other side of this is that growing kids need the exact thing that this device ⁓ them to fear: carbohydrates. Growing brains ⁓ on carbs. They are your child's. Brain's preferred fuel, the carbs in fruit and milk, in whole grains, in vegetables. When we teach a kid to watch a glucose number, well, they start learning to cut out the foods that spike the numbers, which is half the nutrient-dense food the planet. ⁓ be solving a problem. We haven't even proven exists by creating one that we know is real, fearing food. The other part is we're teaching parents to monitor the minutiae of childhood metabolism. We're boiling a relationship with food and body down to something that doesn't support the relationship at all. A number. This approach feeds the anxiety that parents already feel about their children's health, and it fuels the cycle of shame, restriction, and healthism. We find time and again that anxiety about food and health is not relieved by more tools and closer monitoring of numbers. It's relieved by taking a big step back to see the big picture. The whole child in the context of their environment, family, community, and by having relationships, connection with people who can really be there and hold the complexity with you. I've seen this for years with babies coming home from the NICU on monitors. Parents have anxiety through the roof over all of the bells, the alarms, the numbers that didn't match what the parents were actually seeing in their child. And now those monitors are available all over the counter, and the amount of anxiety that parents carry. While monitoring their children is disrupting the very relationships that they hold most dear. I'm not anti-innovation. For a child with certain diagnoses, managed with a care team, this already is a very real tool that we have been using. But for healthy kids, two-year-olds sold a wellness gadget with no doctor, no plan for what to do with the number. Yeah, one questions the rationale. Please talk to your pediatrician before you put one of these on your child. The goal has never been to have a perfect number. It's really shifting that goal to having a child who trusts food, trusts their body, and trusts you. You don't need a monitor to raise a healthy eater. You need a calm adult, regular meals to foster a relationship ⁓ and helpful structure, a whole lot less My goodness, calm is contagious. ⁓ Yeah, let's pass that one on. so ⁓ you're ready to focus more on building. lifelong family relationships with food, body, and especially each other. That's exactly why family and focus exists. You can learn more about working together on the website and in the show notes. And once again, remember, while I am a physician, I am most definitely not your physician. This is not medical advice. It's for education and discussion only. So keep the relationship with your own physician and tell them that I said hi. Tell them about family and focus while you're at it. So much love for you your family ⁓ ⁓ you are the parent creating the change that want to see in the world for you, your family. ⁓ And we are creating very big changes here together. Much love to you.