High blood glucose causes a host of bad health issues even in non-diabetic people: visceral fat, liver fat, inflammation, cardiac disease... You don't need to wait to be diabetic to embrace good dietary habits, and a glucose monitor would go a long way helping people make that transition.

I know, logically, that if I eat a bunch of carbs or sugar my blood sugar will rise. I know if I go for a walk right after a meal it will help blunt the rise. Eating fiber at the start of a meal is also supposed to help avoid the spike.

However, I can’t quantify any of these things, so it feels too abstract. If I was able to see numbers and real-time impacts of my actions, it seems like it would do wonders for adherence to various protocols.

It seems like it could also provide a warning signal if levels are chronically elevated due to diet and lifestyle factors, which would eventually lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes if left unchecked.

That's what I thought too, until I got my last bloodwork results and started wearing one of the OTC continuous glucose monitors.

That device helped a lot to switch diet habits.

Diabetes (as with much else) is a continuum. Many people are prediabetic, or experience periods of high or low blood sugar.

There are also multiple types of diabetes, not just the generally-known Type I / II split, but gestational (affecting pregnant women), Type 5, malnutrition-related, and others. (See Wikipedia for a listing: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes#Types>.)

Other factors can also influence blood sugars, including infections, physical activity, and stress.

In the same way a step counter encourages people to walk more, a glucose monitor on your watch could discourage you from eating that extra donut