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.
That device helped a lot to switch diet habits.
My anecdotal experience from doctor colleagues giving CGM to patients is that it does 3/5ths of fuck all to everyone except those with actual insulin dependent diabetes (T1 or T2) because when you get down to it the insights aren’t that great and most people actually aren’t that invested in shifting the dial on their health that much. But I’m fascinated by examples to the contrary
Yet the mind of most people is terrible at that, we love to overeat our body regulations.
In software we're wiring up stuff with prometheus and making grafana dashboards and changing code and configuration based on what we see happening. CGMs in a way give you insight into one aspect of your body and diet.
I've been trying Lingo, and it's been super-interesting to see in almost realtime how your body reacts to different foods. Sure you read all the time about "watch your carbs..." or "don't eat so much sugar", but it's hard to know how seriously to take that advice.
It's a whole different thing though when you eat one thing for a snack and see a big spike in a graph on your phone, and eat a different thing the next day and see hardly any change at all. It makes it much easier to rationalize your food choices.
I bought CGM myself, without any doctor's input. Didn't know they exist before reading some selfhelp book which my wife found.
Echoing another poster, it's eye opening how some of the foods you'd never think of, are spiking glucose levels.
Overall, after both me and my wife adjusted diet, much better energy through the day, no crashes.
Even if it doesn’t increase steps on average, it will absolutely still work with someone who’s self-motivated and not just looking for a quick fix.