Ever noticed how you can hold your plank for a little longer when you’re working out with a friend, than when you’re doing it solo? Or how that book sitting in your ‘To be read’ list for ages, moves to your ‘read’ shelf if you pick it up as part of a reading club? Call it a bout of healthy competition or a sense of community, your commitment to your goals strengthens when you have someone to share your achievements with, help you raise the bar and pull you up. When you’re surrounded by people engaging in a certain activity, or pursuing a habit, it influences you, too, to imbibe that practice. This applies to a health condition like diabetes, too, and innovations like Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices have an important role to play in helping you stay committed to your health.

A change in lifestyle can go a long way in any health journey. When it comes to managing a chronic condition like diabetes, it is the small things you do every day that count. But we all know how even simple rituals can slip through the cracks.

Having a companion can help you stay accountable and motivate you to strive for your goals.

Ripples that can create waves of change

Think of the times you’ve planned a swim or your morning run with a workout buddy— a notification from them serves as a more potent wake-up call than your alarm ringtone ever will (and it comes without a snooze button)! A partner activity not just urges you to finish your run or your laps, but working together to track and improve your distance, speed, form, and personal best, can encourage you to make exercise a regular part of your life.  Health innovations like wearable sensor-based diabetes monitoring devices that measure your glucose levels, continuously and discreetly, enable this connected approach to care.

A continuous glucose monitor is a glucose monitoring device that tracks your glucose data, giving you trends and patterns that you can share with a friend or a loved one. It keeps a tab on your glucose levels, providing glucose data to you, your caregiver as well as your healthcare provider about any abnormalities or fluctuations that need intervention. It offers insights which show you how your diet and lifestyle impact your blood sugar levels. So whether it is planning your intake of fluids and nutrients, engaging in physical activity, or taking rest, you can make better health decisions armed with this information, and also effortlessly keep your caregivers updated on your time in range and other milestones. This data can help you set focused daily or weekly targets in tandem with a friend to establish a long-term, sustainable routine.