Glucose Revolution Summary & key ideas explained

A nineteen-year-old jumps from a waterfall in Hawaii and lands badly. Her spine breaks. Surgeons rebuild it, and her body heals, but something else doesn't. For years afterward she feels oddly detached from herself, as if she were watching her life through glass.

That young woman was Jessie Inchauspé. She finished her mathematics degree, went on to a master's in biochemistry, and kept looking for answers about what was going on inside her body. A few years later, working at the genetics company 23andMe, she volunteered for an internal test of a continuous glucose monitor: a small sensor stuck to the arm that reports your blood sugar every few minutes.

She didn't have diabetes. She expected flat, boring lines. Instead she saw her blood sugar shoot up and crash after meals she'd thought were healthy, and she began to notice that the crashes matched the moments she felt foggy, hungry or low.

She started posting her graphs online, and the account grew into a following of millions under the name Glucose Goddess. Glucose Revolution is the book that came out of it. Its promise is unusual for a health book: you don't need a diet, and you don't need to give up the foods you love. You need to understand when, how and in what combination you eat them.

So what is this molecule that rises and falls inside you all day, and why should you care if you're not diabetic?