SHOW NOTES:
How many times did your CGM alarm last night? If you have to guess -- or if you're honestly not sure because your arm is doing the silence-and-go-back-to-sleep thing on autopilot -- that's alarm fatigue. And it's a documented, peer-reviewed phenomenon that's costing you sleep in ways that quietly compound every single night.
This episode is about the complicated relationship T1D people have with CGM alarms. They're lifesaving. They're also, at times, genuinely maddening. There's a real, measurable difference between alarms that protect you and alarms that interrupt your sleep architecture without adding any safety benefit. Neil talks about how alarm fatigue develops, what it costs your sleep stages, and why the answer isn't to turn everything off -- it's calibration.
We're in Week 4 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge.
In this episode:
- What alarm fatigue is and how it develops in T1D people over time
- How sub-threshold wake-ups disrupt sleep architecture without a full wake-up
- The boy-who-cried-wolf problem in CGM management -- and why the wolf is still real
- Why calibration (not silence) is the right response
- The peer-reviewed paper with a title that's definitely just a research paper title
This Week's Challenge: Count how many times your CGM alarmed last night. Don't do anything about it yet. Just get the number.
What is Your Best T1D Year?
Managing Type 1 Diabetes doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Each 5-minute episode of Your Best T1D Year is packed with practical strategies, mindset shifts, and a little humor to help you feel more in control and less frustrated by diabetes.
Hosted by Neil Greathouse, this Monday, Wednesday, and Friday podcast delivers quick, relatable episodes that make learning about T1D effortless - so you can build small wins that lead to big changes.
📅 New episodes drop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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