Living Lab: What We Learn From 100 Women

Since the launch of our Living Lab pilot project with the state of Upper Austria, more than 100 women aged 35+ have taken part in a 14-day CGM program. The goal: to understand how daily life, nutrition, and movement really affect blood sugar — not in a lab, but in real life.

One early, highly consistent pattern: stress often shows up more strongly in the curves than food does. Participants under heavy professional strain regularly showed elevated fasting values, regardless of what they'd eaten the night before — a sign of just how closely cortisol and glucose metabolism are linked.

Second pattern: moving after eating works more reliably than restrictive eating itself. Even a short 10-to-15-minute walk measurably lowered peak values in the vast majority of cases — often more so than cutting out individual foods.

The next phase of the project focuses on turning these individual patterns into concrete, everyday-practical recommendations — tailored to each response type, not a one-size-fits-all diet. We'll keep you posted here in the Journal.