One of the first things people notice when they wear a continuous glucose monitor is the post-meal spike. You eat, and within an hour your glucose climbs, sometimes steeply, before falling again. Certain meals send it soaring. Others barely move it.
Why Keeping Blood Sugar Steady Matters
Before we get to tools, it is worth being clear about why this matters. Keeping your blood sugar lower and steadier is one of the most powerful things you can do for both how you feel day to day and how you age over the long run. The benefits reach well beyond glucose itself:
- Steadier energy, focus, and mood, with fewer crashes and cravings
- Easier appetite control and weight management
- Sharper brain function
- Better blood lipids, including lower triglycerides and LDL cholesterol
- Less glycation, oxidative stress, and inflammation
- Improved insulin sensitivity and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, “type 3 diabetes” (Alzheimer’s disease), “type 4 diabetes” (glaucoma), and the other body system-wide damage that insulin resistance produces
- Support for healthy aging
That is the real payoff. A tool that helps flatten your post-meal spikes is, in the end, a tool for all of the above.
Flattening the Spike
Once you can see those spikes, the natural question is how to flatten them. Diet and daily habits are the foundation, and always will be. Alongside them, there is a tool designed to blunt the glucose rise from a meal at its source, in the gut. It is called SiPore.
What SiPore Is
SiPore, which was previously sold under the name Carb Fence, is a technology built from mesoporous silica particles, taken with your meals. It is not a drug and it is not absorbed into the body. It works locally, inside the digestive tract, and then passes through.
The mechanism is what makes it interesting. SiPore acts like a molecular sieve. Its porous particles physically separate digestive enzymes, the amylase that breaks down starches and the lipase that breaks down fats, from the food you have eaten. With those enzymes held back, starches and fats are broken down and absorbed more slowly.
Why That Reduces the Post-Meal Spike
The height of a post-meal spike depends largely on how fast carbohydrate turns into glucose in your bloodstream. When digestion is slowed, that same carbohydrate is released more gradually. Instead of a sharp peak, you get a lower, gentler rise spread over more time. In effect, it turns a fast meal into slow food: the same nutrients, released more gradually.
This is the same principle behind eating fiber first, slowing down a meal, or walking after eating. SiPore delivers that effect as a consistent tool taken with the meal itself. On a CGM, a blunted response shows up as a lower peak and a smaller overall rise after eating, which is exactly the pattern you are trying to create.
One important caveat. SiPore works on starches, the complex carbohydrates in foods like pasta, potatoes, rice, and bread that must be broken down by enzymes before the body can absorb them. It does little for simple sugars that are already in their absorbable form, such as the sugar in fruit juice, soda, or candy. Those flood in quickly no matter what, because there is nothing for SiPore to slow down. So SiPore is a tool for starchy and mixed meals, not a license to eat sweets.
Slowing Fat Absorption, Too
SiPore does not act on carbohydrates alone. By holding back lipase, it also slows the digestion and absorption of dietary fat, and that carries its own set of benefits.
Slower fat absorption means a smaller, gentler rise in blood fats after a meal. That matters more than most people realize. The surge of fats and triglycerides that follows a rich meal is itself a source of oxidative stress and strain on the blood vessels, and repeating it several times a day for years adds up. Slowing fat absorption also lowers LDL and total cholesterol, which is exactly what the research on SiPore has shown, and it modestly reduces the calories pulled from a meal, which supports gradual fat loss.
Here is the honest limitation. Unlike glucose, there is no readily available, real-time test for fat absorption. You cannot watch your after-meal blood fats on your phone the way you can watch glucose. So the fat-slowing benefit works quietly in the background, and we confirm it over time through standard bloodwork, your LDL, cholesterol, and triglycerides, rather than in the moment. What the CGM does let you see is the carbohydrate side of the story. Because glucose can be measured continuously, a CGM shows you, in real time, what SiPore is doing to your carbohydrate absorption: a lower, slower, flatter curve after a starchy meal. The fat side you take somewhat on trust from the research and your lab panel. The carbohydrate side you can watch with your own eyes, and seeing that flatter curve is often what makes the whole idea click.
What the Research Shows
The evidence behind SiPore has grown considerably, and it is fairly impressive.
An earlier formulation was tested in a peer-reviewed clinical trial in people with prediabetes and early type 2 diabetes. Over twelve weeks it produced a meaningful reduction in HbA1c, a marker of long-term blood sugar, with minimal side effects. That early study was encouraging, though it was open-label and lacked a placebo group.
The larger and more rigorous test is the SHINE trial, published in 2026 in the peer-reviewed journal eClinicalMedicine. This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 318 adults with prediabetes or early type 2 diabetes who were overweight or obese, run across 27 clinics in Europe. Over twelve weeks, participants took either SiPore or a placebo three times daily with their meals. The version studied was an oral gel of the mesoporous silica.
The results are encouraging, and worth reporting honestly. Over the twelve weeks, SiPore lowered HbA1c, a marker of long-term blood sugar, by about 0.91 mmol/mol from the starting point, while placebo produced no significant change. Measured against placebo, SiPore also reduced body weight (about 1.1 kg versus 0.5 kg) and LDL cholesterol (about 6 mg/dL from baseline, and closer to 9 mg/dL in people not taking a statin), and it lowered total cholesterol. Notably, the weight lost came almost entirely from fat, with lean muscle mass preserved. Fewer people taking SiPore drifted from prediabetes into diabetes, and more moved back from diabetes toward prediabetes. It was well tolerated, with only mild, transient digestive effects and no serious adverse device effects.
These trials measured longer-term markers such as HbA1c and metabolic parameters rather than continuous glucose curves specifically. HbA1c reflects your average glucose over time, and post-meal spikes are a major contributor to that average, so a lower HbA1c is consistent with blunted spikes. But the most direct way to see the post-meal effect in your own body is to watch it on a CGM, which is where this all comes back to measuring your own response.
The Benefits at a Glance
- Works in the gut, with your meals, and is not absorbed into the body
- Slows the digestion of carbohydrates and fats, blunting the post-meal glucose rise
- In a large placebo-controlled trial (SHINE), lowered HbA1c, body weight, and LDL cholesterol
- The weight lost came from fat, with lean muscle mass preserved
- Reduced the drift from prediabetes toward diabetes, and helped some move back the other way
- Strong safety profile, with no serious adverse effects and only mild, transient digestive symptoms
- Non-pharmaceutical, taken with meals as part of your routine
- A complement to good nutrition, not a replacement for it
Where This Fits in My Practice
I carry SiPore, and do recommend it for individuals needing help in addition to the fundamentals. Nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress reduction remain the foundation of metabolic health.
What SiPore offers is an additional, non-systemic lever for people whose post-meal glucose stays elevated despite doing the basics well. Because it works mechanically in the gut, it sits in an unusual middle ground between a dietary change and a medication. Whether it is a good fit depends on your numbers, your goals, and what we see in your data.
If we decide it is a good fit for you, SiPore is available through my online store in a liquid called Carb Fence and a capsule called Glucose Stabilizer: shop SiPore.
That last part matters most. I would not put anyone on it without a baseline, and I would not keep anyone on it without confirming it is doing something measurable. Which is where the CGM comes in.
See It for Yourself
The advantage of a CGM is that you do not have to take any of this on faith. You can see your typical response to a meal, add a tool like SiPore, and watch whether the curve actually flattens. Measure, adjust, measure again.
If you have not yet seen what your own blood sugar is doing, that is the place to start. For a limited time, I am offering a free two-week continuous glucose monitor to my community. There is no cost and no obligation. This offer is available through September 30th, and sensors are limited. Send me an email if you would like one.