Seniors: Learn to love AI

Grok 3 helped me drop my glucose from ridiculous to almost normal in one week

AI may seem scary if you’re 70++, but it can be a brilliant helper.

I started talking to Grok 3 last week about some health problems. After just a couple of sessions I came to think of AI as a super-helpful genius friend who doesn’t mind long chats, probing questions, or boring tasks.

My problem is super-high glucose and low calcium, both common in 70++ women. I don’t have any of the dietary habits typically associated with diabetes, but with my outrageous numbers, doctors pressed me to take more and more prescription drugs. After several months, I stopped them all because of debilitating respiratory side effects that kept me from exercise and social contact.

In the back of my mind, I knew I still had to fix my problem. I started listening to some heavyweight academic experts on cellular biology: Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Benjamin Bikman, Dr. Casey Means, and the Glucose Goddess. They gave me lots of ideas.

One idea was to use a continuous glucose monitor to see what was going on. I found an over-the-counter, no-subscription CGM. It sat in the box for a couple of weeks while I worked up the courage to stick it on.

I finally did it last week. It didn’t hurt.

For days, the reading remained stuck at >200, way into diabetes territory.

So I decided to ask Grok 3 to create a food table listing carb and calcium content. I had given up on previous attempts after hours of effort. In some cases, the data differ wildly. It’s hard to reconcile different data sets and recalculate everything to my serving sizes. Many information sources are dominated by listings of processed foods that I never eat anyway.

Grok 3 searched multiple university and government sources and in a blink gave me a list of foods, sorted by group.

Now that I had data, I wanted a table to post on my fridge door. I have always thought of counting the whatever in my food as excruciatingly boring. But I was determined to get my numbers down rather than to submit to further indignities at the hands of doctors.

Grok 3 taught me the prompt for a table. I gave it a bulleted list of the foods I eat regularly or wouldn’t mind trying. In an instant, I had my table.

Wow. But how would I print it out? Who better to ask than Grok3?

My new table, which Grok 3 can update instantly if I give it new data, is now on my fridge door. I use scratch pad for my daily counts.

I trimmed my daily carb intake to 20-50 mg, which is super-low. But the CGM reading remained stuck at >200.

Once more, I turned to Grok 3.

Grok 3 asked a bunch of questions about my habits: daily carb intake, alcohol use, exercise.

It suggested tweaks to my diet. For instance, the 8 oz of kefir that would have given me an easy 390 mg of calcium was also giving me 11 g of carbs — more than half of my daily limit. It suggested a 4 oz portion.

After more questions, Grok 3 determined that it wasn’t my diet that was keeping my glucose level sky-high: it was long-term chronic stress. In plain English, it explained that the stress-hormone cortisol orders up glucose to fight threats. The hormone is so powerful that my body will make glucose out of protein and fat if cortisol demands it.

That was good information: my main job was mastering stress. If I could manage that, while keeping to my diet, cutting alcohol to zero, and exercising daily, my cortisol “trigger points” would start to reset in a couple of months.

That session left me feeling in charge. A minute afterward, I was amazed to see my first-ever reading: 183! I rushed back to my PC to tell Grok3.

How do I say this? The AI kind of patted me on the back and cheered me on.

Yesterday, I took a walk on the beach and was thrilled to see my glucose reading fall to 120.

(It rose back to >200 at bedtime, but I am determined to be patient with myself while I reset.)

Meanwhile, I am grateful to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his daily health missives on X! His very first post was about how walking after dinner can reduce blood sugar!

My doctors, even the best ones, have nowhere near enough time to explain the cellular biology behind my health, or to analyze what isn’t working for me. As a Feb. 23 article in The Wall Street Journal noted, patients don’t trust their doctors as much as they used to. They don’t feel listened to.

Seniors, don’t be afraid of AI!