The young people who are afraid of death have brought out a "super single product".

“I lost 6 catties after wearing a continuous glucose monitor for two months!”

“I declare that the continuous glucose monitor is the best weight-loss companion.”

“The healthy weight-loss method that doesn't involve injections or medications might only be wearing a continuous glucose monitor...”

On Xiaohongshu, blood glucose monitors, which originally belonged to the professional medical category, are being “played” by a group of young people into a magic tool for weight loss, blood sugar control, and health management.

They are keen on sharing their real physical reactions to a cup of milk tea, a bowl of rice, or even a single lychee after wearing a continuous glucose monitor (Continuous Glucose Monitor, also known as CGM, hereinafter collectively referred to as continuous glucose monitor).

In the vast number of sharing notes, concepts such as “blood sugar assassins,” “blood sugar-raising bombs,” and “blood sugar-stabilizing foods” emerge one after another. Netizens in the comment section are actively discussing “which is the real ‘blood sugar killer,’ carrots or oat milk.”

Since 2024, the social media buzz about “blood glucose monitors” has been increasing. Under the Weibo hot search #90% of young people are worried about being sick# in April last year, many people were discussing blood glucose monitors. On November 14th, World Diabetes Day, the rising discussion heat also brought the monthly buzz to a new high.

After a brief decline, the relevant discussions continued to climb, and the buzz reached a new peak in the past two months.

The increasing “blood sugar anxiety” among people is gradually bringing a medical device into the daily lives of families and young people.

How are blood glucose monitors selling?

In the past, when people wanted to measure their blood sugar, they often went to hospitals or clinics. Now, more consumers are willing to buy blood glucose monitors for home use to monitor their physical condition at any time.

According to the manufacturing industry ranking database, in 2023, the market size of blood glucose monitors for home use was 5.67 billion yuan, accounting for 84.3%, far higher than the 15.7% (1.06 billion yuan) for medical use.

Actually, buying medical devices for home use has been a trend in recent years.

According to “36Kr Future Consumption,” health devices have become one of the fastest-growing sub - categories in the Taotian health track. “The device category is migrating from professional use to mass adaptation. We observe that the user age group, scenarios, and demands are all expanding rapidly.”

For example, oxygen concentrators are being used in outdoor scenarios, nasal irrigators have become “daily necessities” for rhinitis patients, hair removal devices have entered households from beauty salons, and blood glucose monitors are used by people controlling blood sugar for daily physical management...

The changes in the best - selling medical devices on the Douyin platform also reflect this trend to some extent.

In 2021, the best - selling medical devices on Douyin were mainly blood pressure monitors. In 2022 and 2023, mask products were the main ones. In the first half of this year, blood glucose monitors became the products with the highest demand.

Among the top 10 brands in terms of sales on the Douyin health monitoring medical device list, 7 are hot - selling blood glucose monitor brands.

According to the monitoring technology, blood glucose monitors are mainly divided into two categories:

One is the traditional fingertip blood glucose monitor, which uses fingertip blood and test strips to measure the blood sugar level at a certain point in time. It is currently the mainstream blood glucose monitor product. The other is the continuous glucose monitor, which can monitor the continuous changes in blood sugar over a period of time. The netizens on social media who use it to “measure blood sugar” mentioned earlier are using continuous glucose monitors.

Although the overall market for continuous glucose monitors is small, its growth rate is very fast. During the just - past 618 promotion, the sales of blood glucose monitors on JD Health exceeded 100 million yuan, among which the sales of continuous glucose monitors increased by 64% year - on - year.

In the performance data disclosed by major domestic blood glucose monitor enterprises, continuous glucose monitors also performed very well:

In 2024, the product revenue of Microport continuous glucose monitors was 180 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 138%. Yuwell's continuous glucose monitors achieved more than double - digit growth. The revenue of San Nuo Bio's continuous glucose monitor business (domestic market) in the first quarter of 2025 increased by more than 50% year - on - year.

Who is buying blood glucose monitors?

China has the largest number of diabetes patients in the world, which is the main reason why blood glucose monitors are selling better and better.

However, the consumer profile and usage scenarios of blood glucose monitors are becoming more diverse and segmented, and their concerns about products are also different.

Combining the discussions about “blood glucose monitors” on social media, we have summarized the following three main groups of people and scenarios for using blood glucose monitors:

Firstly, it is the daily monitoring needs of diabetes patients.

They are the “rigid - demand” consumers in the blood glucose monitor market, and their core demands for products are accuracy, stability, and economy.

For many people in this group, when blood glucose monitors become standard daily consumables, cost - effectiveness is an important consideration.

Although the prices of various blood glucose monitor products, including continuous glucose monitors, have dropped significantly, @Yiding told “DT Business Observation” that after her father was diagnosed with diabetes, he still thought it was “too expensive” and “a waste of test strips” to measure blood sugar every day and asked her not to rush to buy a new one because the existing ones were not used up. “Control diet and exercise well, and measuring less is the same. Just have an idea in mind.”

On social platforms, there are also consumers like @Yiding who are researching how to buy blood glucose monitors for their elderly family members. They first get coupons in the live - stream room, stack the platform's big promotion discounts and national subsidies, and finally get one for 168 yuan.

The second group of consumers is pregnant women.

This kind of demand usually only lasts for a short period, but the pregnant women's demand for comfortable, convenient, and reliable monitoring is particularly prominent.

After the doctor advised @Roubao, who was pregnant, to monitor her blood sugar daily, she first bought a continuous glucose monitor of a certain brand on the e - commerce platform because she thought “pricking the finger is painful and troublesome, and it has to be done four times a day.” Then, because she felt uncomfortable wearing the continuous glucose monitor while sleeping and the product was not very accurate, she chose to return it and get a refund.

“The continuous glucose monitor made me very anxious and inaccurate. I switched to the blood glucose monitor recommended by the doctor. Pricking the finger every day is not as painful as I thought.” @Roubao said.

The last group of consumers are young people who pay for “blood sugar anxiety.”

Although they have not been diagnosed with diabetes, “blood sugar control” and “exercise monitoring” are their main reasons for buying blood glucose monitors.

“I just use my dad's blood glucose monitor to measure occasionally. I mainly want to see which of the few types of milk tea I often drink has the lowest glycemic index.” @Yiding, who works in Shanghai, told us like this.

She doesn't have diabetes, but her father was suddenly diagnosed with it in the past two years. Frequent purchases of blood glucose test strips for her family made her more curious and vigilant about “sugar.”

Yiding represents the mentality of some young people: they don't have clear symptoms but are anxious about potential health risks.

@Black, who is currently trying hard to lose weight, accidentally saw on the social platform that someone lost 9 catties in a month by controlling blood sugar with a continuous glucose monitor. Then, impulsively, he opened the e - commerce app and added the hot - selling single products of major blood glucose monitor brands on the market to the shopping cart, thinking that he could also buy one to try when necessary.

Fitness and sports enthusiasts may also buy blood glucose monitors. On Xiaohongshu, a cycling enthusiast said that he planned to buy a continuous glucose monitor before cycling around Qinghai Lake to avoid hypoglycemia during the exercise.

This group of consumers is relatively less sensitive to price but has higher requirements for a sense of technology, wearing comfort, the usability of the app, and the professionalism of data interpretation.

How did blood glucose monitors “fly into ordinary families”?

The increase in the incidence of diabetes is the background for the growth of the blood glucose monitor market.

In 2005, the incidence of diabetes in China was 7.53%, and by 2023, it had reached 13.67%. That is to say, in 2023, there were 233 million people with diabetes in China, and about one in every six people had diabetes.

Moreover, diabetes is showing a trend of becoming younger. A paper in the Health Data Science journal ( The Burden of Type 2 Diabetes in Adolescents and Young Adults in China: A Secondary Analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 ) shows that from 1990 to 2021, the incidence of type 2 diabetes among people aged 15 - 39 in China doubled, and the incidence among people aged 15 - 19 increased the fastest.

In the field of medical devices, for any product to become popular, it probably has to meet two conditions: easy to use and inexpensive.

Just in terms of operation, in the past, using a blood glucose monitor often involved steps such as installing test strips, disinfecting and cleaning, collecting blood, dropping blood samples, and waiting for results. Besides “pricking the finger” every time, there were two inconvenient aspects:

One is that test strips need to be manually installed every time, and the code needs to be confirmed to be consistent with that on the test strip bottle. Some models also require manual code adjustment. If there is an error in this step, the final result will be inaccurate.

The other is that traditional blood glucose monitors can only obtain one blood sugar value at a time, which only reflects the blood sugar level at the time of blood collection. They need to be used at fixed times and places, such as on an empty stomach before meals, one hour after meals, two hours after meals, etc.

Subsequently, the “evolution” of blood glucose monitors effectively improved these two problems.

In 2002, San Nuo Bio launched the first blood glucose monitor without code adjustment. The so - called “no code adjustment” is a bit like the automatic focusing technology of a point - and - shoot camera. It doesn't require manual calibration, which can reduce manual operation errors.

In 2017, Abbott launched continuous glucose monitors in China for the first time, providing 14 - day calibration - free continuous monitoring. This made more people discover that continuous glucose monitors can turn isolated blood sugar data “points” into continuous “lines,” which is convenient for people to understand the all - day blood sugar fluctuation trend.

Meanwhile, the prices of blood glucose monitors are also dropping. Now, an ordinary fingertip blood glucose monitor only costs a few dozen yuan, and the unit price of test strips, the main consumables, is usually between 0.5 and 1 yuan.

The same is true for continuous glucose monitors.

In the early days, the prices of imported products represented by Abbott and Dexcom, which were often thousands of yuan, discouraged ordinary consumers. However, with the collective efforts of domestic brands such as Microport Medical, San Nuo Bio, and Yuwell Medical, the prices of continuous glucose monitors are also “competing fiercely.” Taobao data shows that the price of Yuwell's hot - selling continuous glucose monitor after national subsidy is 97.3 yuan.

In addition, the coverage of medical insurance policies has also pressed the “accelerator button” for the popularization of continuous glucose monitors. Currently, many provinces and cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, have included some continuous glucose monitor products in the medical insurance reimbursement scope.

Conclusion

In addition to the changes in technology and price, the transformation of health concepts is also an important reason for the sharp increase in the sales of blood glucose monitors.

Now, young people are no longer satisfied with passively receiving treatment after getting sick. Instead, they hope to minimize the risk of diseases through active health management.

Although they are not sick, they want to “control blood sugar” and conduct daily monitoring to prevent problems before they occur.

For them, blood glucose monitors are not only a monitoring hardware but also a “data report” about their own bodies. Just like buying bracelets and watches to monitor physical data, it is one of the sources of their “sense of control” over their physical health.

This article is from the WeChat official account “DT Business Observation”, author: Meng Pingping@cq2731443, published by 36Kr with authorization.