Exercise For Diabetes

Lately I’ve been thinking about the best way for those of us who have diabetes to get the exercise we need to stay in shape and to help us manage our diabetes better. But until now I only had my own opinion.

The best exercise, I had decided on the basis of my experience, was to get the exercise we like, because that’s the only exercise that you or I will keep on doing. That’s true, but frankly I didn’t have much more to say about it. Now I do, because a new study shows for a fact that this is what works.

This morning Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab announced some exciting new research. It had appeared in the May issue of a journal that I wouldn’t otherwise have read, Marketing Letters: A Journal of Research in Marketing.

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All of us snack on food from time when we’re hungry and hope that it wouldn’t raise our blood sugar too much. But I wonder how many of us take “exercise snacks.”

New studies on food and exercise snacks point us in different directions. Food snacking may not be what it’s cracked up to be, and I will report on that study soon. But a new concept of exercise snacking is showing that brief but intense exercise before meals can help us manage our diabetes better.

In the paragraph above I emphasized the phrase “before meals” because we already knew that when we get exercise after a big meal we can quickly bring down our blood sugar level. That’s a good strategy that I have followed myself ever since my late wife asked me after dinner one evening what she could do to reverse a high level somewhere above 200. We went out for a moderate 10 to 15 minute walk, and when we got back home and she tested again her level had dropped to little above 100.

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Almost all of us who have diabetes are too busy to keep our hearts in good shape. At least most of us act as if we were.

When our hearts get out of shape, we aren’t so busy any more. Heart disease is the most common as well as the most serious complication of diabetes.

This combination of lack of time and importance of heart health drive my quest for a quicker way to meet this challenge of living long with diabetes.

Lead Author Arnt Erik Tjønna (left) Tests a Volunteer for his Maximal Oxygen Uptake

A couple of weeks ago I learned the answer when I was in Canada’s Yukon Territory. I was driving to Alaska, where I am enjoying a cool summer. I had my car radio tuned to 105.1 FM from Burwash Landing, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio One station. The speaker was Dr. Brian Goldman.

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All the things that that we need to do when we learn we have diabetes and want to manage it can seem daunting. Diet, weight loss, exercise, reducing stress and inflammation, and taking pills or insulin can add up to a major headache.

But a brand new study shows that one of these tasks has become much easier. A little exercise can be a big help in bringing down our blood sugar level after a meal.

We have known for years that a brisk walk of half an hour can bring down our sugar level. I well remember when my late wife Catherine asked what she could do when her blood glucose meter showed that her level was above 200 about an hour after dinner. I suggested that we take a brisk walk around the block, and when we got back home and she tested again, her level was almost down to normal.

The difference in her levels before and after that exercise impressed both of us. But the new study shows that we have something that is much better. It’s easy and reduces our sugar level even more.

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Besides eating wisely, what could be the best way to manage diabetes than getting a lot of exercise? For years the experts have been telling us that we need to work out regularly and to get our required dose of both aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

Exercise helps, but just getting off our butts now seems to be even more important. Stand up please!

This is the message of two recent reports in peer-reviewed professional journals. One of them focuses on people with pre-diabetes and other other on those of us who have type 2 diabetes. But the message is appropriate for all of us.

People with pre-diabetes are just like people with diabetes except that they have a choice because they still have enough beta cells in their pancreas. If they manage their condition now, they won’t have to manage diabetes all the rest of their lives.

The study of people with pre-diabetes analyzed 153 people in two earlier studies who had known risk factors for type 2 diabetes. This is the first study that has examined the effects of a sedentary lifestyle on diabetes. The new study, “Associations of objectively measured sedentary behaviour and physical activity with markers of cardiometabolic health,” appears in the May 2013 issue of Diabetologia, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. The full-text is free online.

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