Since I knew almost nothing about peripheral arterial disease (PAD), I jumped at the chance to talk with Dr. Michael Jaff a few days ago. He is the medical director of the Vascular Diagnostic Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and a specialist in treating PAD.
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Starting to exercise isn’t easy for anyone. It sure wasn’t for me, even though I knew all too well how important exercise is for controlling my diabetes.

It’s a particularly personal example of the universal problem called inertia, which Sir Isaac Newton told us about 321 years ago in the greatest single scientific work ever. Inertia means that a body at rest tends to remain at rest.

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As soon as I read the new study by Dr. James Levine, I was inspired to go right out for a four-mile two-hour walk over to the University of New Mexico campus. I’m in Albuquerque this week, where I am visiting my favorite Certified Diabetes Educator, Karen LaVine.
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“We live in a culture of low targets,” writes Hana, one of my regular correspondents in England who has diabetes. For example, her nurse told her that that walking for half an hour three times a week was enough exercise to make a difference, and it doesn’t have to be fast walking. “I do a lot more than that,” she says.
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Fun exercise is not a contradiction in terms. It’s not an oxymoron, which means sharp dull. So the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron. But fun exercise isn’t.It might seem like that at first. It sure was for me, the original couch potato. Even bending over to pick up the daily newspaper was too difficult for me without a tool that grabbed it for me. My legs were so weak that I had to use my hands to get up from my easy chair or to get off the pot.

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When I hike in the mountains, I prefer the sounds of nature to those coming from my iPod. But for the past month it’s been too cold and windy for me to enjoy the mountains. Not even snowshoeing. [Read more →]

Any exercise can help us control our diabetes. But when we get 45 minutes each of aerobic exercise and resistance training for just three days a week, we can reduce our A1C a lot. In fact, this combination works about as well as any prescription drug can.

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Life is full of vicious circles. The opposite, virtuous circles, are all too rare.

The first virtuous circle I ever remember finding was the positive relationship between Byetta and exercise. “The more weight I lost and the more I exercised, the more energy I had,” I wrote in my forthcoming book, Losing Weight with Your Diabetes Medication. “All this feedback gave me more motivation than ever to keep on losing weight.”

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Just because it’s getting colder and in much of the country snow has begun to fall doesn’t mean that we have to stay indoors. We can still get the exercise that everyone needs outside where it’s a lot more pleasant. [Read more →]

Three people, none of whom know the others, happened to mention balance exercise to me on three consecutive days. I’ve learned to listen to coincidences like this, because the last time it happened like that, I listened and changed my life for the better. [Read more →]