Exercise May Be Best for Diabetes Prevention

Exercise, experts say, may be the best option to prevent diabetes. They say that an intense workout for a few minutes may do it. Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University did a study on this and found that sedentary cases who exercise hard for just 7.5 minutes a week improved their health significantly.

The researchers asked the men to ride a stationary bike for 15 minutes on a two-week period. They found that these men improved the way they metabolize glucose. As a result, they lowered their blood glucose levels. That is why the researchers recommend that people try to do four to six 30-second sessions of intense workout two times a week to obtain the blood glucose benefit.

The question is how does exercise prevent diabetes? Researchers from Yale found that intense workout is more effective than the one done leisurely in controlling and preventing diabetes. They had three groups of healthy but sedentary 72 year old women who were not obese to do some amount of exercise.

They asked one group to do hard training of 80% of aerobics, the second group to do moderate (60%) exercise and the third group to do easy (50%) exercise. They all did the same amount of work and burned 300 calories per bout. The group that did the intense type of workout showed a great improvement to metabolize sugar and curtailed the formation of fat.

Needless to say, but I am going to say it anyway, is that the ones who did the low intensity exercise did not benefit as much as the intense group did. This could only mean that intense workout can aid in helping in not only preventing diabetes but also in treating it. There are some data on diabetes and exercise here.


Here’s how the researchers explained it. As soon as the meal is over is the time when the most tissue damage happens. In other words, this is the time when the blood sugar rises to the highest level. You see, right after we eat, the glucose goes from the intestine into the blood stream. Now we know that the only storage areas for the glucose is the liver and the muscles.

So when the muscles are not exercised, they are full of sugar so the extra glucose after eating has nowhere else to go after it gets into the bloodstream. Now when the muscles are exercised, the stored sugar is emptied out, leaving room for the new glucose.

So after eating, the glucose that goes to the intestines and the blood stream can go to the muscles right away. This therefore prevents the rise in the blood glucose level. This makes sense, doesn’t it? This is indeed an exciting news because it holds some kind of promise that there can be help indeed in making the blood sugar behave better.

The important part of this study is that the more intense the exercise is, the greater the benefit is by way preventing the development of diabetes. And if the diabetes is already present, the greater is the ability to control or manage it. Cautionary measure though should be taken. Intense exercise could be bad for someone with certain kind of conditions so consult with the doctor before embarking on a regimen of intense exercise.