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Exercise Helps Lower Blood Sugar Levels
Type 2 diabetes is associated with obesity, genetics, and lack of exercise. Most of us know that exercise can help control blood sugar levels. A Canadian study set out to find which type of exercise is best: aerobic or strength training. The surprising result was that combining both gave much better results than either one alone. The finding is new, because "most other studies have looked at just one kind of exercise, either aerobic or resistance," noted lead researcher Dr. Ronald J. Sigal, an associate professor of medicine and cardiac sciences at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada.
Sedentary diabetics were divided into four different groups. One group did no exercise while the other three groups exercised 45 minutes three times a week. A second group participated in aerobic exercise. A third group did strength training. And the last group combined aerobics and strength training.
As expected, exercise reduced A1c levels, the blood protein used to measure blood sugar levels for the previous three months. Strength training reduced A1c levels .38% and aerobic exercise .51%. However, combining both types of exercise dropped A1c levels a whopping .97% even though that group exercised the same amount of time as the other two groups. A drop of one percentage point reduces risk of heart attack and stroke by 15% to 20% and diabetes related kidney and eye disease by 25% to 40%.
"For people with diabetes, this is spectacular news," says Larry Deeb, past president of the American Diabetes Association. "Exercise can lower blood sugar level almost as much as any single pill you can take."
Miriam Nelson, an exercise researcher at Tufts University, says, "If I had type 2 diabetes, I would be out there doing abundant aerobic activity and strength training. The great thing about aerobic activity is it burns a lot of calories and improves the whole vascular system from the heart to the cells. Strength training makes the muscles stronger and more sensitive to insulin. We need good cardiovascular health, and we need good muscular health."