The Role of Exercise in Diabetes Management

Do people with diabetes benefit from exercise?

Exercise is an essential component of any diabetic care plan. Checking your blood sugar levels prior to, during, and following exercise will help you avoid issues. This will enable you to prevent potentially harmful blood sugar changes and show you how your body reacts to exercise. Before starting a fitness program, especially if you haven't exercised recently, get your doctor's approval. You should talk to your doctor about how certain activities might affect your blood sugar. Your doctor can advise you on the best time to exercise and can also go over how being more active might impact your blood sugar levels and potential medication side effects. Exercise is beneficial to your health in a variety of ways, but if you have diabetes, monitoring your blood sugar levels is just as important as the exercise itself.

How Does Exercise Help with Diabetes?

For those with type 2 diabetes, regular exercise, including both aerobic and resistance training, can be very beneficial. Exercise can help reduce both excess body weight and poor blood glucose control, which are significant diabetes risk factors, according to studies. Age-related health issues associated with diabetes in older adults, such as weakened flexibility and balance, may also be managed with specific exercise regimens.

Diabetes can be fought in a variety of ways through exercise. It increases insulin sensitivity, enabling cells to absorb glucose from the blood using any insulin that may be present. Muscle cells can still take up glucose when they contract during exercise even in the absence of insulin.

Diabetes-friendly Exercises

In addition to promoting weight loss, blood pressure regulation, and cholesterol reduction, exercise can also benefit your health in other ways. Making the muscles more adept at utilizing glucose is one of the most crucial ways exercise helps control and lower blood sugar levels (improved insulin sensitivity).

Everyone is advised to regularly engage in both aerobic and resistance forms of exercise because they have so many advantages, regardless of age, gender, or fitness goals.

Aerobic (cardio), resistance, and combined training—doing both—are all equally effective at lowering HbA1c levels in diabetics. People frequently claim that strength training only helps you gain muscle and that cardio only helps you lose weight.

One of the most important aspects of better diabetes management is strength training. Strength training has several advantages for muscle growth, including increasing the uptake of glucose by your muscles and helping to regulate blood sugar.

The Functions & Advantages of Exercise in the Treatment of Diabetes

Numerous studies have amply demonstrated the benefits of exercise and its significance in the diabetes management. Below is a list of the advantages of exercising to prevent or control diabetes.

• Exercise decreased HbA1c values by 0.7 percentage points in people with diabetes of different ethnic backgrounds who were taking different medications and following different diets, and this improvement occurred even though they didn't lose any weight.
• Any form of exercise—aerobic, resistance, or combining the two (combined training)—was successful in bringing down diabetics' HbA1c levels.
• Resistance training and aerobic exercise both decreased insulin resistance in older adults who were at risk for diabetes due to abdominal obesity and previous inactivity. Combining the two forms of exercise was found to be more advantageous than doing either one separately.
• Those with diabetes who engaged in three to four hours of exercise each week further decreased their risk of passing away from heart disease. Diabetes patients who walked for at least two hours each week had a lower risk of passing away from the condition than those who did not exercise.
• A woman with diabetes had a 40% lower risk of developing heart disease if she performed at least four hours of moderate (including walking) or vigorous exercise each week. These benefits continued even after the researchers took into account confounding factors like BMI, smoking, and other heart disease risk factors.

What unique safety measures need to be taken by diabetic patients?

• While engaging in physical activity, drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration (harmful loss of body water).
• Before engaging in any physical activity, especially if you take insulin, check your blood sugar levels.
• When you're done, evaluate how your activity affected your blood glucose level.
• After engaging in physical activity, examine your feet for sores, blisters, irritation, cuts, or other injuries. Contact your healthcare provider if an injury doesn't start to heal after two days.
• Try to exercise for 30 to 45 minutes a minimum of three times per week. If you haven't worked out recently, go slowly. Start with 5 to 10 minutes and work your way up.
• Avoid fried foods and foods high in oil, carbs, and sugar, and instead opt for low-GI foods like vegetables and lentils. Additionally, it's crucial to regularly check your blood sugar levels.
• Be on the lookout for signs like a low-grade fever, a sore throat, fatigue, and trouble breathing. Get medical help right away if this happens.

Conclusion: 

Given all of the diabetes research and advancements in diabetes treatments, it's easy to believe that someone has already discovered a cure. Unlike what many people think, neither type 1 nor type 2 diabetes can be cured by roots. But there are treatments out there, like easy daily routines like working out and adhering to a doctor's recommended diet, that can make a significant difference. You've arrived at the appropriate location if you have diabetes. 

Consult the primary care physicians at Millennium Park Medical Associates in Chicago, Illinois, to get the best and most thorough internal medicine and preventive care services. Right away, make an appointment request over the phone or online.