The Benefits of Exercise- Physiotherapy, Reg. Massage Therapy- Kitchener-Waterloo


The Benefits of Exercise Go Way Beyond the Muscles- Part 2

Exercise and Blood Sugar

He’s passionate about exercise because his research has shown again and again how critical it is to health. He says when he’s tried to cause disease, for example, by feeding rats or mice high-fat diets, he can’t do it as long as the animals are exercising.

“Inactivity is the foundational piece that has to be there for these diseases to develop,” he says.

In one experiment, for example, he took healthy people who were walking at least 10,000 steps a day and asked them to walk less — around 5,000 steps a day, about as much exercise as the average American gets.

Thyfault quickly saw changes in how well their blood vessels worked and how well they could control their blood sugar after meals. The study participants looked like they were on their way to getting type 2 diabetes.

“What we think is that if that level of activity continues for a prolonged period of time, disease develops,” he says.

In fact, a long-running study sponsored by the government, called the Diabetes Prevention Program, tested this. It split more than 3,000 overweight adults with prediabetes into three groups. The first group got a lot of help to eat better and exercise more, with a goal of 150 minutes a week. The second group took the drug metformin, which helps the body respond better to the hormone insulin. The third group took placebo pills.

Exercise and a healthy diet worked better than the pill. After 4 years, compared to the placebo group, the people who ate better and exercised cut their risk of getting diabetes by about twice as much as the group taking medication — a 58% reduced risk of getting diabetes compared to 31% in the medication group.

By Brenda Goodman, MA, Reviewed by Michael W. Smith, MD on June 22, 2015

Be well.

www.webmd.com WebMD Health News

www.activewellness.ca


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