Health Network News

Being overweight is a major cause of diabetes and it’s a statistical fact that most of us with type 2 diabetes are obese, or were when we were first diagnosed.

It may be fair to suggest that exercise is not on the list of priorities for people when they are first diagnosed with this disease.

Perhaps the good news is that exercising does not mean that you have to become a slave to the gym! The fact is, one of the reasons we don’t go to the gym is because we don’t want to show our perhaps flabby bodies in public!

So forget about the gym for the moment - as you progress you may get the bug for exercise and want to join up, but simply going for a walk has been proved to make a big difference to our health. Walking an extra 2 miles a day only takes about three quarters of an hour.

Rather than worry about how far you walk, why not just time yourself? Twenty minutes walking has a measurable impact on our health, particularly diabetics.

Just being outside and doing some gardening for twenty minutes is as good.

The good news is that aerobic exercise (exercise that can be maintained for longer periods of time) is more beneficial for the type 2 diabetic than anaerobic (vigorous exercise that can only be sustained in short bursts), so you don’t have to strain yourself! But why bother at all?

The simple facts are these.

The liver has a certain amount of glucose stored in itself, which it releases as we exercise and use more glucose in the blood. This si the point about aerobic exercise, because you can keep it going, the extra glucose from the liver is used. Once used up, the body then starts to use fat. This is how we lose wieght and lower blood sugars when we exercise.

Wieght loss has many other benefits in that it helps reduce the risk of heart disease and reduces blood presure.