Exercise is a key part of treating Type 2 Diabetes

Exercise is a very important part of treating type 2 diabetes. It:

Makes your body use glucose better

Keeps your blood sugar under control

And can help prevent heart disease

Most people can exercise safely, but sometimes it can cause low blood sugar. This is more likely to happen if you take insulin or other medicines that decrease your blood sugar.

How Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Might Need a Special Type of Exercise

Exercise can sometimes make blood sugar drop so low that it can be dangerous. However, there isn’t much research on how exercise affects blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes yet. This study looked at how blood sugar changed in people with type 2 diabetes after they did moderate-intensity exercise for 12 weeks.

Patients with type 2 diabetes have to oversee their blood sugar levels. This includes watching how much they exercise, what they eat, and their age, gender, and other medical conditions. Some medications for diabetes can make it harder for someone to keep their blood sugar under control during exercise.

A study was done to look at how different medications for diabetes affected blood sugar levels after people exercised for 12 weeks. The study found that some medicines made it harder for people to keep their blood sugar under control during and after exercise, while others did not have much of an effect.

Length of exercise is essential when testing interventions for people with type 2 diabetes. This study looked at blood sugar levels in response to 12 weeks of moderate-intensity exercise in people with type 2 diabetes. We looked at the trends in blood sugar levels before, during, and after exercise, and we looked at what factors predict blood sugar levels after exercise.

The Study on a 12 Week Exercise Program for Type 2 Diabetics

66 Patients with diabetes were recruited from a medical center. 20 of them were able to enroll in a 12-week exercise program. They were randomly assigned to do the exercise at different times of the day (morning, afternoon, or evening).

The researchers looked at the blood sugar levels before and after the exercise. They used a tool to figure out how well the exercise worked (called the EIGR).

The Result of the Study

The BEBG ( Pre Exercise Blood Sugar) declined over time during the 12-week exercise training, while the PEBG ( Post Exercise Blood Sugar) remained stable. Higher BEBG levels predicted higher PEBG levels.

Higher baseline maximum oxygen uptake (the amount of oxygen your body can use) contributed to a larger magnitude of EIGR (Exercise-Induced Glucose Response, the difference between the BEBG and PEBG levels).

Higher HgbA1c (a measure of blood sugar levels over time) and BEBG levels predicted higher EIGR levels. Afternoon or evening exercise predicted lower EIGR levels than did morning exercise.

Conclusion

Exercise appears to be safe for people with diabetes. The time of day you exercise, how fit you are, and how well you control your diabetes may all affect how well you exercise. These findings can help us design better exercise programs for people with diabetes.

Reference

Effects of a 12-Week Moderate-Intensity Exercise Training on Blood Glucose Response in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Prospective Longitudinal Study