A friend
of mine a few weeks ago had told me about the benefits of “short” spurts of
exercise being good for diabetics. I had
tried looking for this news on the Internet afterwards and gave up in the end
thinking he must have been pulling my leg. Anyway, the actual link was in the March 2009 issue of Diabetes Current
that is put out by the Canadian Diabetes Association.
A study
was done at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh – involving 25 inactive young men
over a 2-week period where they all did short bursts of exercise such as
cycling. It seems that the few minutes
of intensive exercise enabled them to process a glucose drink afterwards
whereby any extra glucose in their blood stream disappeared quicker. Apparently with the short bursts of exercise –
the insulin they produced worked more efficiently!
I didn’t realize
until reading this article that cardiovascular disease begins early in our
lives, and diabetes is one of the biggest risk factors (and visa versa if you already
are a diabetic). With the right type of
intensive exercise for short periods of time, they are hoping it will be
possible for youths and middle aged adults to reduce their risk for developing
diabetes. Since most of us don’t have
the time or energy to spend 5-6 hours a week in an exercise program. Okay – maybe if I was rich and could afford a
personal trainer I would do it .
Even
though I have diabetes (Type 1) – as this study was aimed at Type 2 diabetes. Perhaps because I have always done this type
of “short spurt” exercise – it might have helped me in avoiding the more serious
complications that some of my diabetic friends have now. Who knows?
So, off I
go to run up the stairs to the kitchen, then run back downstairs, then run back
upstairs again since I “forgot” something. I’ll get my exercise done in no time at all!!! Oh and my title above "Run, Fatboy, Run" - excellent British comedy from 2007 - directed by David Schwimmer.
Here’s the
link to read up on this study - http://www.news.hw.ac.uk/news/4253-Dramatically_reduce_diabetes_risk_factors_with_just_seven_minutes_of_exercise_per_week
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