How Exercise Can Help Diabetics
How Exercise Can Help Diabetics
From feeling younger, more mobile, building muscle health, and especially to controlling your diabetes, exercising is better for your overall health. Exercise is known to lower blood sugar, blood pressure, and delay the effects of Type 2 Diabetes itself.1
Exercise helps you maintain your insulin health
Not only has exercise been shown to lower your blood sugar levels, it helps your body better deal with insulin sensitivity (hormone that helps your body control glucose). Moderate to regular exercise can help reduce visceral fat (fat in the belly area), which if you have excess, makes your body work even harder to use insulin properly. If you already have pre-existing insulin resistance conditions, exercise can help make it go down, thus helping you use glucose more effectively.2, 3
Improves Diabetes affected joint health
Excess glucose in the blood leads to inflammation, thus making some joints painful or stiff, leading to joint deterioration. Though you do not have to be overweight to develop Type 2 Diabetes, many who are diabetic are overweight, and that excess weight causes strain on joints too.
Any routine regime of physical activity increases blood flow, getting oxygen and nutrients where they are needed, reducing pain and improving function in the extremities. With less pain everywhere else, you can do more activities, enjoy life, improve mood, better sleep, and manage stress.2, 3
How to get started and tips to take note
Exercise requires a plan. It does not have to be extremely precise or require complicated techniques, so as long as fits what you yourself alone needs.2, 3
- Consult a medical professional first to see you do not have any underlying conditions that could be made worse. It is also to make sure what level of blood sugar is healthy for you.
- There is such a thing as a blood sugar crash by working out too much. Carry nutrient dense snacks for emergencies and find ways to keep a record of blood glucose levels before and after workout.
- Make a list of fun things to do. Here you can explore routines and things you can try with company to make your workouts more fun.
- Do not jump into a workout program because you feel like you have to, or you will most likely quit. Slow and steady pace and working up to a full program helps you stick with it and reduce injuries or aches or pains that would otherwise stop you from continuing.
- Like getting the proper nutrition to maintain your blood glucose, variety is also key when exercising. Include a mix of aerobics, classic jogging, swimming, yoga, and even lifting weights, which are known to be the most effective types of activities for diabetics.
- Don’t let physical activities finish at working out and stop doing any resemblance of physical activity after. The calories you burn here and thereafter by choosing to keep active throughout your regular day will help further maintain a healthy blood glucose.
If you need extra help in controlling your diabetes with food, look for nutritional supplements with low GI (Glycemic Index, a scale of 0 to 100, the higher the number the quicker it raises your blood sugar). A wide range of Glucerna products have been specifically designed to support the dietary needs of diabetics and help manage to control their blood glucose level. Formulated with low-digested carbohydrates with 35 essential nutrients, it helps to control blood glucose from spiking, keeping one full longer.4
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