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Help Diabetes With Exercise

The Study

People with diabetes should mix aerobics with weight training to get the best results in lowering blood sugar, a new study suggests. The combination worked best for weight loss too, compared to aerobics or weight training alone.

Blood sugar is fuel to muscles, and more sugar is burned during aerobic activity. Weight training builds more muscle, and both activities change muscle proteins in ways that enhance the process.

Patients in the study, published by the American Medical Association, achieved the results over nine months, exercising three days a week for about 45 minutes each session.

The researchers' goal was to test three exercise programs that doctors could realistically recommend and patients could stick with. They compared aerobics alone, weight training alone and a combination of the both.

All three groups worked out for about the same amount of time. A fourth group of patients was offered only weekly stretching and relaxation classes for further comparison. The study was completed by 245 people with diabetes.

Led by trainers, patients walked on a treadmill that raised the uphill grade by 2 percent every two minutes for the aerobics. Weight training, also supervised, was done on machines that worked muscles in the upper body and legs, with more weight added as participants increased their strength.

The researchers found that only the group that combined aerobics and weights both lowered their blood sugar and lost weight, although all three fitness groups reduced their waist sizes.

Fewer patients in the combo group started taking new diabetes drugs than in the other groups. Decisions on medications were left up to the patients' regular doctors during the study.

Forty-one percent of the patients in the combo group either decreased their diabetes medications or lowered their average blood sugar as measured by a common blood test, compared to 26 percent for weights only, 29 percent for aerobics only and 22 percent in the non-exercise group.

The blood sugar reduction achieved by the combo group was enough to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other complications, the researchers wrote, citing earlier studies.