Living with type 2 diabetes can be challenging, but the good news is that you have an incredibly effective tool at your disposal: exercise. Regular physical activity can have a profound impact on managing type 2 diabetes and improving overall health. We have discussed in previous blog on the benefits exercise and how it can help manage blood sugar levels. 

In this blog post, we will further explore the numerous benefits of exercise for individuals with type 2 diabetes and what types of exercise specifically help. 

Exercise has both immediate and long term benefits for our health and for blood glucose management. These benefits can be gained from a variety of different exercise forms. We are going to focus on the two most common forms of exercise prescribed to people with type 2 diabetes.

Aerobic Exercise
First up is cardiovascular or aerobic exercise, which can include walking, running and cycling that focusing on raising our heart rate for consistent periods of time. 

This form of exercise requires a large amount of energy production throughout. As a result our cells require a constant source of glucose as we are completing it. Our muscles then constantly take in glucose from our blood having an immediate lowering effect to blood glucose levels. Making this an amazing way to lower high blood glucose levels if you have a high reading throughout the day. 

Aerobic exercise also helps to manage and control the risk of heart disease, one of the most common disease linked to diabetes. Our heart is like any other muscle in our body, and requires strengthening. And this form of exercise is the best to strengthen it. By keeping your heart strong, it will improve blood flow, improve blood pressure and increase your exercise capacity and tolerance as well. 

Resistance Exercise
​Next up, resistance training. This is any training that utilizes a resistance you work against. This could be using weights, bands, springs like in pilates or even your body weight. The best types of exercises are what we called compound exercises, these utilise multiple muscles and joints at the one time (e.g. push ups and squats). Better yet, combining two exercisers together like a squat with a bicep curl. 

​The great benefit of this type of exercise is that it builds our bodies muscles strength and size. This can help long term blood glucose management as with increase muscle mass and size our body starts to require more energy to maintain these changes. Due to this our resting metabolic rate increases (the amount of glucose our body needs when resting increases) - leading to reduced blood glucose levels as our muscle require more throughout the day to maintain themselves.

This form of exercise, like our aerobic exercise, requires our muscles to take up glucose from the blood to produce the energy it needs to complete the movement. So it too can have an more immediate lowering of blood glucose levels. 
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These are two amazing forms of exercise that can help those with diabetes to control and manage their blood glucose levels. And what's even better, is that these forms of exercise are also the best to help prevent diabetes as well. 

​To understand the role exercise plays in blood glucose (regulation) levels we must first understand the normal process of regulation your body goes through. When glucose levels begin to increase, messages are sent to your pancreas which then produces insulin. This insulin acts like keys unlocking the cells within your body to absorb the glucose. Therefore, reducing the level of glucose in your blood.

For people living with diabetes two things can happen that reduce the effectiveness of this response. The first is that the pancreas is not creating enough insulin or keys so the cells remain locked and unable to absorb glucose. The second is when the pancreas continues to create enough insulin but the cells no longer respond in the same way, as if the locks have changed and the key no longer fits. This is called insulin resistance.

​When is comes to exercise both aerobic and resistance training have been proven to reduce blood glucose levels. We will outline how they do this in our next blog post later this week.

A great way to get started is to find a form of exercise you can and will do regularly. If that sounds hard, or you feel like you've tried exercising before but just haven't found something you'll stick at come and see us at Simply Stronger.

As Exercise Physiologist (EP) we help people use exercise to improve their health and wellbeing everyday. For people living with Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes we help them by building exercise routines that fit into their lifestyle. Helping them to move more and take back control of their blood glucose levels.

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