Walk diabetes away

[fifi]

Ground breaking report
Walk diabetes away
A recent study in the United States appears to give hope to older people in danger of developing type 2 diabetes.





Older adults can be susceptible to poor blood sugar control after meals, due to insulin resistance in the muscles and slow or low insulin secretion from the pancreas.  Many are diagnosed with impaired glucose tolerance, often known as pre-diabetes, and are usually advised to get as much exercise as possible.  Meanwhile, according to the report, the advice that a short walk after eating is good for digestion can also be applied to the prevention of diabetes.

The after-dinner stroll is a pass time ingrained into the Spanish way of life, and now the study seems to show that a simple 15 minute walk after a meal could help balance out some of the blood sugar 'spikes' that are a key risk factor for going on to develop the full blown disease.  The US study was the first to test out the effectiveness of short bursts of activity in the high risk period after meals, when blood sugar can rise very quickly with debilitating effects that can last for many hours.

Interestingly, the tests showed that three shorter walks were just as effective at reducing blood sugar throughout the whole day as the previously advised 30 – 45 minutes in one go and, perhaps most importantly, that walking after food was "significantly more effective" at leveling out the potentially damaging rise in post-meal blood sugar which is common in the older generation.  It was found that the best time to walk, at just an easy-to-moderate pace, was in the evening as this is usually when the largest meal of the day is eaten.

According to the Spanish Diabetes Foundation, just over 41 per cent of women and 37.4 per cent of men in the over 75 age group suffer from type 2 diabetes, whilst the typical figure for the over 18s in general is 13.8 per cent.  Yet, though Type 2 diabetes has traditionally always affected older people, the average age is dropping due to more sedentary lifestyles and changes in diet, thus the recommendations could probably be effective from a much earlier age as well.

[Brightspark]

It's weird the learning curve between type 1 diabetes and type 2.
Someone with type 1 would know this, and would be forgiven for saying that it's just common sense, but then again your taught these kind of things very quickly once diagnosed, with type 2 the education to the patient seems dramatically less.

It always makes me laugh when people say "Has he/she got a bad case of diabetes?" or "have they got it bad?" You either have it or you don't, there is no inbetween.
But again, comes down to education about the disease, and unfortunately it's normally people with type 2 that come out with these kind of things...