Now that you have spent Super Bowl Sunday watching the athletes exercise, it’s time for you to spend the rest of the week exercising yourself!
The Law of Health #2 – EXERCISE
The importance of exercise to a diabetic is second only to nutrition. The exercise you choose is up to you and your health care practitioner.
Conventional wisdom says walking is the best exercise for a diabetic, and that ideally you should walk 10,000 steps (roughly 5 miles) every day. “Normative data indicate that healthy adults typically take between 4,000 and 18,000 steps/day, and that 10,000 steps/day is reasonable.”
“Present Truth” (a.k.a. recent studies) tells us that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) may be more effective for diabetics, and you can combine it with daily walking. “The interval training program appears to confer greater improvements than the continuous training program.”
My Pain Physical Therapist confirmed that walking does use all the body parts, just as Ellen White stated. And while exercise, by itself, does not directly result in weight loss or lower blood sugar, over time, exercise will help decrease insulin resistance. And I have proven to myself, over and over, that the combination of daily walking and intermittent fasting definitely lowers blood glucose and insulin levels.
Do not exercise aggressively if your blood glucose is over 250 mg/dL.3 The problem is this: If your glucose is high and you are insulin resistant and your cells do not allow the insulin in, your cells will continue to signal they need glucose for fuel, and your liver will continue to put out that glucose. Without insulin sensitivity to let the glucose into the cells, the glucose keeps building up in your blood, pushing your blood glucose levels higher and higher.
Some studies show that exercising after the evening meal is more effective than exercising before meals. “Postprandial walking may be more effective at lowering the glycemic impact of the evening meal in individuals with type 2 diabetes compared with pre-meal or no exercise and may be an effective means to blunt postprandial glycemic excursions.” However, any time that you exercise is beneficial to your diabetic health.
If you are at risk for diabetes (but not yet diagnosed), you need to spend a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise per week (that’s equivalent to 30 minutes a day for 5 days) to decrease your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. “A major clinical study called the Diabetes Prevention Program studied people at risk for diabetes. It showed that lifestyle changes involving 150 minutes of exercise per week decreased the risk of progressing to type 2 diabetes by 58 percent.”
One bonus you will enjoy from exercise is boosting brain function (cognition) from increasing blood flow to the brain. “Anything that gets your heart rate up will increase blood flow to the brain and can provide an uptick in cognition.”
If you are mobility-challenged, there are still many exercises you can do while sitting in a chair or a wheelchair. And you can do modified versions of Tai Chi, Qigong, and Yoga while seated. If you have a YouTube account, make a playlist of exercise videos that you can do indoors. Now you will have no excuse for not exercising when it’s too hot, too cold, too smoky (from local fires), or too rainy, windy, or snowy.
What is the best exercise for you to reverse or prevent diabetes? The answer: any exercise you enjoy enough to do every single day! I once asked my doctor if I needed to exercise every day. Her response: “Are you a diabetic every day?”
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Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics™ Recipe Book was published in April 2023. It can be found on Amazon at ( https://www.amazon.com/Adventist-Vegetarian-DiabeticsTM-Recipe-Book/dp/B0C1JJTGLW/) in both Kindle and paperback formats.
Our classic book, Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics, 2nd Edition, was published in May 2023. It can be found on Amazon at ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5KNKS8B) in both Kindle and paperback formats. This book is now available as an audiobook, using an A.I.-generated voice. Check it out at https://www.amazon.com/ITEM_NAME/dp/B0D11Z3382/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0.
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