Healthy Blood Sugar Gnc

People with diabetes may have better blood sugar control during workouts if they lift weights before doing cardio exercise….

Dr. Ronald Sigal, an endocrinologist at the University of Calgary in Canada and lead author of the study explained that, “It’s important to define the best way for people with type 1 diabetes to exercise so that blood sugar doesn’t drop too low [hypoglycemia], yet they can still reap all the benefits of aerobic exercise.”

Those with type 1 diabetes, a condition in which the body does not produce its own insulin, a hormone needed to convert food into fuel, risk low blood sugar during exercise. Blood sugar that drops too low can lead to poor coordination, unconsciousness or even coma.

When participants did aerobic exercise first, blood sugar dropped closer to that threshold and remained lower for the duration of the workout than when they lifted weights first and ran second. Lifting weights first was also associated with less severe drops in blood sugar hours after exercise, and post-exercise drops that did occur tended to last a shorter period of time.

The current study echoes previous research showing that aerobic exercise causes a more rapid decrease in blood sugar than weightlifting.

The study was small, and the researchers acknowledge that other factors, which they did not measure, could be at work, rather than the exercise order. For example, they did not account for levels of a number of hormones that could also lead to changes in blood glucose during exercise. Nor did they have control over participants’ food and activity choices prior to exercise — the authors wanted the study to reflect real-life conditions faced by people with type 1 diabetes.

Because study participants were young, active people with type 1 diabetes, it’s not clear whether the findings would apply to less fit people with type 1 diabetes or people with type 2 diabetes.

Still, the authors conclude, those people with type 1 diabetes who tend to develop low blood sugar during exercise “should consider performing their resistance exercise first.”

Health-e-Solutions comment: Sounds like a healthy tip to me! Daily exercise is definitely therapeutic. This shows that the order of your exercise routine also matters if you are doing both cardio and resistance training – which you should. It is also good to incorporate rebounding (jumping on a trampoline or mini-trampoline) and stretching. Both of these forms of exercise can be beneficial to blood sugar control, long term health and physique.