On this episode of Dr. Marla & friends:
Don't let type 2 diabetes rule your life. Find out how to take charge of the disease and start living again.
Also, running can be a great way to get fit, so don't let injuries slow you down. We'll show you how to hit the ground running with some advice from chiropractor Jory Basso.
Plus, there seems to be a natural medication for just about every condition out there, but do they really work? Our panel weighs in.
Digital Extra: How weight training reduces Type 2 diabetes risk
Keeping your weight in the healthy range and exercising regularly are both good ways to lower your risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. But a new study suggests that working out with weights might also help keep the disease at bay.
The study found that men who lift weights for 30 minutes per day, five days per week, may be able to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by up to 34 per cent. And if they combine weight training with regular aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, they may be able to reduce their risk by close to 60 per cent.
The study is one of the first to look at weight training鈥檚 role in diabetes prevention, and comes from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and University of Southern Denmark.
It鈥檚 not clear if the findings can be generalized to women but the researchers say weight training likely lowers diabetes risk by increasing muscle mass and improving insulin sensitivity.
The study followed 32,000 men between 1990 and 2008. The men filled out questionnaires every two years about how much time they spent each week on weight training and aerobic exercise.
The researchers found that even those men who did less than an hour a week of weight training had a 12 per cent lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to those who did no weight training.
If the men did 150 minutes of weightlifting a week or more, their risk dropped 34 per cent compared to those who didn鈥檛 weight train.
Combining weight training and aerobic exercise offers the most benefits: Men who did more than 150 minutes of aerobics as well as at least 150 minutes of weight training per week had a 59 per cent reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.
The results, published online in Archives of Internal Medicine, suggest that lifting weights might be an alternative for people who have difficulty with aerobic exercise, such as those with mobility problems.
"Many people have difficulty engaging in or adhering to aerobic exercise,鈥� said lead author Anders Grøntved, a doctoral student in exercise epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark.
鈥淭hese new results suggest that weight training, to a large extent, can serve as an alternative to aerobic exercise for Type 2 diabetes prevention."
The researchers say the study wasn鈥檛 able to prove that weight training prevents diabetes, but they did try to account for other factors that might have played a role in diabetes development, such as age and diet.
