High-Intensity Interval Exercise Can Cut Diabetes
British researchers said on Wednesday that short bursts of intense exercise for as little as 3 minutes every few days might cut the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
People unable to meet government guidelines calling for moderate to vigorous exercise several hours per week can still benefit from exercise, according to findings published in the journal BioMed Central Endocrine Disorders.
The report said rather than slaving away for hours in the gym, people should focus their attention on quick "sprints" with each workout lasting just a few minutes.
James Timmons, an exercise biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who led the study, said it is such a brief amount of exercise that people can do it without even breaking a sweat.
He said the short bursts make as big of an effect on the body as doing hours and hours of endurance training each week.
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the body gradually loses the ability to use insulin properly to convert food to energy. Experts say it affects an estimated 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths.
Some people are able to reverse type 2 diabetes with a very strict diet and vigorous, regular and sustained exercise, but this can be difficult for many, as it is a condition closely linked to inactivity.
Timmons and his team studied the effects of quick exercise and found that just seven minutes of exercise each week helped a group of 16 men in their early twenties control their insulin.
He recommends 4 x 30 second sprints on an exercise bike three times a week.
Timmons said after only two weeks, the young men in the study had a 23 percent improvement in how effectively their body used insulin to clear glucose, or blood sugar, from the blood stream.
He told Reuters that the effect appears to last up to 10 days after the last round of exercise.
"The simple idea is if you are doing tense muscle contractions during sprints or exercise on a bike you really enhance insulin’s ability to clear glucose out of the bloodstream," Timmons said.
He believes these "time-efficient" exercises will be appealing to busy workers who want to reduce their risk of diabetes and heart disease.
A separate study has shown similar benefits to heart function and other important benefits to health that come from exercise, such as lowered blood pressure or weight control.
Getting people to exercise even a little could translate into big savings for health systems that spend hundreds of million of dollars treating diabetes, Timmons said.
"If we can get people in their 20s, 30s and 40s doing these exercises twice a week then it could have a very dramatic effect on the future prevalence of diabetes."
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