Diabetes for Dummies by Sarah Jarvis

Author:Sarah Jarvis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Keeping It Moving: Exercise Plan

In This Chapter

Understanding the importance and benefits of exercise

Exercising for the person with type 1 and type 2 diabetes

Determining duration and proper amount of effort

Choosing your activity

More than 60 years ago, the great leaders in diabetes care declared that diabetes management had three major aspects:

Proper diet

Appropriate medication

Sufficient exercise

Since then, millions of pounds and man (and woman) hours have been spent to define the proper diet and the right medication, but exercise has rarely received its proper place in the triad of care. This chapter looks at how you can correct this omission.

Getting Off the Sofa: Why Exercise Is Important

When they wrote their recommendations just after the isolation and administration of insulin, the experts were really talking about type 1 diabetes. In fact, many studies have shown that exercise doesn’t normalise the blood glucose or reduce the haemoglobin A1c (you can read about this in Chapter 7) in type 1 diabetes. Many other studies have shown that exercise does normalise blood glucose and reduce haemoglobin A1c in type 2 diabetes.

Exercise your way to health

John Plant is a 46-year-old male who has had type 1 diabetes for 23 years. He takes insulin injections four times daily and measures his blood glucose many times a day. He follows a careful diet.

Prior to developing diabetes, John was a very active person, participating in vigorous sports and doing major hiking and mountain climbing. At the time of his diagnosis, John’s doctor warned him that he would have to give up many of the most strenuous activities because he would never know his blood glucose level and it may drop precipitously during his heavy exercise. John ignored this advice and continued his active way of life. He has found that he can do with much less insulin than his doctor prescribed, and he rarely becomes hypoglycaemic. He has been able to continue these activities without limitation. His blood glucose level is generally between 4.2 and 7.8. His last haemoglobin A1c was slightly elevated, at 6.7. A recent eye examination showed no diabetic retinopathy. He had no significant microalbuminuria in his urine and no tingling in his feet.

Is John lucky? You bet he is. But like most ‘luck’, John’s is based on a realisation that both mind and body make up a human being. Why would humans have all these muscles if they were meant to spend their lives munching sweets and crisps in front of a television set?

When a new diabetic patient enters my surgery, I give him a bottle of 50 pills. I instruct him not to swallow the pills but to drop them on the floor three times daily and pick them up one pill at a time. After all, the condition a person is in can be judged by what she takes two at a time – pills or stairs.

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