I guess that there can not be anyone on the face of planet earth who is not aware that taking regular exercise is good for you. Walking, cycling and swimming would all rate pretty highly in a league table of activities that are good for you physically, and the fact that they are enjoyable to boot, is probably good for your mental wellbeing as well.
At the same time, you would actually have had to be living on a different planet for the last century or two to be ignorant of the fact that modern man and his mate are taking less and less exercise. More cars in the world equal less people walking, as a very simple example.
Now, throw into the mix the second factor, that the diet of people in the West is becoming ever more sugar and salt laden with each and every passing year, and we have an increasingly volatile and dangerous recipe for a cataclysmic meltdown of the human race in the not too distant future.
America is already seeing the results of this lethal combination of no exercise and poor quality food, usually eaten in quantities that can often border on the obscene. It sometimes seems that modern American society is predicated on the maxim that more is ALWAYS better, and to heck with the consequences!
The bare facts are both staggering and terrifying. Two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and half of these are clinically obese. Scientist’s estimate that perhaps 80% of the population should weigh less than they do.
Moreover, the obesity epidemic has hit the West (not only America, although the States is by far the worst offender) with astonishing speed. After millions of years and thousands of generations of human evolution, obesity has become widespread only in the past 50 years, and waistlines have literally ballooned in the past twenty years.
In 1980, 46 percent of U.S. adults were overweight; by 2000, the figure was 64. 5 percent: nearly a 1 percent annual increase in the ranks of the flabby. Extrapolating this pattern forward towards its most logical (and scariest) conclusion, by the year 2040, 100 percent of American adults will be overweight and “it may happen more quickly,” says John Foreyt of Baylor College of Medicine. You read that right – 100% – in other words, everyone â every single man, woman and child in America will be overweight!
Already, children are amongst the biggest victims of the “fat explosion”!
Childhood obesity, once extremely rare, has mushroomed: 15 percent of children between ages six and 19 are now overweight and even 10 percent of those between two and five. “This may be the first generation of children who will die before their parents,” Foreyt says.
And all of this after it has been scientifically proven time and again that excess weight vastly increases the chances of suffering and dying from heart disease, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and several types of cancer, plus suffering from arthritis, infertility, gallstones and asthma.
So, we cannot pretend that it is a pretty picture, but there are things that can be done. At the most basic level, the first step that anyone who is overweight or obese could take would be to eat less and exercise more.
The latter of these two actions is, in fact, or particular relevant to diabetes sufferers.
Whilst not suggesting that all diabetics are overweight or that everyone’s diabetes is a result of carrying excessive personal “baggage”, nevertheless, by following our earlier statistics for the population as a whole, we can reasonably assume that two thirds of diabetes sufferers in the USA will be overweight.
And whilst research has repeatedly shown that regular physical activity helps physical and mental health for everyone, repeated doses of exercise will especially benefit diabetes sufferers, as it can help to significantly reduce blood glucose levels as well.
This is, of course, great news for people with Type II diabetes, because test have indicated that insulin sensitivity may well be improved by exercise, whilst at the same time helping to lower elevated blood glucose levels back down into an acceptable range.
Here’s why. When anyone takes exercise, their body uses up more oxygen, as much as 20 times more (and even more in the muscles that are actually doing the work) than when you are at rest. So the muscles use more glucose to meet their increased energy needs.
At the same time, exercise improves the action of insulin in the peripheral muscles, making it more efficient, so you get more out of the insulin your body is producing.
In older people with diabetes, the decrease in insulin sensitivity that is a part of the ageing is also partially due to a lack of physical activity. So, regular exercise benefits you now, and will continue to do so for many years to come.
However unappealing “working out” may seem, especially if you have not been a regular exerciser for some time, the truth is that exercise, in combination with a healthy diet (eating less, or maybe, more accurately, a lot less), is one of the best things you can do to take care of yourself if you have diabetes.
In conclusion, for sufferers of Type 11 diabetes, exercise will:
*By definition, help to burn off those excess calories, helping you to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight
*Assist your body’s response to insulin and help to control blood glucose levels.
*Lower blood glucose and possibly reduce the amount of medication you need to treat diabetes.
*Improve your circulation, drop the levels of “bad” cholesterol and aid your body’s ability to deal with and, hopefully, lower high blood pressure.
All in all, a sensible regimen of regular exercise is good for anyone and everyone, but diabetes sufferers (particularly those who could do with shedding a pound or two) stand to benefit more than most!
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