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by Sheri R. Colberg, PhD
Adequate fluid intake is essential to living well at any age, and being dehydrated can impact your health and your athletic endeavors. While it is harder to stay hydrated when exercising in the heat, you can dehydrate under other conditions—even during exercise in cold temperatures if you wear lots of clothing and sweat underneath it. As people grow older, they also begin to lose some of their normal thirst sensations, thereby increasing the risk for dehydration unless they make a conscious effort to drink more.

By Sheri Colberg, PhD, FACSM
The human body only has insulin to lower blood glucose but has five hormones that raise it (with some overlap). This hormone redundancy tells you that, at least from a survival standpoint, your body is desperate to make sure you do not run out of blood glucose; it is not as concerned about you having too much.

How often have you heard things about physical activity and exercise training that you thought sounded correct, but found out later they were totally wrong? If you hang out at a gym or even talk with training coaches, you’ll hear about everything, including contradictory statements about how to be active the right way. Should you work out in a “fat burning” range? Is weight training going to make you bulk up? Will your muscles turn to fat if you stop working out? Do you need to eat a lot more protein to get bigger muscles? Confused? Here is the truth about some of the more common myths you’ll hear about being active.

By Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM
If you take any other medications to help lower your blood cholesterol, manage your blood pressure, or control other health problems, be aware that some of them can potentially impact your ability to be physically active. Although most drugs do not affect exercise, several common nondiabetes medications with such potential effects are statins, beta-blockers, diuretics, vasodilators, and blood thinners.

By Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM

There is no official ideal blood glucose range to start with and maintain during physical activity, but we do know that being too low negatively impacts performance, as does being too high. As for what blood glucose target or range most athletes aim for, it depends on a number of factors, including the type, intensity, and duration of their activity. A consensus statement about exercise and type 1 diabetes published in The Lancet in 2017 suggested that a reasonable target for most people doing aerobic exercise lasting up to an hour is 126 to 180 mg/dL (7.0 to 10.0 mmol/L), only aiming higher for added protection against lows in some situations.

In mid-November 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finally released new physical activity guidelines (as a 2nd edition) to update their previous set from a decade before. Various activity guidelines for adults with diabetes have been updated several times in the interim, including a 2010 position statement on exercising with type 2 diabetes published jointly by the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Diabetes Association; a 2016 ADA position statement on exercise and physical activity for all types of diabetes; and a consensus statement on being active with type 1 diabetes published in The Lancet in 2017.

By Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM As discussed in an earlier column this year (June 2018), many insulin users have chosen to go “low-carb” to better manage diabetes, which may or may not impact how well they perform in athletic events. How do many athletes with diabetes who swear by …

By Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM
It's known that lack of exercise, poor eating habits, genetics, and lifestyle factors can all contribute to the onset of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. I have spent many years touting the benefits of lifestyle change to prevent and manage these health conditions—and in some cases reverse them. Exercise is a particularly important lifestyle management tool because of its ability to lower inflammation (the underlying cause of insulin resistance) naturally.

Guest Post by David Kliff, Editor, Diabetic Investor

Whether the toy makers realize it or not, the key to getting their toys played with is to make the toy as easy to use as possible. This ease of use does not just mean things like easy insertion of a sensor, like Dexcom has done with the G6 or Abbott has done with the Libre. It goes beyond not having to calibrate either of these sensors. When it comes to increasing the use of insulin, it means making dosing insulin as “stupid” as possible; take all the decisions out of the hands of the patient.

By Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM

If you’re like a lot of other people, you may get bored doing the same physical activities day after day. More than half of people who start exercise training programs drop out in the first six months. So, what you do to keep your workouts fresh sometimes matters more for getting the most out of training and staying with it. For these reasons (and more), you may want to consider doing cross-training.