Make no mistake: sitting less time overall is a good idea for myriad health reasons, but is sitting as bad for you as some would suggest? Is it really the new smoking? In 2017 alone, a slew of new research studies has looked at various health detriments associated with prolonged sitting, even in adults who exercise regularly.

I have been writing columns—mostly about physical activity and exercise—for this enewsletter for more than a decade, and I am grateful to DIC for allowing me to educate everyone on topics that I feel so strongly about. This month, I would like to switch gears a bit and share some of my personal story about why physical activity matters to me and how I have lived successfully with type 1 diabetes for almost 50 years to date.

How do you know if you need to see your healthcare provider for a checkup or medical clearance before you start any exercise training? You should have regular checkups at least annually with your doctor or another healthcare provider if you have any type of diabetes. This helps you keep on top of any problems that may pop up over time that have nothing to do with being physically active.

In addition to aerobic activities, you can greatly improve your blood glucose by doing some resistance, or weight, training. Like so many systems in the body, if you don’t use all your muscle fibers, you lose them over time.

One in three Americans has diabetes or prediabetes. You would think that finding a fitness professional—a personal trainer, physical therapist, or other allied fitness and health trainer—who knows enough about diabetes to be helpful rather than harmful would not be that hard, right? Think again.

Without properly functioning joints, our bodies would be unable to bend, flex, or even move. A joint is wherever two bones come together, held in place by tendons that cross the joint and attach muscles to a bone on the other side and ligaments that attach to bones on both sides of the joint to stabilize it.

As an exercise physiologist, I first and foremost focus on the physical activity part for management of blood glucose levels, often stating that being active will increase insulin action, lower blood glucose levels, and make diabetes management easier. In reality, not all of those benefits are fully evident in many cases. In fact, they usually cannot be counted on unless you take into account myriad other factors that can have an equally—if not more—dramatic effect on blood glucose management.

by Sheri Colberg, Ph.D., FACSM
My last article focused on why glucose was the best short-term treatment for hypoglycemia, but this time I want to switch gears and talk about why treating lows is not as straight-forward as you would think. It mainly stems from the fact that sometimes hypoglycemia can be very difficult to treat effectively and even hard to prevent in many cases, particularly related to physical activity.

You have to love it when research studies come out and prove what you believed all along. I had this experience recently when a systematic review and meta-analysis (looking at the results from multiple studies simultaneously) e-published ahead of print in Emergency Medicine Journal in September 2016 (1) compared the speed of glucose tablets against dietary sugars for treating hypoglycemia in adults who had symptoms of being low. The dietary forms of sugar tested included sucrose (table sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), orange juice (containing fructose), jelly beans, Mentos, cornstarch hydrolysate, Skittles, and milk.

A study published in Diabetologia in October 2016 discussed whether exercise training is more important than other lifestyle changes in preventing type 2 diabetes (and possibly reversing prediabetes). Honestly, I was very heartened by its findings.