Brief activity can reduce blood sugar throughout day/night
A study has found that if obese people who sit for most of the day replace their sitting time with standing, slow walking or slow cycling it can reduce the average blood sugar levels throughout the day and night.
‘Anything you can do to bring down glucose readings throughout the day is a good thing,’ said senior author Glenn Gaesser of the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion at Arizona State University in Phoenix.
‘We chose a typical workday because a large number of Americans spend a lot of time sitting at an office desk, and a number of (studies) indicate sitting is a health hazard, so we reckoned that trying to alleviate that by either standing or walking or cycling would help,’ Gaesser told.
Dr Daniel Bailey of the University of Bedforshire in the U.K., who was not part of the study said that this is ‘not wholly surprising,’ because other research in the last few years has shown that breaking up prolonged sitting has benefits on glucose over the course of a day.
Dr Bailey said that it is likely that overweight or prediabetic people may benefit more from breaking up periods of sitting than healthy-weight people.
‘We found that the overall reduction in blood sugar throughout the 24-hour day was typically 5 percent to 12 percent, with the greatest effect being in cycling,’ Gaesser said.
After a meal of carbohydrates, most blood sugar is disposed of in skeletal muscle, and muscle contractions increase insulin activity and glucose uptake, which helps to lower blood sugar, he said.
‘For low-level activity throughout the workday, the effect lasts well after the last exercise bout at 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon,’ continuing into sleep, he said.
Breaks in sedentary time are good, even if you don’t have access to a walking or cycling workstation, Gaesser said.
If involved in a sitting job at the workplace, everyone will benefit even by just standing, the biggest beneficiary being the obese and/or the diabetic – slow walking or slow cycling will help even more!
