If you have type 2 diabetes, you already know how important exercise and nutrition are for managing the disease. Walking, jogging, swimming, hiking, cycling and gardening, to name a few, are all excellent examples of ways you can move your body and manage blood sugar levels. But, strength training offers unique benefits for people with diabetes that make it an exciting and vital way to improve your health and quality of life.
Strength training and diabetes: 6 known benefits
Strength training comes with a ton of impressive advantages. Research shows it can help you build muscle, lower your BMI (body mass index), allow your body to use insulin better and help glucose get into your muscles to be used as energy.
Here’s more on the benefits.
Prevents diabetes
Arguably, the easiest way to manage diabetes is to prevent it before it ever develops. Research published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that women who did at least 120 minutes of aerobic activity but didn’t do any strength training lowered their risk of developing diabetes by 48%. But, women who did both aerobic exercise and strength training dropped their risk of type 2 diabetes by an incredible 65%.
Improves insulin sensitivity
Lifting weights or performing bodyweight exercises stimulates your muscles to produce more insulin receptors, including ones that don’t need insulin to transport sugar into the muscles. That means your muscles become more sensitive to glucose uptake and can use that glucose more efficiently without needing high insulin levels.
Regulates blood sugar short and long term
While you use your muscles during strength training, they contract and take up glucose to use as energy without needing insulin. After your workout, your muscles will keep being more sensitive to insulin, using up extra glucose to fuel repair. For people with diabetes who have trouble using insulin effectively, this is a major benefit. It means blood sugar levels stay in a healthy range, especially if you do your workouts after your meals.
In fact, strength training may be the best form of exercise you can do to regulate your blood sugar. A randomized controlled trial published in Diabetologia found that strength training leads to better glycemic control and body composition than aerobic exercise in normal-weight people with type 2 diabetes.
Balances body weight and metabolism
Lifting weights, performing certain types of strength-building yoga, and body weight resistance training all help to build lean muscle mass, which boosts metabolism and helps with healthy weight loss or maintenance. Being at a healthy weight is one of the best ways to manage diabetes and keep your risk of complications at a minimum.
Reduces risk of complications
Unfortunately, people with diabetes have much higher risks for complications and other diseases. They have twice the risk of heart disease, high risk of kidney disease and gum disease, and risks for nerve damage, hearing and vision loss, and digestion problems.
Strength training improves blood sugar regulation, which helps to prevent these complications, but also has direct beneficial effects on preventing and improving kidney and heart disease, nerve damage, neuropathy, and related nerve pain. Believe it or not, strength training is even associated with lower chances of hearing loss and eye diseases that lead to vision loss.
Wards off bone disease
Strength training is the optimal activity to strengthen your bones and ward off bone loss for everyone, including people with diabetes, because it stresses your bones in a beneficial way that makes them denser and stronger. However, people with diabetes are more prone to bone disease that weakens bones, and fracture rates are up to two times higher for them compared to people without diabetes.
Also, diabetes can cause extra fat formation in bone marrow that weakens bones, but strength training improves bone quality in people with diabetes by helping form new bone cells instead of fat. Lastly, strength training improves balance and stability to prevent falls that can cause diabetic people to sustain painful fractures when bones are weak.
Recommendations for strength training with diabetes
According to the American Diabetes Association, if you’re generally healthy without symptoms and want to start exercising, you usually don’t need to see a doctor first. Just start with something like brisk walking or everyday activities. Still, getting a check-up and some advice from your doctor might be a good idea, especially if you’re new to strength training. Here are more recommendations for strength training with diabetes:
- Aim for a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate to intense exercise per week, spreading it out over at least 3 days a week, and don’t go more than 2 days in a row without being active. If you’re fit enough to do more intense exercise, you can workout for less time.
- Kids and teens with diabetes should get at least an hour of moderate to intense exercise every day, including muscle and bone strengthening sessions, at least 3 days a week.
- Adults with diabetes should do strength training exercises 2 to 3 times a week on days when not performing other intense exercise.
- If you can, work with a trainer or in a supervised exercise program to learn proper form and get a plan and feedback that will make your training sessions more effective.
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