Don’t Sweat It!

“Diabetes is a disease of slowing, turgid blood flows that promote blockages. To deter blockages, sugar and insulin must not be allowed to build up. To prevent the build-up, either take a pill (metformin) or start exercising. The research shows, however, that the latter does the job far more effectively than the former.” Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—11/4/2013—It used to be thought that exercise didn’t help unless it was sudorific.

If you didn’t sweat profusely, the inevitable product of those recommended 30-minute aerobic sessions repeated four or five times a week, you weren’t getting optimal, or even adequate, benefits.

The thinking has changed. You don’t need that much time. In fact, it’s damaging to expend it.

Exercise has many putative benefits, some proved and others suspected but not as yet proved.

Perhaps the most incontrovertibly demonstrated benefit is that which relates to Type 2 Diabetes.

Diabetes is epidemic in the US, as it is in most developed countries.

Diabetes leads to heart disease, still the country’s No. 1 killer.

The mechanism was once mysterious; it is now becoming clearer.

When too much sugar accumulates in the blood stream because the body has become insensitive to the insulin that transports it to muscle or fat tissue, chemicals are released that inflame atherosclerotic plaques in the arteries while at the same time interfering with the secretion of the nitric oxide that normally serves to relax and dilate those arteries.

Diabetes is a disease of slowing, turgid blood flows that promote blockages.

To deter blockages, sugar and insulin must not be allowed to build up.

To prevent the build-up, either take a pill (metformin) or start exercising. The research shows, however, that the latter does the job far more effectively than the former.

What kind of exercise and for how long?

Recent work suggests that brief bursts of intense exercise, interspersed with a little rest, clear sugar and insulin from the blood stream much more efficiently than the traditional slow-paced aerobic variety.

Eat a sugary treat and your sugar and insulin levels will spike.

Train yourself on a traditional aerobics program and, following consumption of the same treat, your levels will not spike nearly so much.

Now, switch to a program, gradually undertaken, that works up to maximally intense bursts of cycling activity, followed by rest (20-second bursts, 30-second rests, repeated six times, every other day).

Within just two weeks, your sugar and insulin levels after consuming the treat will rise least of all and will return to baseline fastest.

Because the short-burst regimen mobilizes a higher percentage of overall body muscle fibers (in many cases as much as 80 percent) than does the traditional program, it allows us to train the heart optimally in much less time.

And since you don’t break the proverbial sweat, the activity may be done practically anywhere, even at work in a business suit, if a stationary bicycle, which should of course be standard office equipment, is available.

Note: The image illustrating this column derives from http://www.healthfitnessandsport.com/2013/10/.