|
 
Exercise
Alone
Helps Diabetics
By Jennifer Faddis
Diabetes is often called a lifestyle disease, and now a new study
from the University of Missouri-Columbia verifies that a lifestyle
change brings strong improvements.
People with diabetes who attended classes to help them increase
their exercise had more significant improvements than people who
focused on trying to change exercise, diet modification and medication
at the same time.
“In studies that focused on exercise
only, blood glucose improved twice as much as in studies that
focused on exercise, diet and medication adherence,” said
Vicki Conn, professor and associate dean of research in the MU
Sinclair School of Nursing.
The meta-analysis considered data from 10,455
subjects in 103 research reports. No previous meta-analysis has
compared exercise-only interventions with interventions including
multiple diabetes self-management behaviors. Complications from
diabetes are serious and can include: heart attacks, kidney disease
or limb amputation.
“One thing we found was that it doesn't
matter how overweight you are or how poor your current blood glucose
is at the start of the studies, the improvements from exercise
were equal across the board,” Conn said.
The study also found that women did not improve
as much as men. However, both young and older adults had similar
benefits from the physical activity intervention.
“The censuses among these studies could
mean that it is easier for people to focus on one thing at a time.
It is easy for people to get overwhelmed when asked to make too
many changes,” Conn said.
The study was recently published in Diabetologia.
The study was co-authored by David Mehr, professor in the MU School
of Medicine, and Joseph LeMaster, assistant professor in the
MU School of Medicine.
Archives
| Comments | Home SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe
| Change Your
Address | Unsubscribe
Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved.
An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org
Last Update:
March 12, 2007
|
