Good news for those who hate the treadmill!
For decades, you’ve heard that working out is one of the main ways to fight of type 2 diabetes.
A new study proves this to be completely wrong.
It’s not exercising, rather, something a little bit connected (and much easier), that makes or breaks whether or not you can reverse your type 2 diabetes naturally.
A research team from Maastricht University led by Julianne van der Berg recently published a study in the journal Diabetologia that suggested that the emphasis should not be on exercise, but instead on lack of movement.
In other words, tell people to sit less, rather than to exercise more.
They asked 2,497 study participants to strap an accelerometer to their thighs, which is a device that detects posture (upright, recline, etc.) and movement. They had to wear these for 24 hours a day for a period of eight consecutive days. They were also subjected to glucose tolerance tests.
The researchers used these measurements to calculate the participants’ amount of sedentary time, number of sedentary breaks, and number and duration of prolonged sedentary periods of more than 30 minutes.
Among the participants, 55.9% metabolized glucose normally, 15.5% had impaired glucose metabolism, and 28.6 % had type 2 diabetes.
Those with type 2 diabetes spend on average 26 more minutes per day sitting down than the other participants.
But this wasn’t the most alarming finding.
Researchers established that every additional hour of sitting time increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 22% , and that of impaired glucose metabolism by 39%.
They did not find any major associations between these conditions and the number of sedentary bouts or their duration, meaning that it is only the average sedentary time that contributes to these metabolic syndromes, not the details of the sedentary sessions.
Previous research has found that sedentary behavior overrides even the most strenuous exercises program in causing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and death.
So even if you do two hours of a heavy workout every day, it will not help at all if you sit or lie down for the other 22 hours.
Perhaps most importantly, this study again proves that diet and lifestyle changes are the main contributors to type 2 diabetes. And in it, lies the cure.