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When making decisions about our health, we sometimes need to choose between two evils. Should we, for example, take medication that causes side effects or risk not treating a disease that could potentially kill us?<\/p>\nWhen making decisions about our health, we sometimes need to choose between two evils. Should we, for example, take medication that causes side effects or risk not treating a disease that could potentially kill us?<\/p>\n
Natural remedies usually provide the best of both worlds (if we don\u2019t mind putting in a little work and effort).<\/p>\n
But a new study in the journal Diabetologia presents us with one of those catch-22 choices when trying to naturally heal type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n
Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Utrecht University have noticed that approximately 91% of people around the world live in areas where air pollutant levels exceed those deemed healthy by the World Health Organization. This presents a dilemma for those who need to exercise outdoors to prevent or treat diabetes, as studies have shown that air pollution contributes to the negative effects of diabetes.<\/p>\n
The researchers selected 156,314 non-diabetic Taiwanese adults who had joined a large longitudinal study between 2001 and 2016. They were given frequent medical examinations to identify medical conditions like diabetes.<\/p>\n
The average level of particulate matter with a size of 2.5 micrometers and smaller (PM2.5) was estimated for each participant\u2019s address using aerosol optical depth data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer installed in NASA satellites. PM2.5 is a combination of all the chemicals that together constitute air pollution.<\/p>\n
They also asked their participants to complete a questionnaire to obtain information about their levels of physical exercise and a whole range of other demographic and lifestyle details.<\/p>\n
With all this information at hand, they could compare the effects of exercise and pollution on diabetes.<\/p>\n
Compared with people who were highly physically active, those who were only moderately physically active had a 31% greater chance of developing diabetes, and those who were physically inactive had a 56% greater chance. This shows how important a high level of physical activity is in preventing diabetes.<\/p>\n
Compared with those exposed to low PM2.5, those exposed to moderate and high levels were respectively 31 and 94% more likely to develop diabetes.<\/p>\n
In fact, together low physical activity and high PM2.5 exposure were such powerful predictors of diabetes that they increased the participants’ risk for diabetes by 64% compared with highly active participants exposed to low PM2.5.<\/p>\n
However, they also found that people who were highly physically active benefited from exercise regardless of whether they lived in a high or a low PM2.5 exposure area.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, air pollution seemed almost irrelevant for highly active people, as they all benefited equally from exercise regardless of exposure to pollutants.<\/p>\n