Exercise + Weight Loss to Fight Diabetes

A recent study claims that combining exercise with a 10% weight loss can result in significant health improvements in adults with obesity and diabetes. Regular exercise increased insulin sensitivity more than twice as much as weight loss alone. According to the researchers, this has the potential to prevent or delay the progression of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes while simultaneously lowering the risk of heart disease.

Insulin resistance is a major factor that causes type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and abnormal blood lipids in people with obesity,” said senior investigator Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“We’ve shown that combining exercise with weight loss causes a marked improvement in whole-body insulin sensitivity, thereby lowering the risk of developing diabetes and treating obesity-related metabolic diseases to a much greater degree than is possible with weight loss alone,” he said in a university news release.

According to Klein, obesity renders the body resistant to insulin, resulting in an increase in blood sugar concentration.

The 16 study participants were all obese, with BMIs ranging from 30 (the obesity threshold) to 49. They also had prediabetes and insulin resistance, according to their medical records.

Eight volunteers were randomly assigned to a diet-only group and dropped 10% of their body weight. The remaining eight dieted and lost 10% of their body weight, but they also added a supervised exercise regimen several days each week.

“The data from most studies show that exercise has very little effect on body weight in people with obesity,” said Klein. “Our study involved detailed analyses of metabolic changes in muscle and body fat before and after a 10% weight loss in people who lost weight with diet therapy alone and in those who lost the same amount of weight with diet therapy plus supervised exercise training. The results demonstrate that the benefits of combining exercise with weight loss are considerable.”

Prediabetes affects millions of Americans, maybe as many as 96 million. According to the experts, this equates to one out of every three adults. Diabetes affects around 37 million people in the United States, and more than 40% are obese, which is connected to diabetes.

“The metabolic benefits we found in this study demonstrate the profound reasons why exercise should always be included in weight-management therapy,” Klein said.

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