Friday, January 1, 2021

Quick Bursts of Exercise Can Help Diabetics' Hearts

 Frequent, short exercise sessions may be better for diabetes patients' blood vessels than longer and fewer workouts, and that may reduce their risk of heart disease, according to a new study.

People with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for heart disease and reduced vascular (blood vessel) function, the study authors noted. Measuring vascular function is often used to determine heart disease risk.

Other research has shown that spending less time sitting and getting more exercise lowers the risk of heart disease in all people, not just those with diabetes.

But with "rapidly advancing technologies in workplaces, transportation and home entertainment, fewer opportunities exist for incidental activity, creating many contexts of daily life that are conducive to prolonged sitting," according to the report published online recently in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

Frances Taylor, a doctoral candidate in exercise and sports science at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, led the study.

Taylor's team compared how blood flow and blood vessel dilation in obese adults with type 2 diabetes responded to shorter, more frequent or longer, less-frequent exercise sessions.

Eating Before Early Workout Helps Burn Carbs

If you exercise in the morning, it may be a good idea to eat breakfast first.

A small British study finds that having breakfast before a morning workout triggers the body to burn more carbohydrates during exercise and also speeds digestion afterward.

The study included 12 healthy men who did an hour of cycling in the morning. They either had a breakfast of porridge made with milk two hours before exercise, or had breakfast after they exercised.

The researchers tested the blood glucose levels and muscle glycogen levels of the volunteers. They found that eating breakfast increased the rate at which the body burned carbohydrates during exercise, and increased the rate the body digested and metabolized food eaten after exercise, too.

"This is the first study to examine the ways in which breakfast before exercise influences our responses to meals after exercise," study co-leader Javier Gonzalez, a senior lecturer at the University of Bath, said in a school news release.

Study co-leader Rob Edinburgh is a Ph.D. student at the university. "We also found that breakfast before exercise increases carbohydrate burning during exercise, and that this carbohydrate wasn't just coming from the breakfast that was just eaten, but also from carbohydrate stored in our muscles as glycogen," he said.

"This increase in the use of muscle glycogen may explain why there was more rapid clearance of blood sugar after 'lunch' when breakfast had been consumed before exercise," Edinburgh said.

"This study suggests that, at least after a single bout of exercise, eating breakfast before exercise may 'prime' our body, ready for rapid storage of nutrition when we eat meals after exercise," he added.

The study was published Aug. 15 in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism.

"As this study only assessed the short-term responses to breakfast and exercise, the longer-term implications of this work are unclear, and we have ongoing studies looking at whether eating breakfast before or after exercise on a regular basis influences health," Edinburgh noted.

The Best Time of Day for Exercise

Many studies have tried to pinpoint the best time of day to exercise for peak performance and best results. But most of these studies were designed for elite athletes.

For general fitness, exercise can be whenever it's most convenient for you. In fact, the best time of day for exercise is whatever time you can do it consistently. That's because fitness benefits come from working out on a regular basis.

Consider factors like work and home responsibilities, your energy level at various times during the day, and what type of exercise you like best when picking your "prime time" for fitness workouts.

If you're a morning person whose energy fizzles by 3 p.m., start your day with a workout, even if it means waking up a half-hour early. If you need a workout buddy to stay motivated, schedule exercise when it's easiest for both of you. If you like solitude, try off-peak hours at your gym or create your own at-home workout space.

Remember that you can break up daily activity into three 10-minute segments if that's what it takes to get it all in. Park 10 minutes away from work and walk briskly to the building. Do 10 minutes of desk exercises at lunch. Then walk back to your car to go home, and you're done for the day.

Or take a walk during your mid-morning break, your lunch hour and just before or after dinner.

The only caveat is to not exercise too close to bedtime, or you could become too revved up to fall asleep. Allow at least two hours before you go to bed -- more if you need longer to wind down.

The American Heart Association has more on when to work out to meet your goals.