Whether you have diabetes or not, keeping fit plays an important role in keeping your body healthy and hearty in different ways! Be it stress, lack of self-confidence, or sleep, exercising has a way to solve these complexities and transform your life within the initial stages itself. Staying active not only lower your chances of developing other complications like high blood pressure, heart disease, nerve damage, and vision loss but also helps improve your overall quality of life.
Exercise has been known to be a vital part of type 1 diabetes treatment, as it increases insulin sensitivity in people with type 1 diabetes. In other words, after a workout session, your body doesn’t need as much insulin to process carbohydrates. As people with diabetes tend to be more susceptible to developing blocked arteries leading to heart attacks, exercising will also help avoid such long-term complications! There are three main kinds of exercise—aerobic, strength training, and flexibility work, you could try your hands at!
Aerobic Exercises: The American Diabetes Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise a week, 30 minutes five days a week. Increasing your general physical movement would also be considered helpful like taking the stairs instead of the lift, housework, taking a walk at lunch, going on a hike, or just gardening. You could also squeeze in an intense workout session doing any of these:
- Walking
- Jogging/Running
- Tennis
- Basketball
- Swimming
- Biking
Strength Training: Strength training will help you achieve lean, efficient muscles, and it also helps you maintain strong, healthy bones. Weight training using your body weight to build up strength is one of the most used strength training techniques today! Lifting weights for about 20-30 minutes, twice a week is sufficient to get the full benefits of strength training.
Flexibility Training: With flexibility training, you’ll improve the functionality of your muscles and joints. Stretching before and after exercise reduces muscle soreness and relaxes your muscles making it flexible and ready for the intensity of a workout!
Exercising and being active, in the life of a person with type 1 diabetes is just as important as their diet and medication. However, if you have any underlying conditions or feel unwell, you should talk to your doctor or consult an exercise physiologist before you start increasing the intensity of your exercise. So your long-term health depends on your commitment to exercising and making it a priority!