It’s Entirely Natural - Articles

It is important for all individuals to maintain an active lifestyle for good mental and physical health. It is just as important for the older person who has type-2 diabetes to stay physically active for their good health. The reason is that exercise can actually improve the sugar control that is so important to managing diabetes. Contracting and relaxing muscles uses up energy.

As the body produces energy it uses the sugar supply in the blood during the time that you are exercising. This reduces the blood sugar level in your system. Exercise also increases the body’s ability to use insulin. This equates to your body needing less insulin in the process of taking sugar into your body cells, which can also reduce the blood sugar levels.

It is wise to let your physician know that you are thinking about starting a new exercise program. Your doctor will advise you regarding your diabetes and how to design a program around your ability, age and health needs.

Some of the questions you may have:

How long to exercise? How Often? How hard do you exercise?

Normally you need to exercise a minimum of 30 minutes in order to improve you fitness level. If you have difficulty doing 30 minutes, start out at 10, then increase to 15 until in a few weeks you work up to 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Those persons needing to lose weight you may want to set a goal of 60 or more minutes of exercise.

Three times a week is how often to exercise that is usually recommended, your physician can give you a better individual guideline.

Determining how hard to exercise may be a little more difficult. In order to determine the degree of exercise, it’s extremely helpful to determine your heart rate. Some exercise equipment comes with monitors to help you determine this. You want to increase your heart rate and breathing rate to sufficient levels so that you are doing your heart well without causing exhaustion. Generally if you can sing while doing the exercise, you are not exercising hard enough. If you can talk, but are a little out of breath, you are at the appropriate level. If, however you cannot talk at all during exercising, you are in the “too hard” level and you need to take it down a level.

Exercise Tips:

Start with mild exercising if you have been inactive for a while. Gradually increase the time you exercise and how hard you exercise.

Start with 3 times a week and work up to 5 times a week.

Drink plenty of water before during and after exercising. Dehydration can affet your blood sugar levels, so stay hydrated!

Always carry diabetic identification with you while exercising

Choosing low-impact exercising is kinder to your bones and will lower your risk of injury. Good low-impact exercising: walking & swimming

Yoga and Pilates are great strengthening and flexibility activities

Avoid doing exercises that are high in intensity or involve lifting weights.

---

Scott Meyers is a staff writer for It’s Entirely Natural, a resource for helping you achieve a naturally healthy body, mind, and spirit. You may contact our writers through the web site. Follow this link for more information on Insulin Resistance & Diabetes.

---

Tags: blood sugar level, diabetes, insulin resistance, type-2-diabetes

Insulin is a self-correcting hormone which ebbs and flows as the body needs it. Insulin is part of an exquisitely-controlled system that signals the cells when to use energy, the liver when to produce it, the hunger centers when we need to refill, and the nerves to insure that we stay calm and collected.

The insulin that diabetics have to take is a replacement for this smoothly-operating natural system. Although insulin-dependent diabetics must take insulin or they will die from their disease, the spikes in their insulin injections don’t correspond well to how their insulin system would work in a normal body. As a result, even diabetics who measure their blood glucose often during the day and assiduously take their insulin shots are at much higher danger of organ failure, circulatory disease and other diseases that are common to diabetics.

In order to understand why diabetes can be so problematic, it’s best to understand how the insulin cycle works in a healthy body.

The pancreas produces insulin, and it detects the amount of glucose and insulin circulating in the body. The two parts of the pancreas—glucose-sensors and insulin producers—work hand-in-hand to insure that the levels of insulin and glucose are in balance at all times.

What does the pancreas really measure when it measures circulating glucose? It’s primarily monitoring the amount of sugar uptake by the cells. When we are working hard on a math problem, for example, the brain’s cells require a good deal more energy in the form of glucose than when our brains are relaxed. The brain is the most sensitive of our organs to glucose levels—that’s why we can achieve a ‘sugar high’ after we eat a piece of candy, and a ‘sugar low’ when our blood sugar level falls. The symptoms of too much sugar are excitability (particularly amongst children), while the symptoms of too-low glucose in the blood are lowered temperature, thirst, shivering and bad temper.

Other organs also depend on the right glucose level in order to assure that they function properly. When you run, for example, your leg and other muscles use a good deal of the glucose circulating freely in the blood. If this glucose weren’t replenished quickly, you could end up hypoglycemic, which means with low blood sugar. The muscles would soon lose their ability to work at their top level, and you would slow down.

Fortunately, the pancreas detects this lowering of the blood sugar levels and responds immediately with insulin secretions. These secretions tell the muscles “request more glucose,” and tell the liver “produce more glucose.” The elegant system therefore relies on this feedback loop in order to assure that cells have exactly the right amount of sugar available to fuel their activity.

The insulin-dependent diabetic cannot rely on this fine-tuning method. He or she is forced to ‘spike’ their insulin by injecting it two to five times a day. Although they try to time their insulin injections around mealtimes, they are not able to duplicate the fine controls of insulin secretion in response to cellular needs.

---

John Lonergan is a staff writer for It’s Entirely Natural, a resource for helping you achieve a naturally healthy body, mind, and spirit. You may contact our writers through the web site. Follow this link for more information on Insulin Resistance.

---

Tags: blood sugar level, circulatory disease, diabetes, insulin resistance