4 Ways How to Control Blood Sugar with Exercise: Part 2
Learn four ways to control your blood sugar, get rid of stubborn carbohydrate-related body fat, and reduce your risk of diabetes with exercise.
Ben Greenfield
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4 Ways How to Control Blood Sugar with Exercise: Part 2
In last week’s episode, you discovered two potent ways to control your blood sugar, and why you should be controlling your blood sugar in the first place if you’re serious about your health or your waistline! In today’s article, we’re going to delve into two more strategies. Let’s jump right in.
Strategy #3: Post-Prandial Walks
A few years ago, I was inspired to begin setting a rule to move or walk for at least a few minutes after each meal when I read an interesting Japanese study entitled, “Postprandial lipaemia: effects of sitting, standing and walking in healthy normolipidaemic humans.”
This study compared the effects of sitting, standing, and walking on postprandial fat storage in healthy Japanese men. The fifteen participants in the study completed three two-day postprandial trials (you may remember from last week’s article that “post-prandial” means “after a meal”) in a random order: 1) sitting, 2) standing, and 3) walking. On day one of the sitting trial, participants rested. On day one of the standing trial, participants stood for six, 45-min periods. On day one of the walking trial, participants walked briskly for 30 minutes at approximately 60% of maximum heart rate. On day two of each trial, participants rested and consumed test meals for breakfast and lunch. The researchers then collected blood samples in the morning and afternoon on day one, and in the fasted state and at 2, 4 and 6 hours postprandially on day two. On day two, they found serum fat concentrations were 18% lower in the walking trial compared to the sitting and standing trials, proving that postprandial lipaemia was not reduced when standing (or, of course, sitting) after a meal but was reduced after low-volume, easy walking for 30 minutes.
The study “Postprandial Walking is Better for Lowering the Glycemic Effect of Dinner than Pre-Dinner Exercise in Type 2 Diabetic Individuals” takes this science even one step further and looks at the effect of walking before a meal vs. walking after a meal.
In this study, twenty minutes of self-paced, easy walking done shortly after meal consumption resulted in lower blood glucose levels at the end of exercise compared to values at the same time point when subjects had walked pre-dinner. In addition, the investigators in this study found that one hour of aerobic exercise performed in fasted state prior to dinner had a minimal impact on post-dinner glucose levels, but when performed two hours after the meal, induced a significant decrease in plasma glucose levels. So, from what we know thus far, it looks like if you’re going to go on a walk at some point in the evening around dinner, you’re better off doing it after dinner rather than before dinner, and that you get benefits when it’s as short as 20 minutes (although I’d highly suspect you get benefits from any movement at all!).
The same study also makes another interesting observation about the timing of moderate aerobic exercise around a meal and the effect on blood sugar of this exercise: specifically that postprandial, morning moderate intensity exercise decreases blood sugar levels after a morning meal, but this effect does not persist during and after the following lunch meal. This means that if you exercise in the morning, you’re probably going to still want to maintain at least low-level physical activity (e.g., a standing or walking workstation) between breakfast and lunch if you want to continue to reap the benefits of that exercise.
The study also reports that moderate bicycling exercise after any meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) results in a significant decrease in blood glucose levels and that both postprandial high-intensity exercise and longer bouts of walking (e.g. two hours versus one hour) reduce blood glucose levels and insulin secretion, suggesting that the effect of exercise is related more to total energy expenditure rather than to peak exercise intensity, leading the researchers to conclude that it is possible that the short duration of the exercise bout in this study (20 minutes) could have had a greater impact blood sugar if either the intensity or its duration had been increased. This is backed up by the study entitled, “Effect of Post-Prandial Exercise Duration on Glucose and Insulin Responses to Feeding,” which found that longer bouts of exercise after a meal produce a greater decrease in glucose and insulin.
Once again, sugar transporters play a big role here, and researchers reported that “the binding of insulin to its cellular receptors in muscle and adipose tissues recruits GLUT4 transport proteins to the cell surface that facilitates glucose transport. Muscular contractions themselves are known to stimulate glucose transport into muscle cells without the need for insulin through an independent mechanism, but in an additive manner, thereby potentiating the effects of post-meal exercise.”
So what do we know so far from all these studies? An excellent strategy to control blood sugar would be to set a habit of exercising before breakfast in a fasted state, using either longer aerobic exercise or brief high intensity exercise, and then, if time permits, to go on an easy 20-60 minute walk after dinner.
OK, there’s one more strategy, so let’s keep on rolling!
Strategy #4: Standing
Using a standing desk can lower blood sugar levels, and there’s research to back it up!
In one study of office workers, standing for 180 minutes after lunch reduced the post-lunch blood sugar spike by 43% compared to sitting for the same amount of time. Interestingly, researchers noted that both groups took the same amount of steps after lunch, indicating that the smaller spike in blood sugar was due to standing rather than additional physical movements around the office.
Another office worker study discovered that alternating between standing and sitting every 30 minutes throughout the workday reduced blood sugar spikes by 11.1% on average. And yet another study showed that the harmful effects of sitting after meals, with excessive sedentary time post-meal at the office being linked to a whopping 112% greater risk of type 2 diabetes.
And that is why I not only recommend a standing or walking workstation, but also the incorporation of a concept called “greasing the groove”. This is a concept I originally discovered in a book called The Naked Warrior. The idea is basically this: Instead of doing a long workout at the gym, you simply spread your exercises throughout the day.
This not only allows you to become proficient at certain movements, but also elevates your metabolism throughout the day and gets you fit or maintains fitness without you needing to always set aside time for structured workouts. For example, I have a pull-up bar installed above the door of my office. Every time I walk under that bar, I have a rule that I have to do 5 pull-ups.
Other examples of “Greasing the Groove” that I include in my own life to become fit and control blood sugar even when I’m not exercising are:
-Beginning every day with a few minutes of yoga and calisthenics with deep nasal breathing…
-Doing 25 body weight squats every time I take a bathroom break…
-Doing 30 burpees at least once per day…
-Doing 100 jumping jacks for every hour that I actually am sitting…
-Taking a cold shower 2-3 times each day…
You get the idea. Even during a day at the office, you don’t actually have to “workout” to be working out or to be controlling blood sugar.
Whew! This has been quite a journey. You’ve learned why you need to control blood sugar, how sugar can wind up in either fat or muscle, why you should strength train (even at low intensities), the benefits of pre-breakfast fasted cardio, the benefits of post-evening meal walking, and the concept of staying active at the office with activities like standing and greasing the groove.
Do you have more questions about how to control blood sugar with exercise? Join the conversation at www.Facebook.com/getfitguy.