Weight Lifting Helps to Prevent Diabetes
One third of Americans will become diabetic because
they eat too much and exercise too little. A study in Medicine
and Science in Sports and Exercise (July 2006) shows that lifting
weights can help to prevent and to treat diabetes.
Extra fat prevents your body from responding normally to
insulin. Before insulin can do its job of driving sugar from the
bloodstream into cells, it must first attach to little hooks on cell
membranes called insulin receptors. Having extra fat in cells
turns these receptors inward, making it far more difficult for
insulin to attach to the receptors. This prevents insulin from doing
its job of lowering blood sugar levels, even though your body is
making plenty of insulin. That’s why anything that makes you fat
increases your risk for diabetes. Doctors can measure how cells
respond to insulin with a sugar tolerance test.
In this study, adolescent boys were given a program of
lifting heavy weights twice a week. After only 16 weeks, their
muscles were larger and they lost fat. Sugar tolerance tests
showed that the ability of their bodies to clear a load of sugar
from their blood streams improved dramatically. This means that
a regular weight lifting program decreases insulin resistance and
thus reduces risk for becoming diabetic.
Checked 9/29/08