Type 2 diabetes? Frequent exercise can help your heart

When Sherri Shepherd, former co-host of “The View,” was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, she promptly modified her diet and started doing short bouts of lower body exercise. “Those squats are trying to take me out!” she told Parade magazine.

Sherri’s commitment to blasts of exercise appears to be the right prescription for her condition. A new study, published in the American Journal of Physiology- Heart and Circulatory Physiology, finds that people with Type 2 diabetes benefit significantly from short, frequent sessions of leg-centered resistance activities — especially if they are sedentary or have deskbound jobs.

The researchers tested the femoral blood flow and blood pressure of 24 obese adults with Type 2 diabetes after three seven-hourlong sessions. In the first one, the participants, ages 35 to 70, sat all day with no breaks for exercise. In the second, every 30 minutes, the participants did three minutes of exercises that included squats, leg lifts, and calf raises. In the third, they took a six-minute exercise break every 60 minutes to do those same exercises.

Blood vessel dilation and blood flow improved significantly with intermittent exercise. Duh!

But the surprise was that the best results came from putting out three minutes of effort every half hour — cutting the risk for cardiovascular events by around 18%. Seems just 180 seconds of movement that engages large muscles in the lower body (glutes, quads, calves) every 30 minutes is your ticket to reducing vascular impairment if you have Type 2 diabetes.

You can do that!

Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” and Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Wellness Officer Emeritus at Cleveland Clinic. (c)2020 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D. King Features Syndicate