The importance of strength training on regulating diabetes and blood sugar problems

Exercise and movement have always been a foundational health principle. Often times we get confused as to what is the best type of exercise for our own unique health conditions. When you are dealing with blood sugar problems such as pre-diabetes, diabetes or insulin resistance, strength training and weight lifting can become an integral part of your health routine. Let's take a closer look at how this type of exercise will benefit you.

Making room for your next meal

When you start lifting weights, your muscles use glycogen (glucose stored in the tissues) as a primary fuel to aid in the metabolic process. As this exercise continues, you will deplete this muscular glycogen resulting in the body starting to mobilize glycogen from the liver and other tissues. The benefit of lowering your glycogen stores in the body, is that it makes room for glucose that is coming from your next meal. If you do not make room for this glucose, then it is going to accumulate in the blood, irritating and breaking down your vessels. It will also convert into triglyceride moving you towards a state of fatty liver. 

Putting glucose in its place

If glucose is having a hard time getting into the cells and converting to glycogen, it is going to hang around in the blood stream causing problems. When you begin lifting weights and building muscle mass, you add more storage for glycogen. (This is like adding more closet space in your house so things are not spread out on the floor disrupting your ability to move around.) As these glycogen banks build in the muscle through strength training, you can convert more glucose to glycogen and less to adipose and fat tissue. These increased glycogen banks also lower overall blood glucose levels making it easier to manage.

Stops visceral fat accumulation

Visceral fat is the stuff that builds up around your organs and significantly increases your risk for heart disease and diabetes. It does so by disrupting insulin's ability to get blood glucose into the organ's cells for metabolism.  This visceral fat is also related to your cortisol levels which increase during times of stress. Weight lifting has a significant influence not only on improving muscle size and strength but also on reducing visceral fat.

Brings down blood pressure

Weight liftings influence on blood circulation has a positive effect on lowering blood pressure. This is due to the vasodilation that occurs. Vasodilation is when the blood vessels increase in size to bring more blood flow to an area of the body. This "opening up" of the vessels in essence lowers the overall pressure needed to move your blood volume around the body. When you have diabetes or high blood glucose, reducing blood pressure lowers the potential complications that can occur which lead to heart disease. 

As you can see, weight lifting is much more than just "getting ripped". Of course there is the side benefit of having defined muscles but the true metabolic benefit that occur from this type of exercise are astounding. Anyone can weight lift with the right direction and training. You are never too old, too fat or too anything to begin down this road. Here are some tips on how to get started:

• Get a trainer to show you how to properly lift weights.  You can do 1-2 sessions to get set-up or use them regularly. 
• Start with your own body weight. Push-ups, sit-ups, planks, etc... are great ways to get started that lower risk for getting injured. 
• Spend time creating a reason why you are going to start a new routine. Write that reason down on a card. Then read that card out loud to yourself everyday in order to remember why you are beginning something new. 
• Get my Simple 3-Step Plan which gives you actionable steps to get metabolic results helping you feel better NOW, so you can implement activities like weight lifting. 

 Health is not found in a bottle. The greatest healing occurs within your decision making and daily routine. Weight lifting can be a wonderful addition to this routine to recover your metabolic health. 

 Dr.Buttler

Citation-

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167527313009212