'Know You Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes' author interview (part 5)

December 31, 7:50 AMNutrition ExaminerCarol Bardelli

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Exercise is crucial to controlling diabetes.

Can you explain why exercise is crucial to diabetes management and how people can get motivated and fit exercise into their busy lifestyles?

Exercise, physical activity, moving your body through space—whatever you want to call it—is perhaps the single most important action you can take in caring for your diabetes and for yourself. This is because diabetic complications primarily stem from poor circulation. Foot problems, increased infections, eye damage, wounds that won't heal, heart disease… the blood just isn't flowing like it's supposed to. Because over time, elevated blood glucose levels damage blood vessels, making the walls thicker and less elastic, so the blood has a harder time passing through.

In addition, people with diabetes tend to have higher fat levels in their blood, also caused by higher blood glucose. These fats or "lipids" clog and narrow the blood vessels. Sometimes they clog completely. This is what your doctor calls "atherosclerosis." Any blood vessel in your body can become narrow and clogged, and this can lead to a heart attack, angina (heart pain), stroke, or painful legs.

Also, when you have Type 2 diabetes, exercise is the single most potent treatment for insulin resistance, which is one of the major causes of the disease. Regular aerobic exercise, or a combination of aerobic exercise with some resistance training, significantly improves the insulin resistance problem.

This is why exercise -- which improves circulation and also boosts your metabolism -- is so important. Not just on the face of it because you can take less insulin or skip your oral medications.

Exercise is also "the most effective and portable stress-management tool on the market," as one diabetes educator puts it. Plus it boosts your mood, improves your body image, promotes a wonderful sense of well-being, and can even improve your sex life. (Studies show that muscle strength and tone enhance sexual function, and the endorphins released in the brain may well work as an aphrodisiac.)

What? You need more motivation than that? Yes, of course: you're so busy, it's hard to find the time for exercise.

We recommend combining exercise with regular errands or routines. Try walking a little further for your morning coffee or paper, parking a mile away from work, or using your bike for some errands. You are the one who best knows your daily schedule and responsibilities: What would be the easiest time to slot in your exercise? It might be easier to slot in several shorter sessions than one or two long ones. Frequency is important, so you may actually get more impact out of several short sessions per week than you would out of just one or two workouts.

What other issues do you feel diabetics must deal with to maintain a healthy lifestyle and why? What issues have you personally found challenging?

Oy, that's a hard one to answer, because everything about diabetes can be a hassle, an annoyance and sometimes utterly overwhelming! See the recent article I wrote in Diabetes Health magazine about the Top 10 Patient Gripes (at http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read,1044,4892,1.html and what you can do about them. Coping with diabetes successfully really boils down to breaking it down into "bite-size" bits, so you don't feel so snowed under by trying to be the "perfect diabetic" on every front all the time.

I plan on buying copies of your book to give to my diabetic friends and relatives, and also to share with clients. I heartily encourage my readers to do the same.

I'd like to thank you again for making yourself available for this interview, Amy. I know your time is valuable. I wish you great success with your book, 'Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes', as well as with your blog, and your career.

Thanks so much! Carol

Amy Tenderich is the 2006 Winner, LillyforLife Achievement Award for Diabetes Journalism