Got Three--yes, THREE--Minutes to Exercise Away Diabetes? Of course, you do!

If you are obese, your risk of diabetes is not insignificant. Right now, the epidemic of obesity and the crazy rise of type II diabetes go hand in hand. Has your doc told you you have insulin resistance or Metabolic Syndrome (previously known as Syndrome X)? Then you're at risk for diabetes. Is your BMI through the roof? Yep, you might get diabetes. If it runs in your family (and your family runs large, to boot), watch out.

But you can take one very non-time-consuming step--or steps--to improve the odds you DO NOT get this nasty disease.

Got three minutes?

I gotta say, almost no one has an excuse for not exercising THREE INTENSE MINUTES every or every other day. None. Not one. I don't care how busy we claim to be, we can find 3 minutes a day. If you can't, you're just lazy. If I can't, I'm just a layabout sloth-monkey.

It's the truth. Everyone has there minutes. EVERYONE. If the busiest man in the country (President Obama) can find time to exercise, the rest of us got no excuse not to for at least a few minutes a day.

Come on. Who're you kidding if you say no? Yourself. Only you.

So, why do I keep saying THREE MINUTES?

Here's why:

As little as three minutes of high-intensity exercise every other day may help sedentary people ward off diabetes, results of a small clinical study suggested.

Two weeks of brief episodes of high-intensity training led to significant (P<0.01 to P<0.001) improvement in multiple parameters of blood glucose and insulin action in healthy volunteers, James A. Timmons, of Heriot-Watt University here, and colleagues reported online in BMC Endocrine Disorders.

The six training sessions lasted a total of 15 minutes.

"The efficacy of a high-intensity exercise protocol, involving only about 250 kcal of work each week, to substantially improve insulin action in young sedentary subjects is remarkable," the authors concluded.

"This novel time-efficient training paradigm can be used as a strategy to reduce metabolic risk factors in young and middle-aged sedentary populations who otherwise would not adhere to time-consuming traditional aerobic exercise regimes," they said.

--from the article "Brief But Intense Exercise May Thwart Diabetes" (Do read the whole article for context.)

Here is how the exercise was structured, from a different article, emphases mine:

Timmons and his team showed that just seven minutes of exercise each week helped a group of 16 men in their early twenties control their insulin.

The volunteers, who were relatively out of shape but otherwise healthy, rode an exercise bike four times daily in 30 second spurts two days a week.

After two weeks, the young men had a 23 percent improvement in how effectively their body used insulin to clear glucose, or blood sugar, from the blood stream, Timmons said.

The effect appears to last up to 10 days after the last round of exercise, he added in a telephone interview

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In the study, the interval training at that intensive level was supervised. But what it proves is that in a very short time, two weeks, people improved their sensitivity to insulin. If they can do that in two weeks with about 15 minutes TOTAL of exercise in those fourteen days, what can you do with 15 minutes of vigorous exercise daily, or thirty, even when broken down into spurts of minutes? Say, five in the morning, five in the afternoon, five at night. Or ten, ten, ten?

Think about it. Wow.

If it seems overwhelming to start being active, then take heart from this study--and start with THREE MINUTES a couple times a week. Try every other day, if daily makes you wary. Start there. Work really hard (if it's intensive, we're probably talking in the upper range of your target heart rate, not just slightly breathing hard. We're talking breathing really hard!) Get your heart rate on an online calculater (read up on it and figure your best range for your age and resting rate). Try this one or this one.

You really need to learn your THR, so you know when you're up in a zone that's "intensive" and aerobic.

Anyway, consider this new study a clarion call to activity if you've been sedentary and are a overweight/obese/superobese. NOTE: Talk to you doctor FIRST, ALWAYS, to make sure you're okay to start an exercise regimen, especially if you already have some condition. That's very important. Get the A-Okay.

But even before you get the A-okay, start learning what you need to ONLINE, so that when the doc says "Go!" you really can GO. :)

Happy (active) Wednesday!

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