The Best Exercise for Diabetes

author avatar Dr. Eric Berg 08/31/2023

Make sure you’re doing this type of exercise if you have diabetes, prediabetes, or insulin resistance!

Timestamps

0:00 Diabetes and exercise 

0:14 The two types of exercise 

1:13 The best exercise for diabetes 

Let’s talk about the best exercise for diabetes, prediabetes, and insulin resistance. 

Aerobic exercise (with oxygen ): 

• Walking 

• Yoga 

• Slower type workouts

Anaerobic exercise (without oxygen):

• HIIT (high-intensity interval training)

• Sprinting 

• High-intensity fast exercise 

With aerobic exercise, you burn your stored glycogen (sugar) for the first 20 minutes. After that, your body starts tapping into fat. 

With anaerobic exercise, you burn sugar, but you have a delayed effect with fat-burning. Fat burning sometimes occurs 24-48 hours later when you’re sleeping. 

Anaerobic exercise may be the best type of exercise for diabetes, especially high-intensity interval training (HIIT). You don’t have to do a lot of anaerobic exercise to get the benefits from it. However, it’s very uncomfortable and sometimes painful because you’re putting more effort into it. 

I encourage people to do both anaerobic type exercises and aerobic exercises. Aerobic type exercises are great for reducing stress and promoting sleep. 

Top two benefits of anaerobic exercise:

• It will spike growth hormone the most (growth hormone is the main fat-burning hormone and anti-aging hormone)

• It could increase insulin sensitivity by 23% more than aerobic exercise (can help improve insulin and get rid of insulin resistance) 

You may want to try anaerobic exercise if:

• You are new to keto, and it’s taking a long time for you to adapt

• You’re prediabetic 

• You’re a diabetic (type 1 or type 2)

• You have a problem with your metabolism 

DATA: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4625541/

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