How Diabetes is Helped by Brisk Walking

Images Dawn

First and foremost, brisk walking helps you lose weight effectively. And losing weight is a big step to controlling your blood sugar levels if you are diabetic. After your medical doctor approves of your brisk walking workout, do it regularly at least 30 to 45 minutes a day with proper diet.

Brisk walking helps shrink dangerous abdominal fats that increase the risk of diabetes. The excess fat building up around your waist and abdomen can lead to inflammation in your cells which can result to your being resistant to insulin---a hormone controlling sugar levels in the blood.

A Canadian study in fact discovered that women who did brisk walking for an hour or so each day lessened their abdominal fat by 20 percent after just 14 weeks or 3 and a half months---even without changing their eating habits.

"Walking is one of the best types of 'medicine' we have to help prevent diabetes, or reduce its severity and potential complications—such as heart attack and stroke—if you already have it," states JoAnn Manson, MD, DrPH, in an article on the site Prevention. She is also chief of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, at the same time a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

My cousin, Ismael, goes biking regularly to keep his blood sugar levels normal. According to him, it works, requiring him less medications. But brisk walking is better than biking because with biking you have more idling time, like when you stop pedaling because the bike keeps moving on via the momentum anyway, especially downhill. 

With brisk walking, you have to keep your legs working, uphill or downhill. 

My friend and shooting range buddy, Lito, who's also a diabetic, jogs regularly at UP Diliman and says he gets wonderfully normal blood sugar levels after such runs. "It's like I'm not diabetic at all!" he exclaims.

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Something Diabetics and Hypertensives Should Know about Climbing Up and Down Stairs

From Livestrong Website

A study presented at the American Heart Association showed how walking downhill (going down stairs, for instance) improved blood sugar levels. While walking up stairs improved fat levels in blood.

Thus, if you go up and down stairs, there is a huge chance you may normalize your lipid and glucose levels in your blood.

Well, the study was done on the mountains of Austria, but it also said you don't need to do this in the mountains or hills. Just look for uphill streets or stairs and it would work as effective. God blessed my neighborhood with uphill streets so this is easy for me. It may be the reason why I always have normal blood sugar and blood lipd readings, especially triglyceride. Thank God!

But I also climb up strairs. If you want something more strenuous, try climbing up and down stairs. I tried this at SM North, Walter Mart and even at the Philippine Heart Center along East Avenue---in case a heart problem suddenly occured, hehehe. Just kidding.

Make sure your doctor gives you a go signal before doing this. Look for a building near your place and ask the owner if you could just drop by everyday to climb up and down its stairs. Then do the exercise. Or, go to the nearest mall. Better if you have a street in your vicinity that goes uphill.

The study showed that walking downhill improved the subjects' glucose tolerance by 8.2 percent. Uphill walking improved it by only 4.5 percent. However, uphill walking, according to the study, lowered the triglyceride levels of the subjects by 11 percent. But they only had a 6.8 percent improvement when they walked downhill.

How did the researches explain this? They thought it had to do with using more concentric muscle power when going uphill and more eccentric power when going downhill. Obviously, more studies need to be done to establish the internal processes behind it. 

To be sure, climbing up and down stairs is healthy (but make sure your heart physician approves of it).

You don't need a high stairs to do this. A two-level building would do. A stairs with 13 to 15 steps ought to do it for beginners. The stairs at Walter Mart in Munoz has about 20. The ones at SM North and Heart Center have more.

Do it slowly at first---sometimes, even really slow. No need to hurry up. Then, as you build more power and heart and lung strength (after probably a week or so), do it a bit faster. 

Doing it on footbridges should be ideal but the problem is pollution from traffic. So I'd rather do it in malls or in subdivisions with plenty of trees, like our place.

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3 Things You Shouldn't Do Just Before Brisk Walking

Trendzified

There are three things you shouldn't do right before doing a brisk walk.

1. Never eat a full breakfast. I often eat something before brisk walking but never a full meal. You may stand up or walk slowly around after a full meal, but don't walk briskly. It will cause more problems with digestion. After your brisk walk, then you can eat a full healthy meal. I said "eat a full healthy meal," not overeat.

2. Don't take stress with you. Leave stress at home---in fact, get rid of it. Never brisk walk or exercise with bad emotions or negative stress. It creates free radicals in you and that wouldn't go well with your exercise. It might even make things worse for your health. Make sure you're in good spirits when you go out. relax, be happy and enjoy your surroundings.

3. Don't neglect your toilet rituals. Never---I say again---never hit the road without emptying your bladder and sigmoid colon. Well, what I mean is, make sure stool in your colon ready for elimination should be eliminated. I can't fully describe the horror of needing to urinate or eliminate stool right in the middle of nowhere.

You usually take a bottle of water with you when you run, right? And then you get all excited and drink water now and then. But that makes your stool go down closer to the exit and fills your bladder with more urine, especially in the morning.

Now, imagine if you suddenly feel the need to go to the restroom and you're 5 miles away from home.

Besides, it isn't good for your health to be keeping them stuck up in you while exercising.

To help eliminate morning stool, I take 2 to 3 tall glasses of water first thing in the morning. And it's a big help, too, to eat nothing but vegetables the night before. I often eat pineapple to ease my bowels.

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