A recent study has found that when people with type 2 diabetes do aerobic exercise some days and resistance training on others, they had lower blood sugar levels after nine months more than those people who do only one type of exercise alone.

Exercise is commonly recommended for people with diabetes, however the “type” of exercise that might be best for people with diabetes hasn't yet been well researched.

To get a better idea of whether aerobic exercise (e.g. walking or running) or resistance training (e.g. weight lifting) was of more benefit, the researchers recruited 262 sedentary people with type 2 diabetes for a nine-month study. The average age of the participants was about 56. 63% of them were women.

The subjects were then divided as follows: 73 into resistance training, 72 to aerobic exercise, and 76 into a combination of aerobic and resistance training. The remaining 41 people served as the control group and didn't exercise.

The people in the resistance-training group exercised three days per week, and each session consisted of two sets of four upper-body exercises, three sets of three leg exercises, and two sets of abdominal crunches and back extensions. Most of these exercises were done with weight machines.

The aerobic group did about 150 minutes a week of moderately paced walking on a treadmill.

The combination group had two resistance-training sessions a week that consisted of one set each of the exercises listed above. They also walked slightly less than the aerobic-only group, as the researchers wanted to make sure that the time each participant exercised each week was about the same, no matter which group they belonged to. The researchers supervised all of the exercise sessions. To help ensure safety, all of the participants also saw a certified diabetes educator once a month to check for blisters and other potential problems.

At the end of the study, the aerobic/resistance group showed the greatest improvement in relation to long term blood glucose control compared to all other groups.

Participants in all exercise groups reduced their waist measurements compared to the control group, and the group doing resistance training-only lost some fat mass as well. But people in the combination group also lowered the amount of diabetes medication they needed on average, and they lost the most body fat – a little under 2 kilograms -- compared with the control group.

This research clearly indicates that for people suffering from type II diabetes, the optimal exercise program involves aerobic and resistance training – as prescribed by Guy Leech Fitness.

Skeletal muscle is the biggest consumer of blood glucose (sugar) and anything that can be done to improve the health of your muscles will help in the control your use of blood sugar.

Although the study didn't include people with type 1 diabetes it is suspected that such people would benefit from the combination of exercises as well as too do the general population.

Those who want to maximize the impact on glucose control and maximize the use of their time should do a combination of aerobic and resistance exercise. Even relatively small amounts of resistance exercise – 20 minutes twice a week – makes a significant difference to blood sugar control.

Reference: Journal of the American Medical Association November 2010.