How can we treat them and why do they happen?

Managing your diabetes is certainly an important aspect of maintaining your health and quality of life, but your goals and interests are very important too. Exercise Physiologists are specially trained in prescribing exercise to achieve your goals and manage your health while considering all aspects of your life, come and visit one of our Exercise Physiologists to discuss the best exercise for you, your life, your goals, and your diabetes. What is Type 2 Diabetes? Type 2 Diabetes is the result of increased insulin resistance and beta-cell impairment. Your pancreas has cells, named beta-cells, that produce insulin which helps your body use and store glucose, the sugar your body gains from the carbohydrates you eat. When you eat carbohydrates, your pancreas makes and releases insulin, which helps your body use and store the glucose (usually known as ‘sugars’) that are contained in carbohydrate foods. This insulin helps your body use the glucose as energy for your brain and muscles, or store the glucose in your muscles and liver to be used later. Without insulin the glucose stays stuck in your blood, which raises blood glucose levels and reduces the amount of glucose your brain and muscles have available to use as energy. In Type 2 diabetes, two areas of this process are impacted. 1. Beta-cell death: The cells in your pancreas that make insulin are overworked and some cells can die. Usually due to years of working too hard to create enough insulin to keep up with high carbohydrate and sugar intake and/or because they were a bit weaker to begin with and became more easily overworked than usual (due to family history and genetics). 2. Insulin resistance: Your body needs more insulin than usual to get the glucose out of your blood and into cells where it can be used as energy or stored for later. This puts stress on your body to produce more insulin than it usually would and often leads to further beta-cell death. These two processes cause ongoing problems, because as your insulin resistance gets worse and you need more insulin to do the same job, your cells get more and more overworked trying to keep up with your bodies demand. How does exercise help? As you exercise your heart rate increases and pumps your blood around your body more rapidly, this increase in blood flow helps deliver the glucose in your blood to your muscles, so it is pulled out of your blood more quickly than usual. Within your muscle cells there are transporters that move the glucose from your blood into your muscle cells to be used, some of these cells are powered by insulin, but some of these transports are powered by exercise. So, as you exercise, your cells have access to both the insulin and exercise transporters to get the glucose out of your blood and into your muscles, enabling much more glucose than usual to be moved out of the blood. Once you have moved your body and muscles, your muscles need to replenish their energy supplies again. To do this, a large amount of glucose is taken out of your blood and stored in your muscles, ready for the next time exercise is completed, taking this glucose out of your blood reduces your blood glucose levels. Replenishing the glucose stores in your muscles is also beneficial for preventing weight gain because if more glucose is stored in your muscles, less if left over to be stored as body fat in your adipose tissue. As your exercise more regularly and get fitter your body becomes more efficient at storing glucose and can store much more in your muscles than previously. However, this does not increase forever, and you must continue physical activity regularly to maintain your improved ability. What type of exercise is best? To choose the best exercise for you it is important to consider all the other aspects of your life and health, because you are much more than just your diabetes diagnosis. Exercise should be focused on improving your health and wellbeing, making you feel stronger, increasing your independence and ensuring you can continue to complete all the activities you enjoy throughout your lifespan