30 SECONDS of vigorous exercise lowers blood sugar....

Today's post: Monday, 2-9-2009

If your blood sugar is too high, you may have heard that exercise will help lower it. You may even have heard that progressive strength training and interval cardio do the best job.

But if you haven’t been exercising and do NOT have an extra half an hour a day or the budget to go to a gym or buy home exercise equipment, you may have done nothing about it.

The same is true for the situation if you are fatter and heavier than you should be and don’t exercise. Even if you’ve not tested it, your blood sugar is likely to be too high. In addition, if you can lower it slightly if your blood sugar is even a bit high, you’ll tend to lose some fat.

What if you could exercise for only ONE minute a day at home on some days AND in only 2 weeks, you could lower your blood sugar level significantly?

You can do just that!

The report of some new research has been out for over a week. We even posted: “Minutes a WEEK of exercise can help....Thursday, 1-29-2009” a week before last Thursday based on our initial reading about it.

But I missed something. I’d read that the study had found that just minutes a WEEK of vigorous exercise had an astoundingly large beneficial effect on the health of the people in the study who did it. But what I missed was that in only 2 weeks, it lowered their blood sugar levels significantly.

So, when I saw the article in today’s Early to Rise email, I knew it was important enough to post immediately.

Here’s the article. As usual, my added comments follow it.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”


“Improve Your Metabolism in Just 2 Weeks!

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

It's hardly news that exercise is good for you. It can help keep weight off, build a bigger brain, improve mood, and lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. Many people are put off by the idea of exercise because of time constraints. But research continues to demonstrate that you don't have to spend an hour in the gym or on the track to get the significant health benefits.

Case in point: A new study out of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland found that high-intensity exercise for brief periods of time may help reduce the risk of diabetes.

In the study, published in the journal BMC Endocrine Disorders, researchers had young healthy male volunteers use exercise bikes to perform rigorous 30-second sprints. Over the course of two weeks, the subjects performed 30 of these sprints (about two or three a day) for a grand total of 15 minutes of exercise.

You read that right - 15 minutes. Over the course of two weeks.

And this low-volume, high-intensity training substantially improved both insulin action and blood sugar control.

"Doing a few intense muscle exercises, each lasting only about 30 seconds each, dramatically improves your metabolism in just two weeks," said James Timmons, a professor at the University and one of the researchers.

I've been an advocate of short, high-intensity training for years. Now, in addition to the many studies showing that this kind of exercise improves cardiovascular fitness and is an effective way to burn fat, the Heriot-Watt study shows that it may be an effective weapon in the fight against diabetes.

This finding is important, because it helps make the case that there's a lot you can do for your health in very little time. If, that is, you train smart. While walking 30 minutes a day is terrific, and weight training and spin classes and all the other ways to exercise still have their place, it's nice to know that you can still get a lot accomplished even if you have only a few minutes a day to work out.

[Ed. Note: If 15 minutes over the course of two weeks can help improve your health, there's no excuse to avoid exercise. For more advice about staying fit and healthy, check out health expert Jonny Bowden's site, JonnyBowden.com ....]"

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Here are some other points and ideas on how to use this.

1. The people studied were relatively young and in good health. My guess is that older people or people who are in less robust health AND who have NOT been getting any exercise at all might need to build up to this kind of intensity rather than just doing it right off the bat.

But the evidence is that your body can get used to this kind of exercise if you build up to it over a period of time. And, if you do that and do such a short, 30 to 60 second session, of exercise even after you’ve built up to it, it is even safer.

2. To illustrate that, here are three at home exercises from our post on 1-29.:

In this case, they did an abbreviated interval cardio exercise by having the people do a 30 second session on an exercise bike while pedaling as fast as they could.

a) But one set a day in about a minute of as many fast pushups as you can do until you cannot do another will likely also work.

b) Or doing half squats as fast you can for one minute each time

c) or doing one set of as many crunches as you can in one minute would also likely work.

So, if all you can do now is 3 pushups where you do them where you only have your knees bent and touch, so called women’s push-ups, instead of regular push ups where you support yourself on your toes and keep your legs straight, do that the first time; then do them a bit faster the second time; and then do 4 the time after that; & keep improving. When you keep doing this even 3 days a week with a day off in between each time, you will gradually build up to being able to do 30 or 40 really fast. (Note that if you do get strong enough to do 40 really fast from the knee pushups, you’ll likely be strong enough to do at least 5 regular pushups and can then build up to 30 or 40 of those really fast for even better results.)

For best results do half squats (easier on your knees and easier to do fast than full squats) or crunches on the other days of the week. (Or you could do jumping jacks if you like them instead.) Then gradually build up to where you can do something like 98 in less than a minute.

It may take you a couple of months to build up to doing the kind of really vigorous and fast exercise that gets these really good results. But you’ll find you CAN do it. If you do it, you’ll get really good results too just like the people in this study. The evidence is that you can do it safely by gradually building up to it in this way.

BUT the truly HUGE news is that you can get significant results in just ONE minute a day. And, you can do it at home. No extra money or gym needed—or travel time to a gym either.

If you can do more once you get used to exercising or you already have a walking program or do less intense strength training at a gym twice a week, that’s great as it would be if you added it later.

But by adding just ONE exercise for ONE minute or even a bit less at least 4 days a week, you can get extraordinary results.

Think about it. You can do that much even if you don’t have time for more.