About one in 10 Americans have diabetes and, of those, up to 95% have type 2 diabetes, making this an incredibly common condition. While there are certain risk factors for developing the disease that you can’t control, like genetics, there are some things you can do to lower the odds you’ll develop it. New research finds brisk, or fast, walking may lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
That’s the main takeaway from a new meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. For the analysis, researchers crunched data from 10 studies conducted between 1999 and 2022 that looked at walking speed and the development of type 2 diabetes in adults in the U.S., U.K., and Japan.
I think the interesting thing here, as the article mentions, is that correlation doesn’t equal causation. There is definitely an advantage to exercise, and the brisker the walk the better, as it’s good for cardiovascular fitness, joint health etc as well as burning calories. And people who are generally fitter are less likely to develop T2DM. But also people who are generally fitter/healthier are are less likely to have T2DM, and are probably also better able to move more and faster.
A potentially interesting follow-up might be to examine the correlation between number of daily steps, and pace, in patients with known Type 2 Diabetes and the reversal of the condition.
Spot on.
Also, T2 is almost completely a result of poor eating habits - maintaining a high-glycemic-index diet.
It’s frustrating that T2 is even lumped in the diabetes bucket. It’s not a disease, nor a disorder like T1 (whi is a result of either too-low production of insulin or being insulin insensitive).
T2 is nothing more than unstable glucose levels. (I have both in my family, with some hypoglycemia, which is a precursor to T2… Imagine that, a glucose instability leads to T2).
The stigmatising of fat in the 80’s caused a major increase in obesity as people replaced low-glycemic foods with high glycemic, and then had to eat more calories to feel sated because of the missing nutrients (specific amino acids such as leucine).
Having diabetes in my family has been a blessing that it forced all of us to learn, and realize how our biochemistry actually works.