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Intense exercise training can help normalize muscle metabolism in people with type 1 diabetes, which could result in “clinically important health benefits,” Australian researchers report.

After 7weeks of sprint training, diabetics seemed to burn, or “oxidize,” fat more readily, while accumulating less lactate in their muscle tissue, Dr. Alison R. Harmer of the University of Sydney in New South Wales and her colleagues found. The researchers also found no adverse effects of intense exercise in the study participants, some of whom had poor blood glucose control.

In people without diabetes, high-intensity training can help reduce breakdown of glycogen, a molecule used to store energy in the body, in future bouts of intense exercise. And while lactate accumulates in the muscles with strenuous exercise, leading to fatigue and pain, training can help reduce this accumulation.

Just one study has looked at muscle metabolism in people with type 1 diabetes, the researchers note in the November issue of Diabetes Care. This investigation found that these individuals had less ability to burn energy in their muscle tissue, more fluctuation in glucose metabolism, and greater blood acidity.

To see if their hypothesis that training may help restore normal muscle metabolism for people with type 1 diabetes, the researchers had eight patients with the condition and seven healthy individuals complete 7 weeks of sprint training. Study participants performed 4 to 10 “all out” sprints on an exercise bike three times a week.

Before and after the 7 weeks of training, each study participant cycled to exhaustion. After training, the researchers found, cycling to exhaustion led to less accumulation of lactate in the muscles and blood and slower breakdown of both glucose and glycogen than before training in the diabetic individuals.

“The oxidative adaptations to high-intensity exercise training may confer clinically important health benefits in young patients with diabetes; however, this remains to be established,” Harmer and her team conclude.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A49Z220081105

Regular moderate exercise helps people with diabetes to reduce fat in their livers, in turn potentially preventing liver failure and heart disease, U.S. researchers said on Friday.

People with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease and one closely tied to obesity, often have elevated liver fat levels and are at high risk for a condition called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Diabetics who did a six-month program of cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting three times a week cut the fat in their livers by about 40 percent in the study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

They said the study, which used magnetic resonance imaging scans, is the first to show exercise can get fat out of the livers of people with type 2 diabetes.

“What we were able to demonstrate pretty definitively is that yet another benefit of exercise is to help reduce liver fat,” Johns Hopkins exercise physiologist Kerry Stewart said in a telephone interview.

Stewart presented the findings at an American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation meeting in Indianapolis.

The condition, also known as hepatic steatosis, can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver failure, liver cancer and a higher risk for diabetes-related heart problems.

Seventy-seven men and women with diabetes, most of whom were overweight or obese, took part in the study.

About half were assigned to moderate exercise including 45 minutes of running on a treadmill, using a stair-climbing machine or riding a bicycle for 45 minutes three times a week, along with 20 minutes of lifting weights.

The others were not placed in any formal fitness program, and most got little physical activity. At the end of six months, they had no improvement in liver fat.

Those in the exercise group also improved their overall fitness, shedding weight, gaining muscle strength and losing abdominal fat.

Type 2 diabetes is a growing problem in the United States and many other countries, fueled by increasing obesity. The American Diabetes Association said about 24 million people in the United States have diabetes, mostly type 2.
source: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1944083420080919?sp=true

A disturbed night’s sleep may increase the risk of developing diabetes, US research has suggested.

The US team discovered that volunteers who were roused whenever they were about to fall into the deepest sleep developed insulin resistance.

This inability of the body to recognise normal insulin signals leads to high blood sugar levels, weight gain and, eventually, even type 2 diabetes.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Previous studies have shown an association with diabetes and a lack of sleep.

It is also already known that the deepest sleep, known as slow-wave sleep, is associated with changes that affect metabolism.

Brain patterns

To test the impact of sleep quality on blood glucose control, nine healthy men and women were first monitored for two consecutive nights to see what their normal sleep patterns were.

Then on the following three nights, the research team woke them with a loud noise when they drifted into deep sleep - characterised by long slow-moving delta waves in the brain.

The amount of overall sleep they had was unchanged.

After injecting the volunteers with glucose and measuring their daytime blood sugar levels and insulin response, the researchers found that eight of them had become less sensitive to insulin.

Lead researcher Dr Ersa Tasali, of the University of Chicago, said there was an alarming rise in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes associated with an ageing population and increased obesity and it was important to understand the factors that promote its development.

“We had shown previously that restricting sleep duration in healthy young adults results in decreased glucose tolerance.

“The current data further indicate that not only reduced sleep duration but also reduced sleep quality may play a role in diabetes risk.

“The current evidence suggests that strategies to improve sleep duration and quality should be considered as a potential intervention to prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes in at-risk populations.”

Dr Tasali added that chronic shallow sleep and diabetes are typical factors associated with ageing and more research was needed to find out if age-related changes in sleep quality contribute to such metabolic changes.