Do's and Don'ts of Exercise for Diabetics

Exercise is an important part of the diabetes treatment plan. It helps to lower the blood glucose level and blood pressure. It also lowers your risk of heart disease which is more common in people who have diabetes. It is important to know that which type or which exercise is best for you.

There are two types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic.

Aerobic Exercise:

This type of exercise use arms and muscles that keeps heart and liungs lungs working constantly. This includes jogging, swimming, brisk walking, bicycling, dancing, vacuuming etc. This type of exercise helps to lower blood glucose as well as helps the body to use insulin better.

Anaerobic Exercise:

This tyoe of exercise is of shorter duration but requires a lot of energy. Some examples of anaerobic exercise are weight lifting, tennis, baseball, tennis etc. It helps to tone and build your muscles but it doesn;t really help heart and lungs the way aerobic exercise does. People with certain type of diabetes may need to avoid this type of exercise.

However, it is important for diabetics to follow these Do's and Don't's of exercise.

1. When you start an exercise program, go slowly. Increase the length of exercise time gradually.

2. Try to exercise everyday. If that is not possible, try atleast 5 days a week. Work upto 30 minutes of exercise each day.

3. While exercising, it is important to warm-up before exercise by doing a low intensity walk or gentle stretching for 5-10 minutes. After the warm-up, do aerobic exercise for 30 minutes. Cooldown after exercise by low intensity walk or gentle stretching for 5-10 minutes. It is important to warm-up and cooldown before and after the exercise.

4. Drink lots of water before, during and after the exercise. Our body uses water to keep it cool during exercise. This may decrease the water content of the body which affects glucose level.

5. Check your blood glucose before and after the exercise. Since exercise lowers blood glucose level, you should watch out for signs of low blood glucose.

6. Always carry some carbohydrate food with you.

7. Wear a diabetes ID tag indicating that you have diabetes so that proper treatment can be given in case if there is any problem during exercising or in case of an injury.

8. Always wear good, comfortable exercise shoes with clean socks and exercise on smooth surface.

9. Do not exercise if you ae sick, not feeling well or experiencing pain due to exercise.

10. No alcoholic beverages before, during or after exercise.

11. Don't exercise if your blood sugar level is over 300 mg/dl or you hve ketones in your urine.

Staying active helps tremendously in controlling blood sugar along with a healthy diet.