Studies show exercise boon for obesity, diabetes

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - Walking a bit more each day can help people control their Type 2 diabetes but obese people trying to keep weight off may need to exercise harder than they had thought, according to a studies published on Monday.

Simply walking 45 minutes more each day helped people with diabetes use blood sugar better, Michael Trenell of Britain's Newcastle University and colleagues wrote in the journal Diabetes Care.

"People often find the thought of going to the gym quite daunting, but what we've found is that nearly everyone with diabetes is able to become more active through walking," Trenell said.

The Newcastle team paired 10 Type 2 diabetes patients with people without the condition of similar height, weight and age and asked everybody to walk more than 10,000 steps each day.

Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans showed that people who walked 45 minutes more each day burned about 20 percent more fat -- increasing the ability of the muscles to store sugar and help control diabetes, the researchers said.

"What is exciting about this study is that it provides an immediate way to help control diabetes without any additional drugs," Trenell said.

Diabetes affects an estimated 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths. Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity and physical inactivity.

Obesity and diabetes both are growing problems as more developing nations adopt a Western lifestyle, something the International Diabetes Federation estimates will propel the number of people with diabetes to 380 million by 2025.