DIABETES DIGEST – Feb. 18, 2015 – People with type 2 diabetes are often told to exercise to help control their blood sugar. Few people ask, “what is the best time of day to exercise?”
To find out, researchers led by Jill Kanaley, professor at the University of Missouri Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology tested whether exercising before or after dinner makes a difference. Their findings were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Kanaley and her colleagues studied a group of 13 obese individuals with type 2 diabetes, who were asked to do resistance exercises before eating a moderate carbohydrate dinner on the evenings of the study. On another visit, participants were asked to exercise 45 minutes after eating the dinner. Participants performed resistance exercises such as leg curls, seated calf raises and abdominal crunches. On a third visit they consumed the meal without doing exercise. Their blood sugar and triglycerides were measured after each meal.
Compared to levels on a non-exercise day, Kanaley found that the participants who exercised before dinner were able to only reduce the sugar levels in their blood; however, participants who exercised after dinner were able to reduce both sugar and fat levels.
While the study doesn’t answer the question of what is the best time of day to exercise, Kanaley says it offers some guidance to health care providers.
"Knowing that the best time to exercise is after a meal could provide health care professionals with a better understanding of how to personalize exercise prescriptions to optimize health benefits," Kanaley said.
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