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Diabetes: How Exercise Can Help

Wednesday, 5th June 2019


More people than ever have, or are at risk of, Type 2 diabetes. In fact, according to Diabetes UK someone is diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes every 2 minutes.

But exercise can help.

As well as the obvious fitness benefits of regularly working out, if you’re diabetic keeping active can help improve your health too.

For example, regular workouts can improve your blood glucose (fun fact: exercising muscles use 7-20 times more glucose than non-exercising muscles). Exercise can also improve your cardiovascular health, in turn lowering your blood pressure and improving your cholesterol, and help your body use insulin more efficiently.

Plus, working out can help you lose weight, improve your quality of sleep and reduce stress.

If you’re diabetic, it’s recommended that you exercise for 30 minutes 5 times a week. This doesn’t mean vigorous gym workouts before work every day, a casual walk around the park or a dip in your local pool are great places to start.

In fact, there are lots of exercises you can try. If you’re a beginner, try starting with a gentle walk or swim and work your way up to jogging or a few extra laps of the pool.

The gym offers lots of options to work out different parts of the body too, while group classes offer plenty of variety and support from your gym friends and instructors.

There are lots of options to choose from and whatever you opt for, the more time you spend moving and less time spent inactive, the better. Even if you choose to start slow and build up to longer or harder workouts, small changes can make a big difference.

Thinking about working out more? Why not sign up for our 7 day free pass? You can try any of our 4 gyms, 3 swimming pools or choose from over 100 fitness classes for a whole week. Sign-up here.