From now on be diligent to the gym. In addition to making you more fit and muscular, turns a new study found men who diligently perform weight lifting can avoid diabetes.
Team of researchers from Harvard University, Boston, and University of Southern Denmark, Odense observed 32,000 men from 1990 to 2008 to determine the link between exercise, especially weight lifting against a man's risk for developing diabetes.
Then after adjusting for other factors such as television viewing habits, family history of diabetes, smoking and dietary habits, researchers also categorized participants into three groups based on how much weight lifting portion of what they do every week: between 1-59 minutes ; 149 minutes and 150 minutes to the top.
The result, the researchers identified 2,278 participants who developed diabetes during the study period. But participants who regularly do weight lifting remained decreased risk of diabetes, no matter how long they spend the time to exercise.
For participants who only spent 1-59 minutes, the risk of diabetes was reduced by 12 percent, 25 percent for participants who exercise for 140 minutes weight lifting and 34 percent for participants who exercise for 150 minutes weight lifting upward. It means that the longer the time spent on weight lifting, the less the risk for diabetes.
The study, published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine also agreed with previous findings that aerobic exercise like say jogging or running also reduces the risk of diabetes. Even the researchers of this study reveal for each participant time spent doing aerobic exercise, the risk of diabetes was reduced by 7 percent, 31 percent and 52 percent.
"A lot of people who are having trouble to regular aerobic exercise, but the findings suggest that weight lifting can also be an alternative to aerobics to prevent type 2 diabetes," said researcher Anders Grontved, a nutrition researcher and doctoral student sports epidemiology from University of Southern Denmark .
According Grontved, participants who get the biggest benefit is the prevention of diabetes among participants who combine weight lifting and aerobic exercise. Because the guy who did aerobic exercise and weight lifting for 150 minutes each week proved to have a reduced risk of diabetes by 59 percent.
Another researcher, Dr. Frank Hu who is also a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health explains that increased muscle mass can lead to the addition of insulin sensitivity in the body.
After all this time known type 2 diabetes unable to control their blood sugar levels due to their resistance to insulin. This condition is the effect of obesity which causes the accumulation of fat in the body so that the body can not use insulin properly.
"I think the benefits of weight lifting it's really real. Any type of exercise may also be beneficial for preventing diabetes, but weight lifting combined with aerobic seems to give the best results of all," said Dr. Hu as reported by CBSNews, Tuesday (04/09/2013).
However, because this study only examines male participants, Grontved admitted if the findings of this study have not been said to be effective for women.