Podcast 29

How Strength Training Prevents and Reverses Pre-Diabetes

. . .

SHOW NOTES

Amy and Brian break down the science behind pre-diabetes and how strength training is the most efficient and effective way to escape the negative feedback loop of insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, and weight gain. If you or someone you know has been diagnosed as pre-diabetic, this information could change your life.

• Approximately 1 in 3 Americans are pre-diabetic, which increases their risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, and most people don’t even realize they are at risk.
• Pre-diabetes also increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, problems with vision, and amputation later on in life.
• There are two leading factors to pre-diabetes: exercise and nutrition. As we lose muscle as we age, we develop insulin resistance which exacerbates the problem. High blood sugar levels over time lead to the wearing out of the body’s ability to even produce insulin.
• The good news is that pre-diabetes is a very modifiable condition that can be positively affected by exercise and proper nutrition.
• When we condition our muscles, we improve insulin sensitivity. Fast twitch muscle fibers store sugar in the form of glycogen, which removes it from the bloodstream.
• When muscles resist the effect of insulin, the insulin remains in the bloodstream at elevated levels and leads to systemic inflammation.
• Systemic inflammation is the root cause of all the health issues mentioned. Unlike acute inflammation, you don’t feel systemic inflammation except for the symptoms of the diseases and the effects of aging.
• The most important lifestyle recommendations are to start eating a whole food diet, eliminate high carbohydrates and refined sugars, and then begin strength training.
• A1C is the measurement of how saturated your red blood cells have become over a 90 day period. Whole food and whole effort strength training are how to keep that number in the safe range.
• Only strength training can target the fast twitch muscle fibers which are directly related to A1C levels in your body. People can experience tremendous improvements in their A1C levels over a short period of time just by implementing a strength training program in their life.
• If your doctor has diagnosed you as pre-diabetic, they are going to recommend exercise, and whole effort strength training is your best bet.
• Research shows that losing the first 5% of your body weight confers the majority of the health benefits, which is good because that means it’s easier to see results in a short period of time.
• Diabetes predisposes you to weight gain, but the reverse is also true. Elevated insulin levels, weight gain, and insulin resistance act on each other, which leads to a dangerous feedback loop. The best way to break the cycle is smart and brief strength training sessions.

Having elevated blood sugar levels leads to weight gain, leads to inflammation, but that weight gain and that inflammation also lead to insulin resistance. And so they just act on each other and it’s this terrible negative triad that we need to reverse.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where you will get information about living a strong and healthy lifestyle. I’m Amy Hudson, exercise coach franchisee, along with my co -host, exercise coach, CEO, and co -founder, Brian Sagan. Did you know that approximately 88 million American adults, according to the CDC, or more than one in three have prediabetes? They estimate that of those one in three Americans, most of them don’t even know they have it, about 84%. Prediabetes puts you at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. If you are prediabetic or someone in your family is prediabetic, you have a parent or brother or sister that’s either prediabetic or has developed type 2 diabetes, this episode is for you.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about what it means to be prediabetic, insulin’s role in the body, and how that hormone plays into diabetes, developing type 2 diabetes, and why strength training is so crucial to maintaining proper blood sugar levels, insulin sensitivity, and how it can really change the game when it comes to looking down the barrel of this problematic disease. Brian, welcome to the podcast today. I’m ready to talk about this.

Are you?

Great.

Happy to be here, Amy. And this is an important one.

Yes. So I just want to jump right in and talk about type 2 diabetes or that stage of being pre -diabetic. So what causes lead up to this state in our bodies when we to become aware of the fact that we may be pre -diabetic? What are the causes of this?

Great question and again just so important. That was a great intro and it made me think of a few more things that you can add to the list that make the concern about pre -diabetes and diabetes so concerning. Like the way that it predisposes you to Alzheimer’s and problems with vision and how it can lead to amputation later in life. And even just, as you said, the interplay between blood sugar and then weight gain, it’s really going to drive weight gain or make it difficult to lose weight. But to answer your question about what’s causing what is termed as diabetes or prediabetes, I think We want to think about it on a couple fronts, the kind of the activity front or the exercise front and then the nutrition front, but both really are putting our body in a situation where it just has difficulty mobilizing or moving blood sugar out of the bloodstream and storing it in the appropriate tissues throughout the body. And as we age, and as we lose muscle as we age, which as we’ve talked about is termed sarcopenia, the age related loss of skeletal muscle mass, as we age, and we lose muscle, and our muscles become weaker.

And specifically, we experience atrophy in what are known as fast twitch muscle fiber, people start to develop something called insulin resistance, it just means that their muscle tissue isn’t as responsive to the hormone insulin, And so does not as readily take up sugar from the bloodstream. And this leads to elevated blood sugar and elevated blood sugar over time. And that’s what physicians are measuring when they look at various metrics for diabetes and prediabetes. namely A1C. We’ll probably talk a little bit more about that. But then also just on the nutrition, just the consumption of high carbohydrate, refined foods over a long time leads to the wearing out of our body’s ability to produce insulin.

And so eventually people get into a situation where they might even need insulin from some type of therapy. And that’s, that’s the most serious place to get to. But really, it’s about exercise and diet. And therefore, A1C or blood sugar levels are extremely important, extremely impactful on our health. But it’s also good news that this is a very modifiable condition that we’re concerned about and talking about.

Yeah. And I remember Brian in episode four of the podcast entitled why muscle quality matters more than movement quantity. You discussed in detail the hormone insulin and it basically knocks on the door of our muscle cells in order to, to get let blood sugar into those cells for use as energy. And the more deconditioned our muscles are, the less muscle we even have, the worse our muscles are at letting or storing that blood sugar. And so there’s more blood sugar just in our bloodstream. Therefore, our pancreas makes more insulin, more and more insulin to try to get those cells to respond.

But eventually our pancreas just can’t keep up and our blood sugar levels rise. And that’s just what sets the stage for this to happen. And so if you have not listened to that episode four, where Brian describes that hormone insulin and its role, it’s a really good list. And I would encourage you to go listen to that episode next. But so Brian, let’s spell out though, why is sugar so important? getting our muscles strong when it comes to regulati and what role does it pla body?

Sure.

When we condi optimize their fitness an or when we restore muscle who maybe are in their fo What happens is we improve the flip side of the coin, something known as insulin sensitivity. So insulin resistance is what people experience as they lose muscle as they age. And insulin sensitivity is what we want. We want our muscle cells to be very responsive to the hormone insulin, so that our bodies don’t have to secrete as much insulin in order to move blood sugar out of the bloodstream and into the muscle cells. And there’s really, there’s so much going on here that’s connected and really important. One thing is these muscle cells that we’re talking about, as I said, are fast twitch muscle fibers or muscle cells.

These are the cells that store sugar in the storage form known as glycogen. Another important point to make is when Why does it matter that we get blood sugar out of the bloodstream? And that’s because elevated blood sugar becomes very toxic and dangerous to the body. And your body will get that blood sugar. It’ll do what it takes to get that sugar out of the bloodstream and store it in muscle cells and your liver. But when you experience insulin resistance, your body, your pancreas in particular, has to secrete so much insulin to go knock hard on the door to get that those muscle cells to open up and let the blood sugar in from the bloodstream.

that these elevated insulin levels, this is another thing that’s really connected here. These elevated insulin levels, which might be measured by something called serum insulin, just how much insulin is floating around in your bloodstream. These elevated insulin levels are what lead to weight gain and just as important or maybe more important, systemic inflammation. Insulin interacts with some other chemicals in the body to produce systemic inflammation. And this systemic inflammation is really the root cause of the things that we talked about earlier in this episode. What puts you at risk for heart disease and stroke and Alzheimer’s and weight gain and sore joints and all of that’s really about systemic inflammation, which is inflammation that is different than classic inflammation.

So it’s not like when you sprain your ankle and your ankle hurts, swells up and gets black and blue or red. It’s silent or invisible inflammation throughout your body and every cell of your body from your brain to your bicep. And it’s the kind of inflammation that has been called the silent killer because it’s happening. It can be measured by doctors, but you don’t feel or see it except for the symptoms you might experience like these diseases of aging.

Yes. So when it comes to. preventing or warding off type 2 diabetes. Let’s say somebody has high blood sugar levels. They maybe have just recently been diagnosed as pre -diabetic.

What advice, what do you think are the most important lifestyle recommendations for preventing type 2 diabetes? I would say to start eating a whole food diet, start eating real food and get the high carbohydrate, refined sugar stuff out of your diet, and then start strength training those two things. And again, what we’re measuring or what doctors are measuring to evaluate where someone is related to diabetes and prediabetes is what’s known as a one C. And this is it’s really it’s called glycosylated hemoglobin. It just has to do with how sugar coated your blood cells become over time. So when a doctor says to someone their A1c is let’s say 6 .5, that’s a reflection of how saturated in sugar their red blood cells have become over a 90 day period.

It’s a 90 day look back. So it’s different than just looking at blood sugar. Your blood sugar varies a lot throughout the day and doctors do use blood sugar as something that they look at fasting blood sugar or what’s known as postprandial blood sugar, which is what your blood sugar does after shortly after you’ve eaten. But mostly we’re interested in a one C and a normal a one C reading is going to be 5 .7 or lower. And at above 5 .7, 5 .7 to 6 .4, according to the CDC is pre diabetes. And then above 6 .4, 6 .5 and above is actually considered diabetic.

But back to your question, eating whole food, and then engaging in what we call whole effort exercise, which is best experienced through smart strength training. And so my recommendation isn’t just eat better and move around. It’s get at those fast switch or type two muscle fibers, which are the muscle fibers that you lose as you age. And as a result of that loss, you experience insulin resistance and this rising A1C over time. Only strength training can really best target that tissue and reverse this situation very quickly.

We see that all the time. We want both. We want the healthy eating and the healthy exercise, namely strength training, but we see people experience significant changes in A1C. sometimes in very short periods of time, even independent of changes in what they’re eating. And we’re going to keep encouraging them to improve those nutrition habits. But I think it’s really encouraging that we can see results that really change someone’s outlook for the future of their health, even without a massive overhaul of their nutrition.

or engaging in time -consuming, long -duration, conventional cardio that they might not be able to even do because of their knee or their back or their hip or something. Just a 20 -minute, high -effort strength training session can be safely performed by men and women of all ages.

And over a very short course, just a matter of weeks or a couple months, they can start to see significant turnaround in their A1C. That is super, super encouraging. And yes, if you, if you, if you, if your doctor has diagnosed you as prediabetic in that stage, or says your tests are a little bit high, they’re going to recommend exercise. And Brian, as you’re saying, strength training exercise, because of the way it impacts inflammation, because of the fact that it increases our muscle quality and makes those muscles able to help get that blood sugar out of the bloodstream, giving us more healthy levels at all times. And even just how it allows us to manage our weight better. I mean, you’ve written an article even talking about this.

that even the first 5 % of weight loss, you know, being overweight is another risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but losing just 5 % of your weight really, really leads to a lot of healthier outcomes.

And Brian, can you just give us a little glimpse of what you had to share in that article? Sure, Amy. Some researchers found that The majority of the benefits that people experienced health benefits that they experienced as a result of weight loss were actually coming from losing just five percent of their body weight that first five percent of their body weight that they were able to lose confer a majority of the benefits and so that is just super encouraging because that is something that people can experience in a pretty short period of time and they may want to keep going and lose some more weight for various reasons but in terms of health man it’s it’s impactful outcome and Another thing worth mentioning, I think, is you said that diabetes predisposes you to weight gain, or you might have said it the other way. My point is that it’s both, that it’s very cyclical. And so weight and blood sugar, and also that systemic inflammation all interact with each other. They all act upon each other.

Having elevated blood sugar levels leads to weight gain, leads to inflammation, but that weight gain and that inflammation also lead to insulin resistance. And so they just act on each other and it’s this terrible negative triad that we need to reverse.

And as we’re talking about here, we’ve just found that one of the most efficient and encouraging ways to break up that terrible triad and start moving your body in the right direction metabolically is smart, brief, high effort strength training with a professional like we offer at the exercise club. Yep. And as an owner, I can tell you that I have met with and spoken firsthand with multiple people who have told me that Even in the first several months of doing our exercise program that their A1C levels are back in the normal range for the first time in 20 years. I have family members as well with type two diabetes, which fuels my fire for just strong muscles and taking care of myself and helping others to do the same. And my two family members have actually also seen progress with their A1C numbers as well through strength training at the exercise coach as well. And I’m so, so proud of them.

thrilled about that. It really makes a huge difference. If you or somebody, you know, or love is prediabetic or is thinking about avoiding or preventing type two diabetes in your life. I really encourage you to check out an exercise coach location. We offer support with nutrition, those healthy whole food nutrition habits that we talked about in this episode, as well as the best strength training program customized perfectly for your body to help your muscles. do a better job of getting that blood sugar regulated and controlling some of these factors that puts you at less risk for developing these other health issues.

So stay healthy, stay strong, have a great day. We will see you next week on the podcast. And remember, strength changes everything.