(Press-News.org) Boston, MA – Men who do weight training regularly—for example, for 30 minutes per day, five days per week—may be able to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by up to 34%, according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of Southern Denmark researchers. And if they combine weight training and aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking or running, they may be able to reduce their risk even further—up to 59%.
This is the first study to examine the role of weight training in the prevention of type 2 diabetes. The results suggest that, because weight training appears to confer significant benefits independent of aerobic exercise, it can be a valuable alternative for people who have difficulty with the latter.
The study will be published online in Archives of Internal Medicine on August 6, 2012.
"Until now, previous studies have reported that aerobic exercise is of major importance for type 2 diabetes prevention," said lead author Anders Grøntved, visiting researcher in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH and a doctoral student in exercise epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark. "But many people have difficulty engaging in or adhering to aerobic exercise. These new results suggest that weight training, to a large extent, can serve as an alternative to aerobic exercise for type 2 diabetes prevention."
Type 2 diabetes is a major public health concern and it's on the rise. An estimated 346 million people worldwide have type 2 diabetes, and diabetes-related deaths are expected to double between 2005 and 2030, according to the World Health Organization. More than 80% of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
The researchers, including senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH, followed 32,002 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1990 to 2008. Information on how much time the men spent each week on weight training and aerobic exercise came from questionnaires they filled out every two years. The researchers adjusted for other types of physical activity, television viewing, alcohol and coffee intake, smoking, ethnicity, family history of diabetes, and a number of dietary factors. During the study period, there were 2,278 new cases of diabetes among the men followed.
The findings showed that even a modest amount of weight training may help reduce type 2 diabetes risk. The researchers categorized the men according to how much weight training they did per week—between 1 and 59 minutes, between 60 and 149 minutes, and at least 150 minutes—and found that the training reduced their type 2 diabetes risk by 12%, 25%, and 34%, respectively, compared with no weight training. Aerobic exercise is associated with significant benefits as well, the researchers found—it reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by 7%, 31%, and 52%, respectively, for the three categories above.
The researchers also found that the combination of weight training and aerobic exercise confers the greatest benefits: Men who did more than 150 minutes of aerobics as well as at least 150 minutes of weight training per week had a 59% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.
Grøntved said that further research is needed to confirm the results of the study as well as to analyze whether or not the findings can be generalized to women.
"This study provides clear evidence that weight training has beneficial effects on diabetes risk over and above aerobic exercise, which are likely to be mediated through increased muscle mass and improved insulin sensitivity," said Hu. "To achieve the best results for diabetes prevention, resistance training can be incorporated with aerobic exercise."
INFORMATION:Other HSPH authors included Eric Rimm, associate professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition, and Walter Willett, Frederick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition.
Support for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health (DK58845 and CA55075).
"A Prospective Study of Weight Training and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Men," Anders Grøntved, Eric B. Rimm, Walter C. Willett, Lars B. Andersen, Frank B. Hu, Archives of Internal Medicine, online August 6, 2012.
Visit the HSPH website for the latest news, press releases and multimedia offerings.
Harvard School of Public Health (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu) is dedicated to advancing the public's health through learning, discovery, and communication. More than 400 faculty members are engaged in teaching and training the 1,000-plus student body in a broad spectrum of disciplines crucial to the health and well being of individuals and populations around the world. Programs and projects range from the molecular biology of AIDS vaccines to the epidemiology of cancer; from risk analysis to violence prevention; from maternal and children's health to quality of care measurement; from health care management to international health and human rights. For more information on the school visit: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu
CHICAGO – The odds of undergoing cranial computed tomography (CT) among children with minor blunt head trauma who were at higher risk for clinically important traumatic brain injury did not appear to differ by race/ethnicity in a secondary analysis of a study of injured children, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. However, there may have been differences for children at intermediate or lowest risk.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of pediatric illness and death in the U.S., ...
CHICAGO – Treatment with growth hormone-releasing hormone appears to be associated with favorable cognitive effects among both adults with mild cognitive impairment and healthy older adults, according to a randomized clinical trial published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication.
"Growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH), growth hormone and insulinlike growth factor 1 have potent effects on brain function, their levels decrease with advancing age, and they likely play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease," the authors write as background ...
CHICAGO – Patients with hoarding disorder exhibited abnormal activity in regions of the brain that was stimulus dependent when deciding what to do with objects that did or did not belong to them, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication.
Hoarding disorder (HD) is defined as the excessive collection of objects and an inability to discard them. It is characterized by marked avoidance of decisions about possessions, according to the study background.
David F. Tolin, Ph.D., of the Institute of Living, Hartford, ...
White children are more likely to receive cranial (head) CT scans in an emergency department following minor head trauma, compared with African-American or Hispanic children, a study published by researchers at UC Davis has found.
The study findings do not indicate that CT (computed tomography) scans are underused in African-American and Hispanic children. Rather, the researchers suggested that white children may receive too many CT scans and thus may be exposed to unnecessary radiation.
The results are online and appear in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics ...
Just as differences in song can be used to distinguish one bird species from another, the pips and squeaks bats use to find prey can be used to identify different species of bat. Now, for the first time, ecologists have developed a Europe-wide tool capable of identifying bats from their echolocation calls.
The new free online tool – iBatsID – will be a major boost to conserving bats, whose numbers have declined significantly across Europe over the past 50 years. Details are published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.
Working with ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 6 , 2012) — University of Kentucky researchers, led by Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, have made an exciting finding in the "dry" form of age-related macular degeneration known as geographic atrophy (GA). GA is an untreatable condition that causes blindness in millions of individuals due to death of retinal pigmented epithelial cells. The paper, "ERK1/2 Activation is a Therapeutic Target in Age-Related Macular Degeneration" appears in the current online issue of the premier journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ambati, professor of physiology, ...
Despite advances in health care and increases in life expectancy overall, Americans with less than a high school education have life expectancies similar to adults in the 1950s and 1960s.
"The most highly educated white men live about 14 years longer than the least educated black men," says S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the study. "The least educated black women live about 10 years less than the most educated white women."
The research, funded by The MacArthur Foundation ...
An international study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) at the University of Southampton, has found that obese patients who undergo bariatric surgery are not at an increased risk of broken bones in the first few years after the operation.
However, the study, published in the British Medical Journal today (DATE) has shown that there is a possibility of an increase in fracture risk after three to five years.
Generally, a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) protects the bone against most types of fracture because a higher ...
A Yale study of the care quality received at safety-net hospitals — which provide care for the majority of uninsured and other vulnerable populations — found that quality at these facilities is similar to non-safety-net hospitals. This is despite the unique financial challenges at safety-net hospitals in the face of rising costs and the potential impact of the health care law.
Published in the August issue of Health Affairs, the study was conducted by Elizabeth E. Drye, M.D., of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor ...
OAKLAND, Calif., August 6, 2012 – Long-term use of commonly used blood pressure medications that increase sensitivity to sunlight is associated with an increased risk of lip cancer in non-Hispanic whites, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the study found that photosensitizing antihypertensive drugs such as nifedipine and hydrochlorothiazide were associated with cancer of the epithelial cells known as squamous cells—which are the main part of the outermost ...
