My name is Jeremiah Ridderbos and I have been a Certified Personal Trainer for just over 2 months. During this time, I have learned so much about how to address the needs of the client and how to answer the questions that really matter in a practical way. During my experience working with special populations, I found there to be one outstanding issue, especially with insulin resistant individuals. This issue is muscle mass.
The Problem
With the growing number of insulin resistant people in communities throughout America and the world, it is important to know the effects of insulin resistance. We also must know different ways to improve the lives of people with this condition. Individuals with insulin resistance have a lower ability to accept glucose into their cells. This is because of a decrease in insulin receptor number and function. When the cells are no longer able to regulate sugar levels in the blood. This leads to a high degree of spiking and drops in the sugar levels. These spikes and drops can cause a lot of stress to the body and lead to blood vessel diseases (blocking of the blood vessels), mental issues and heart disease (Shoji et al., 2021).
The Solution
Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem. As a personal trainer I believe exercise can have a positive impact on so many aspects of health, and insulin resistance is not excluded. While other studies have shown that higher intensity resistance training can be helpful in regulating blood sugar, fewer studies have shown this in lower intensity resistance training. This is important because lower intensity resistance training does not spike blood pressure as much and it is safe for most individuals with vascular diseases. One study looked at the effect of low-intensity weight training using slow movements on sugar spikes and drops in the blood. The results showed that weight training worked well to keep a stable short-term sugar level in the blood (Shoji et al., 2021). Even though this study was done in healthy adults and not type 2 diabetics, the results are still significant. The benefits of weights don’t just stop with short term blood sugar. Interestingly, weight training causes muscles to take in sugar even when insulin is not present. The benefits of resistance training just keep coming. Exercise also improves insulin-dependent glucose uptake for 1-2 days (Verbrugge et al., 2021). In individuals with blood sugar issues, weight training and muscle building are exactly what they should be including in their training schedule.
What overweight people with insulin resistance are often told is to start cardiovascular exercise to improve heart and blood vessel health. Don’t get me wrong, cardio certainly has its place in an exercise routine. However, it greatly overshadows resistance training in the lives of many Americans. One study reported that 57.8% of U.S. adults use no muscular strength exercises in their weekly routine (Bennie et al., 2018). This means that only 43.2% of Americans do any amount of weight training. With the increasing commonness of blood sugar problems, the number of Americans who strength train should be higher. While strength training is necessary, it is not necessary for every American to weight lift 5 days a week. Simply working the muscle enough to cause muscle to work and gain mass will make an incredible difference in one’s ability to clear glucose. Not everyone who lifts weights has to be a body builder. The solution is to spread awareness of the benefits of strength training and to encourage individuals to include more strength training in their weekly routine.
References
- Bennie, J. A., Lee, D., Khan, A., Wiesner, G. H., Bauman, A. E., Stamatakis, E., & Biddle, S. J. H. (2018). Muscle-Strengthening Exercise Among 397,423 US Adults: Prevalence, Correlates, and Associations with Health Conditions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE, 55(6), 864–874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.07.022
- Shoji, T., Hamasaki, H., Kawaguchi, A., Waragai, Y., Yanai, H., & Barshtein, G. (2021). Effects of Low-Intensity Resistance Exercise with Slow Movement and Tonic Force Generation on Short-Term Glycemic Variability in Healthy Subjects: A Randomized Controlled Study. Applied Sciences (2076-3417), 11(4), 1536. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11041536
- Verbrugge, S. A. J., Alhusen, J. A., Kempin, S., Pillon, N. J., Rozman, J., Wackerhage, H., & Kleinert, M. (2022). Genes controlling skeletal muscle glucose uptake and their regulation by endurance and resistance exercise. Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, 123(2), 202–214. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcb.30179
Journal Review 