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Staying
in Shape Staves
Off Diabetes in Women
Being physically fit may help prevent
the development of diabetes in healthy women, according to findings
presented at the American Public Health Association's 131st Annual
Meeting in San Francisco.
Jason M. Wallace, and others from
The Cooper Institute in Dallas, examined the association between
fitness and type 2 diabetes in 4,984 women participating in the
Aerobic Center Longitudinal Study (ACLS).
"This study has been going on for
more than 30 years," Wallace told Reuters Health. "We have already
looked at men, fitness, and risk of developing diabetes and needed
to look at it in women."
Participating women were free of
diabetes when the study began. Based on how long they could walk
on a treadmill, the women were classified as being low fit, moderately
fit, or high fit.
Eighty-two women developed diabetes
during follow-up. The rate of diabetes was 3.2 percent in the
low-fit group, 2.6 percent in the moderately fit group, and less
than 1 percent in the high-fit group.
After considering other factors,
such as age, weight, and blood sugar levels, "women who were in
the highest fitness group were at lower risk for developing diabetes
relative to women in a lower fitness category," Wallace said.
For example, high-fit women were 70 percent less likely to develop
diabetes than low-fit women.
"For every additional minute on
the treadmill, there was a 14-percent reduction in the risk of
developing diabetes," the investigators report.
"The clinical implications are
obvious," Wallace said. "Physicians need to be prescribing physical
activity to their female patients to help prevent the development
of diabetes."
"There has been very little (research)
done on fitness and the development of diabetes in women," he
added. "These results do support what we have found in men, that
higher fitness levels protect against the development of diabetes."
Reference
Source 89
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