A new study indicates that combining aerobics and weight lifting can help people with Type 2 diabetes keep their blood sugar levels under control.
Most people probably think of diabetes control in terms of diet or insulin, but Dr. Tim Church says exercise can play a big role.
大部分人都知道，可以通过饮食和胰岛素控制糖尿病。但迪姆·丘奇医生说，运动能够发挥很大的作用。
"If you look at what diabetes is, it's the failure of the body to manage the blood sugar, and the biggest consumer of blood sugar in the human body is skeletal muscle," he says. "So if you keep skeletal muscle happy, it's chewing up blood sugar 24 hours a day."
“糖尿病是怎么回事呢，它就是人体不能控制控制血糖了。人体消耗血糖最多的组织是骨骼肌，因此，只要让骨骼肌高兴，它就能每天24小时消耗血糖。”
Church is a researcher at Louisiana State University's Pennington Center. He says most previous studies looked at the impact on diabetes of one kind of exercise only - typically aerobic exercise, like walking or bicycling. So he and his colleagues recruited more than 250 patients with diabetes and randomly assigned them to an aerobic exercise group, a weightlifting group, a group that did both kinds of exercise, or a control group that had no organized exercise program.
丘奇医生是路易斯安那州立大学彭宁顿生物医学研究中心的研究员。他说，过去的研究，大部分只关注一类运动对糖尿病的影响，一般都是有氧运动，例如走路或骑自行车。他和他的同事招募了250名糖尿病患者，随机将他们分成有氧运动组，举重组，两者都做的组，还有不做任何有组织运动的对照组。
After nine months, he said, the results were clear.
他说，9个月后，结果非常清楚。
"And for virtually everything we looked at, but in particular related to hemoglobin A1C - that represents blood sugar control - the group that did both the walking and the resistance training, or weight lifting, did by far the best."
“在我们观察的每一个项目上，特别是和代表血糖控制的‘糖化血红蛋白’有关的项目上，走路和举重并举的一组效果最好。”
Church said he expected that the group that did both kinds of exercise would do better, but he was surprised by how much better they did - not just on controlling blood sugar, but on other relevant measures as well, like weight. He said different kinds of exercise affect the body differently, especially the big muscles that are fueled by blood sugar.
丘奇医生说，他本来就预期两种运动都做的这组效果会比较好，但效果比其它各组好这么多，还是让他有些吃惊。不仅仅是血糖控制，其它有关方面也好得多，例如体重控制。他说，不同的运动对身体产生不同的影响，特别是消耗血糖的大肌肉。
"Skeletal muscle is so important for your health, and that's particularly true in individuals with diabetes," he explained. "And aerobic exercise affects skeletal muscle through one set of mechanisms, and the weight-lifting affects skeletal muscles through a completely different set of mechanisms. So when you combine aerobic plus the weight-lifting, you're doubling the opportunity for benefit."
“骨骼肌对健康非常重要，对糖尿病患者尤其如此。有氧运动对骨骼肌产生一种影响，而举重对骨骼肌产生一种完全不同。因此，如果有氧运动和举重并举，身体得到的好处就加倍了。”
The people in Church's study were diabetic adults, mostly in their 50s and older, so you might wonder if taking on a lot of exercise is a reasonable thing to ask. But he points out that the exercise routine in the combination group amounted to a bit more than two hours a week, which he said is do-able and actually less of a commitment that some previous studies have suggested was necessary.
参与丘奇研究的志愿人员都是成年糖尿病患者，年龄大都在50岁以上。你也许会怀疑，让他们同时做多种运动是否合理。不过丘奇指出，进行多样运动的这组病人每星期的运动时间只有两个多小时，因此是可行的。实际上，这比过去一些研究建议的时间还少一些。
Tim Church published his findings in the journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA. |