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How Much Exercise is Enough to Prevent Diabetes?

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How Much Exercise is Enough to Prevent Diabetes?

Oct 14, 2021

If you are pre-diabetic, a regular weekly exercise routine can be an important and easy way to prevent diabetes. On today's Health Minute, endocrinologist Dr. Tim Graham talks about why as little as 150 minutes of exercise per week may be all you need to help prevent diabetes.

Episode Transcript

Interviewer: If you have pre-diabetes, exercise is one of the best ways to prevent it from escalating into full blown diabetes. Dr. Tim Graham is an endocrinologist and diabetes expert. So how much exercise do you recommend?

Dr. Graham: Frankly, as little as 150 minutes per week. Now that sounds awful, 150 minutes, but you break that down.

Interviewer: Sounds like a lot.

Dr. Graham: Yeah, if you break that down though, that's only 30 minutes, 5 times a week. And we're not talking about going to the gym and working out to the point where you're exhausted. We're talking about some brisk walking five times a week.

Truly anything that causes your heart rate to go up for a sustained period of time, causes you to sweat, most likely is having a good benefit from the standpoint of diabetes prevention.

Interviewer: So if you have pre-diabetes, pick something you like doing and do it for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. That will go a long way for preventing your pre-diabetes from turning into a full-fledged diabetes.

updated: October 14, 2021
originally published: January 1, 2018