A new study has shown that regular aerobic exercise can help to improve vascular reactivity, which in turn reduces the risk of people going on to develop type 2 diabetes .
It was revealed that patients with pre-diabetes that take regular aerobic exercise manage to improve their vascular reactivity to almost normal levels regardless of whether any weight loss was achieved. The research, which was presented at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, examined the vascular reactivity – a condition linked with heart disease – of people at risk of diabetes in terms of how much exercise they took.
The participants that had at least 150 minutes of exercise each week presented vascular reactivity that was close to the normal levels of someone without diabetes, as well as substantial reductions in cholesterol levels and inflammation markers. For the patients who didn’t lose weight, the findings indicated the improvement in vascular reactivity was independent of weight loss.
Lead author on the study, Sabyasachi Se, said “Knowing that exercise significantly improves vascular reactivity for pre-diabetic patients is substantial.”
He added “It appears that the pre-diabetic stage is a therapeutic window when aerobic exercise can make significant improvement in vascular reactivity and bring it back towards normalcy, before these patients progress to overt diabetes.”

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