Among people with low physical activity and a high risk of diabetes, those who walk more throughout the day are less likely to actually get the disorder, according to new research.
The study, published in Diabetes Care on June 20, is part of a growing body of evidence that for people who get very little exercise, "even small amounts of activity will provide a really good return on their investment," said Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke, who studies walking and health at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was not involved in the research.
To get a better sense of walking's potential benefits, Dr. Amanda Fretts, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, and her colleagues asked more than 1,800 people to wear a pedometer on their hip for a week to tally the number of steps they typically took each day.
All of them came from Native American communities in Arizona, Oklahoma, and North and South Dakota that are known to have low physical activity levels and high rates of diabetes.
About a quarter of the group were considered to have very low activity, taking fewer than 3,500 steps a day, while half took fewer than 7,800 steps per day.
At the beginning of the study, none of the participants had diabetes. But after five years of follow-up, 243 people had developed the condition.
About 17% of the people in the lowest activity group developed diabetes, compared to 12% of the people who took more than 3,500 steps a day.
After taking into account people's age, whether they smoked, and other diabetes risk factors, Dr. Fretts's team determined that people who walked the most were 29% less likely to develop diabetes than those who walked the least.
"Our finding wasn't surprising given that other studies have shown that even light activity is associated with a lower risk of diabetes," Dr. Fretts wrote in an email to Reuters Health.
"Increased physical activity may prevent weight gain and promote weight loss, a major determinant of diabetes risk," she said.
The link may also be related to physical activity's effects on inflammation and glucose, said Dr. Fretts.
Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/766657?sssdmh=dm1.799093&src=nldne
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