Exercise Tied To Lower Diabetes Risk In High-Risk Women

According to a new study, women who have gestational diabetes may be able to avoid getting diabetes later in life with exercise.
In women who had gestational diabetes, those who increased their exercise by at least 20 minutes per day after giving birth had half the long-term risks of women who didn't change their activity levels.
"This is kind of a hopeful message because they may think they are at a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, but this shows they shouldn't give up," said Dr. Cuilin Zhang. "Exercise more. It can help."
Zhang, the lead author in the study is from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Rockville, MD.
Gestational diabetes typically affects older, heavier, and non-white women, affecting between 2 and 10 percent of all US pregnancies. They experience symptoms similar to Type 2 diabetes, including increased thirst and the urge to urinate. If gestational diabetes isn't controlled during pregnancy, it puts babies at risk of being born earlier and heavier than usual. It also puts pregnant women at risk for high blood pressure and preeclampsia.
The condition usually disappears after childbirth, but women who have had it have an increased risk of developing diabetes, especially within the next five years.
In the new study, researchers looked at 16 years' worth of data on 4,554 women who had a history of gestational diabetes. By the end of the study period, 635 developed type 2 diabetes.
Using behaviors like exercise and time spent watching television, researchers were able to calculate a women's risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
In the 1/5 of women who exercised the least 19 percent developed diabetes later on, compared to 9 percent of the top 1/5 of women who exercised the most.
For every additional 100 minutes of exercise women added per week, the risk for developing diabetes fell by 9 percent.
Watching television was tied to an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Women who watched between 11 and 20 hours of TV a week had 1.4 times the diabetes risk of women who watched 0 to 5 hours a week. This however does not mean that watching television is the source of the problem, said the authors in the JAMA Internal Medicine article. In general, it means that women who watch more television tend to be less healthy than those who don't.
The researchers caution that this data does not apply to all women in the United States- most of their data came from white women.
Zhang said that the goal of their research was to identify how medicine, lifestyle, and genetics come together to influence risk among women with a history of gestational diabetes.
Reference: Chicago Tribune
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