How to improve blood sugar control with exercise

Blood sugar is one of the rare nutrition topics where everyone agrees: We should avoid big peaks and dips and aim for a steady curve. Spikes cause inflammation, accelerate aging, and lead to type 2 diabetes. Crashes make us feel moody and tired, and crave foods we don’t need. We can control our blood sugar through what and how we eat. But something else affects our blood sugar — physical activity. Exercise has a profound effect on your blood sugar response. Together with your food choices, being physically active helps you keep your blood sugar level even. In this episode of ZOE Science & Nutrition, Jonathan speaks with Javier Gonzalez and Sarah Berry to find out how exercise affects our blood sugar response — even when we’re fasting — and how much exercise we need to do to benefit.

Javier Gonzalez is an associate professor of human physiology at the University of Bath whose research focuses on the interaction between diet and exercise.

Sarah Berry is one of the world's leading experts on human nutrition. She has personally run over 20 randomized clinical trials looking at how humans respond to different fats.

Download our FREE guide — Top 10 Tips to Live Healthier: https://zoe.com/freeguide Timecodes: 00:00 - Introduction 00:12 - Topic introduction 01:39 - Quickfire questions 02:55 - Is a 30-minute walk as good as 30-minute cardio? 03:39 - What is blood sugar and why should we care about it? 05:10 - Blood sugar control throughout the day 07:43 - Why is it important to know about blood sugar? 09:01 - Blood sugar control 12:25 - How exercise affects blood sugar 14:17 - The power of fidgeting 16:12 - Effects of higher intensity exercise 17:00 - Lower intensity exercise vs higher intensity exercise 18:41 - Intermittent fasting and blood sugar 24:43 - Personalization 26:35 - What types of exercises can you do to control blood sugar? 29:12 - Cardio vs resistance training 34:21 - Blood fats & exercise 42:15 - 3 tips on leveraging exercise to control blood sugar and blood fats 43:14 - Summary 44:25 - Goodbyes 44:37 - Outro Episode transcripts are available here. Follow Javier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gonzalez_jt Follow Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsarahberry/ Follow ZOE on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoe/ Have an idea for a podcast? Contact Fascinate Productions to bring it to life.