What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a metabolic condition which results in an elevated fasting blood glucose level due to either a defect of our body to produce the hormone insulin, or an inability of our body to use insulin. 

Why is insulin important, what does it do?
Insulin is a hormone that allows our bodies to use the glucose from the food that we eat for energy, and it also acts like a key that unlocks cells and allows glucose to be stored for future use.  

Without insulin working well, the glucose from food remains in our blood and our blood glucose levels rise to a high level.  This is  not normal for our bodies.  When left untreated this can cause a number of consequences to our health including blindness, nerve damage, limb amputation, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and even death.

How common is diabetes?
It’s estimated that around 1.7 million Australians are living with diabetes, with one person being diagnosed every 5 minutes, and it contributes to around 11% of deaths in Australia.

What are the different types of diabetes
There are a number of different types of diabetes, with the most common being type 1 and type 2 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and is commonly diagnosed in children and young adults.  

Type 2 diabetes is the more common form of diabetes, affecting 85-90% of all people with diabetes. While it usually affects older adults, more and more young people, even children, are developing type 2 diabetes.  Unlike type 1 diabetes, your risk of developing type 2 diabetes is strongly associated with lifestyle factors such as high blood pressure, overweight or obesity, insufficient physical activity and a poor diet.  

How can exercise help to prevent type 2 diabetes?
No one knows exactly what causes type 2 diabetes, but lifestyle factors, such as being overweight and being inactive, strongly increase your risk.  Statistics show that 53% of the diabetes burden is due to overweight and obesity alone.

Increasing your exercise and physical activity levels is an easy way to help reduce your risk!

Can exercise help people living with type 2 diabetes?
Yes it certainly can.  Although there is no known cure for diabetes, exercise can be a powerful tool for managing this condition.  Exercise helps to:

• Make insulin in our bodies work more effectively;
• Assists the muscles to take up glucose in other ways that doesn’t depend on insulin;
• Helps to maintain a healthy weight;
• Helps to lower your blood pressure, reduce risk of heart disease and reduce stress.

How much exercise is recommended?
The actual dose of exercise that is recommended to prevent and to assist in managing type 2 diabetes is to accumulate 2 and a half hours of moderate intensity exercise across the week, or half that amount of high intensity exercise, in addition to 2 strength training sessions.   The strength training exercises should aim to target the major muscle groups within the body.

• ​150 minutes of moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise
• 60 minutes of strength training targeting the major muscle groups

It’s important to monitor blood glucose levels, particularly for people on insulin, before, during and after an exercise session, and it is also important to wear good supportive footwear and to check feet for problems each exercise session.


Lisa Parkinson
Accredited Exercise Physiologist/Diabetes Educator

#Type2Diabetes

It has been a very different year in regard to local community sports and how/ if they are running due to COVID-19 restrictions. It is great to see some sports happening again and bringing with it many positive benefits for our physical, mental and over wellbeing. Although the preparation for this year’s winter sports has not ran as usual and as a result meant players physical fitness and condition may not be quite up to scratch. 

When the game day and training demands are much higher than a player’s current physical capacity are not quite meeting up it can increase the likelihood of injury significantly. This can be due to pushing your body harder that it is capable of at that point of time, placing increased stress on each of your body systems. 

Why is injury more likely? 
It’s no secret that the first few games of any sporting season usually make you feel more fatigued than usual and this is largely due to the body not being accustomed to the high degree of sport specific demands that are placed on the body. Weather it is the high contact nature of football or the short sharp bursts of speed needed in hockey, the body takes a little while to re-adjust to sport when you first get back into it. The difference in regard to the 2020 sporting seasons is that as structured trainings during the pre-season have not been able to occur as much, your body has not had the time to prepare adequately. 

If you are a player who relies heavily on building your fitness level during structured training sessions and complete little extra independently at home, you may have put yourself at a higher risk of injury due to a lack of preparation. For those not competing in elite level sport and not training regularly in the off season it is normal for declines in muscular strength, endurance and general conditioning to occur. This is then built up again over the off season, conditioning the body for competition intensity and loads. When this conditioning has not occurred the risk of injury increases as the body tries to complete more than it can handle. Depending on the sport and the specific movement patterns, different areas of the body are more susceptible to injury. For example, footballers are more likely to have a knee or lower limb muscle tear whereas netballers are more inclined to experience ankle and knee joint related issues. 

Ways to help outside of game day? 
So how can you help to prevent injuries and prepare yourself for sport? 

• Start gradually: Try not to start out hammer and tong in your first few training sessions, ease yourself into it and re-accustom your body to the intensities and movements. 
• Monitor your training load: If the season has been sprung upon you within a matter of weeks you may have started trying to regain your fitness all at once to ensure that you are ready. Although it is important to monitor how much training you are doing and how intense, it is important to give yourself adequate rest days and build up your strength by beginning with lower loads and slowly increasing. 
• Know what areas are most important to train: Depending on the sport you play different areas of your physical fitness will need more attention than others. A combination of resistance training, agility and plyometric training and cardiovascular training will be required but all in different ratios depending on the sport. Have a think about what movements and intensities are required in your sport and adjust your training to match. 

How to help on game day? 

• Warm-up: It is important to properly prime your muscles for movements before starting any form of sport. This should involve dynamic movements that assist in increasing circulation through your cardiovascular system to help loosen your joints and increase blood flow to the muscles. 
• Cool-down: Just as it is important to warm-up it is just as important to help our body cool down and recover from sport. When we cool down it assists in bringing down our heart rate and body temperature gradually to prevent us from feeling sick or even passing out due to these dropping too quickly. Stretching after a game also helps to remove the build-up of lactic acid in the muscles and prevent further stiffness later on. 

I know we are all loving having sport back on in the community and we hope that you are too. Try implementing a few of these tips to help you stay in the game all season!

By Aleisha Michael

​Accredited Exercise Physiologist