Controlling blood sugar is very important for diabetics, and in this report, we offer a very simple exercise that can help with that and also help reduce blood fats.
Before going into details, we emphasize that what we offer here is for guidance only, and is not a treatment for diabetes, nor a substitute for consulting a doctor and taking treatment.
The exercise was presented by a Professor of Health and Human Performance at the University of Houston in the United States, Dr. Mark Hamilton, in a study published last September in the journal “iScience”.
The University of Houston said in a report on the study that this discovery is groundbreaking.
How does this exercise lower blood sugar?
This technique moves a specific muscle in the body.
What is this muscle that moving can lower blood sugar?
The answer is the soleus calf muscle. Although it only makes up 1% of your body weight, it can do great things to improve the metabolic health of the rest of your body if activated correctly.
And the soleus muscle is one of the 600 muscles in the human body, and it is the back muscle of the leg that runs from the bottom of the knee to the heel.
What is the required exercise called?
Its name is soleus flexion (SPU) which effectively increases muscle metabolism for hours, even while sitting.
How effective is this exercise?
According to the study, the ability of a single exercise to maintain elevated oxidative metabolism to improve blood glucose regulation is more effective than any common method currently promoted as a solution, including aerobic exercise, weight loss, and exercise. intermittent fasting.
What is oxidative metabolism?
Oxidative metabolism is the process by which oxygen is used to burn metabolites such as blood glucose or fat, but it depends in part on the immediate energy needs of the muscle as it works.
Glucose Use
The study revealed that there is a negligible contribution of glycogen in soleus nutrition. Instead of breaking it down, the sole can use other fuels like glucose and fat in the blood. Normally, glycogen is the predominant type of carbohydrate that fuels exercise muscles.
He added: “The template’s reliance on glycogen helps it work for hours effortlessly and without stress during this type of muscular activity because there is a specific limit to muscular endurance due to glycogen depletion.”
When the soleus flexion was tested, the whole-body effects on blood chemistry included a 52% improvement in blood glucose (sugar).
The new approach to preserving soleus muscle metabolism is also effective in doubling the normal rate of fat metabolism in the fasting period between meals, thereby lowering blood lipid levels.
Soleus muscle activation
Based on years of research, Hamilton and his colleagues developed the soleus press, which activates the soleus muscle in a different way than standing or walking. This exercise aims to increase oxygen consumption more than is possible with these other types of sole activities, while also fighting fatigue.
How is sole pressure exerted?
While sitting with the feet flat on the floor and the muscles relaxed, the heel rises while the ball of the foot remains in position.
When the heel reaches the top of its range of motion, the foot is passively released downward. The goal is to simultaneously shorten the calf muscle, at a time when motor neurons normally activate the soleus.
While the solemn push-up motion may appear to be walking (even though it’s performed sitting down), it’s anything but, according to the researchers. When walking, the body is designed to reduce the amount of energy used due to how the sole moves.
Hamilton’s method turns that around, making the sole use of as much energy as possible over a long period of time.
Sole pressure looks simple from the outside, but sometimes what you see with the naked eye isn’t the whole story,” Hamilton said. “It’s a very specific movement that at the moment requires technique and experience.”
But the researchers emphasize that this is not a new fitness tip or a new diet for this month, it is a powerful physiological movement that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of the sole.
Regardless of a person’s level of physical activity, sitting too long has been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and more.
Conclusion
More than half of American adults and 80% of people 65 and older have metabolic problems caused by diabetes or prediabetes.
A low metabolic rate while sitting is particularly problematic for people at risk of developing age-related metabolic diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
“The combined 600 muscles typically only contribute about 15% of whole-body oxidative metabolism within 3 hours of carbohydrate ingestion,” Hamilton added. “Despite the fact that the soleus muscle accounts for only 1% of body weight, it is capable of increasing metabolic rate during soleus pressing contractions to double, sometimes even triple, whole-body carbohydrate oxidation.”
“We are not aware of any current or promising drugs that come close to increasing and maintaining whole-body oxidative metabolism to this extent,” he continued.
