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Listen to Dr. Mowll reveal insights on how to prevent or reverse diabetes.
Dr. Brian Mowll is the founder and medical director of SweetLife® Diabetes Health Centers and serves clients worldwide as The Diabetes Coach™. He is a master licensed diabetes educator (MLDE), CDE, and was one of the first doctors to be certified to practice functional medicine by the prestigious Institute for Functional Medicine. Since 1998, Dr. Mowll has been helping people with all forms of diabetes properly manage their complex health conditions. Additionally, with type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, his goal is to not just manage but to reverse these conditions using a natural, personalized lifestyle approach.
Dr. Mowll has spent over 20 years studying and applying clinical nutrition, physical activity, lifestyle management, functional medicine, and diabetes self-management education. He is the host of the popular “Diabetes Summit”, as well as a prolific writer, blogger, and speaker.
In addition, he has written hundreds of articles about diabetes and natural health and has been a featured speaker and contributor on diabetes. Dr. Mowll treats clients locally in the greater Philadelphia area and nationally through his acclaimed Mastering Blood Sugar™ programs.
TRANSCRIPT:
This is auto-generated and may have mistakes. Please listen to the interview for accuracy.
[00:01] REENA JADHAV: Hey you guys its Reena Jadhav with the live longer podcast and health bootcamps here with Dr. Brian Mowll answering one of the questions that you guys sent and which is should I exercise Dr. Mowll I worry I was told I have to really watch my diabetes. I have type 2 diabetes I am concerned if I do work out how much should I work out, how long should I work out etcetera so, Dr. Mowll what is the connection between working out and diabetes and how concerned should someone be and how should they make sure they are exercising safely?
[00:32] DR BRIAN MOWLL: Great question and I think we have to look this from two different perspectives. One is that centaury lifestyle not being active, not moving is a major contributor to obesity and diabetes today so if you are not moving and not active that’s a major strike against you and the diabetes game and the heart disease game and the obesity game so it is important to move. Our bodies are meant to move; we either hunting or we were fighting for our lives or we were picking and gathering food at some point in our history. So our bodies are meant to move, they are not meant to fight desk games or office games where we were sitting on a chair all day long and it’s amazing if you think about it. Not everyone but many people spend their lives most of it in a centaury position and they sleep all night, they might get up and sit down for breakfast and then they sit in the car on their way to work they might sit at work all day long and then they get off back in the car maybe they get an hour of exercise in there somewhere if they are lucky. They are on the couch in front of the TV and then they are back in bed so it’s amazing what percentage of life we spend in a centaury position whereas I think life in the past we were naturally much more active. Now you may have a job where you are on your feet and work all day and that’s great but a research show that, that’s still isn’t enough we really need intentional exercise to prevent diabetes, heart disease and obesity so how do we do that? Well there are different forms of exercise that have been shown to be beneficial for cardiovascular health and for weight and diabetes. There are really 5 types of exercise that I look at. The first is sort of restorative work or gentle exercise that’s things like stretching and maybe a gentle form of yoga, tai-chi or something like that to be a restorative type of exercise. There is of course play where we are just out to ran around with our kids or chasing our dog around perhaps that could maybe it doesn’t look like play but that could be parking on the opposite side of the parking lot and walking across the parking lot to get to work or taking the stairs to your office. Those are all sort of activity type exercise and then we get into the real intentional exercise, which would be aerobic, a slow fat burning cardio exercise that’s walking and swimming and maybe light cycling and bike riding where your heart rate stays in that fat burning zone so maybe 55-75 percent of your maximum heart rate. You are using oxygen so you can carry on a conversation easily typically during that type of exercise you can talk perhaps not sing so we use these talks sing test so you can talk maybe not sing so you are working but you are not working so hard that you are not able to use oxygen or breathe normally. And then there is resistance training which is using weights or body weight exercise and finally sprint training which is the other end of the spectrum, this is where we are not using oxygen. We are in anaerobic fitness burning mostly sugar and we have limited resources to burn there so we are burning mostly sugars at usually short duration’s very high intensity and we are not able to talk or sing or doing that type of exercise usually you are just breathing very heavily and I think we need to do all of those. I think it is important to do all five types of those exercise, we need to play, we need to take the stairs and by the way that play maybe would also constitute if you had an active job maybe that’s part of that as well. Its activity based exercise; I think we need to do restorative work especially if you have some stress. Do some shivenadi under yoga or do some tai-chi, do some relaxing stretching or gentle platys tape work and then there is also again the more aggressive forms of exercise giving yourself time to get your heart rate up on a brisk walk or swim and actually get some cardiovascular benefits from your exercise. Do some body weight or resistance training and do a little bit of sprint training sometimes you have to work up to the sprint training make sure your heart is healthy enough to do it but that’s one of the best techniques to burn sugar and to deplete stored sugar in your body which is called glycogen to create basically a vacuum for the sugar you eat and the sugar in your blood to fill those stores back up so I think that sprint training is another essential piece.
[06:10] REENA JADHAV: Are there any dangers to someone who has diabetes working out or any of these specific ones that you mentioned dangerous at all?
[06:14] DR BRIAN MOWLL: Well if you have what is called brittle diabetes where you have a hard time regulating controlling your blood sugar, and or if you are on insulin or one of the potent blood sugar lowering drugs, there is a classic drug called sulfonylurea which really drops blood sugar pretty drastically. If you are in any of those three situations, we have got to be a bit careful and you may want to slowly work into an exercise program but for people who aren’t either on medication or who are taking something like metformin which sort of the basic diabetes medication. There is really no risk to adding in exercise again you want to make sure that you are healthy enough to do the form of exercise that you are doing whether that means having a stress test with your doctor at least just getting they are okay. If you are not exercising at all now and you want to start but if you are already doing exercise and you want to increase your fitness level then just start slowly and gradually start to add some of these forms of exercise to your tolerance level to the point where you are able to incorporate all five of these forms of exercise.
[07:32] REENA JADHAV: What about standing versus workout so we are saying now sitting is the new smoking that’s a cool marketing AdWords being used. Is there a difference between just standing and sitting does that even count or not really you really have to be moving for it to count?
[07:53] BRIAN MOWLL: Not for fitness but I will say that standing and moving around I think can be beneficial for muscular scale or health so sitting particularly in a chair or in one position all day is not at all good for your spine and your bone and your muscular skeleton health. When you are standing, you are loading your skeleton so it’s better for your muscles, it’s better for your bone health and it’s better for your joints and it’s ever better if you change positions frequently and go for a walk around the office periodically or around the house. You can sit, sometimes stand, and sit on a ball like if you have one of those big extra sized balls. They are fun actually sit Indian style or sit on the floor trying to sit on unsupported for a little while even it’s only for 30 seconds, these are all different ways of sort of stimulating the muscles joints and bones of the body in different ways but I think for cardiovascular fitness and for blood sugar control we really need to get moving.
[09:01] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely and so when you join the health bootcamps you will see there is a lot of great workouts in fact there is a daily workout that is sent to you that has been curated and along with the workout you are also sent some kind of yoga something that’s more rejuvenating, replatshing, nurturing that’s not necessarily cardio so it can be both kinds of options you have got the cardio something like yoga, tai-chi. And we give you these little tips which is if today is not going to be the day when you get to do a cardio workout you just stand up and work as you can see I am actually standing. This interview is being conducted with me standing because I realized at one point that I was sitting 4-5 hours during these interviews and I said why not stand up and do these interviews. So there is these little tiny changes you can make that do impact how your body feels on a day to day basis so check out the beat diabetes health bootcamp for Dr. Mowll and make sure to tune in and check out the other interviews that Dr. Mowll has answered these questions, amazing insights don’t miss them and we will see you on the next one. Thank you Dr. Mowll.
[10:06] DR BRIAN MOWLL: Thank you take care.
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