Diabetes and Exercise: How Exactly Muscle Movement Manages Blood Sugar
Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman
Nutritious Movement
4.8 • 686 Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Katy Bowman and Jeannette Loram dive into the fascinating relationship between blood sugar, diet, and movement. They unpack how the body regulates blood sugar, what happens when this process breaks down in Type I and Type II diabetes, and why different kinds of activity play such a big role in prevention and management.
Katy and Jeannette explain how contracting muscles can pull glucose directly into working cells during exercise—a powerful but site-specific effect—and how long-term training reshapes muscle to take up glucose more efficiently.
They also compare the blood sugar benefits of endurance exercise, resistance training, HIIT, stretching, and even light daily movement. Along the way, they highlight two key scenarios: insulin resistance linked to excess weight and inflammation, versus insulin resistance driven by low muscle mass in people with normal weight. For the latter, they stress why resistance training—or “big body work”—is especially essential.
Enhanced Show Notes & Full Transcript
CHAPTERSÂ
0:06:00 - DefinitionsÂ
0:16:00 - The Dynamic CollectiveÂ
0:17:00 - You Can’t Exercise Off DiabetesÂ
0:20:00 - Muscle is the Key Tissue (and the Liver)
0:36:30 - Stretching & Light ActivityÂ
0:47:00 - Exercise Modality for Blood Sugar Regulation
0:54:25 - Listener Question on Lupus brought to you by PeluvaÂ
1:09:09 - Blood Sugar Spikes During Exercise
BOOKS & RESEARCH PAPERS
My Perfect Movement Plan by Katy Bowman
I know I should Exercise, But... by Diana Hill & Katy Bowman
Exercise and GLUT4 by Flores-Opazo et al (2020)Â
Mechanisms of endurance and resistance exercise in type 2 diabetes by Zhao et al (2025)Â
Sedentary behaviour as a mediator of type 2 diabetes by Hamilton et al (2015)Â
Impact of reduced sitting time or increasing sit-to-stand transitions on blood pressure and glucose regulation in Postmenopausal women by Hartman et al (2025)Â
The impact of standing desks on cardiometabolic and vascular health by Bodker et al (2021)
CONNECT, MOVE & LEARN
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Your Voice on the Podcast: Read The CreditsÂ
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, podcast listeners, this is a live event announcement. I am headed to North Carolina this |
| 0:06.9 | October to lead a three-day dynamic aging retreat of the serene Art of Living Center in the Appalachian |
| 0:13.5 | Mountains. Aging is for every body. While we can't stop the sands of time, there is a difference between the effects of age and the effects of years, accumulating sedentary habits. |
| 0:26.4 | This is my third time offering this event, the first time at the Art of Living Center. |
| 0:31.5 | You'll learn to nourish all your parts with movement, feet, ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, pelvic floor, and all the |
| 0:38.1 | bits in between, and restore loss function due to inactivity. In addition to gentle, |
| 0:44.7 | head-to-to-co, corrective movements will also be working on practical movement skills like balance, |
| 0:51.2 | fall-proof gait patterns, boosting the amount of play in your life, and how to make |
| 0:56.4 | the movements you need fit easily into the activities of daily living. I could go on and on about |
| 1:01.9 | the benefits of the content that we'll cover, but I know you want to get to this podcast episode, |
| 1:06.2 | so if you're keen to know more, go to nutritiousmovement.com and click on events. There you will find more |
| 1:12.9 | information. Retreats are different from vacations where you're looking to just get away. They are |
| 1:18.5 | time set aside from the regular grind and dedicated to practicing something that you don't |
| 1:23.3 | often have time to focus on in daily life. Movement retreats let you focus on building a toolkit |
| 1:29.0 | that will serve you again and again long after you've left the event. I hope you can join me. |
| 1:35.0 | We're going to have a blast. This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets |
| 1:43.8 | your everyday life. |
| 1:45.7 | I'm Katie Bowman, and I have bought multiple glucose monitors, and I can never get them to work. |
| 1:51.0 | And I'm Jeanette Lorham, biologist, movement teacher, and I have a little bit of a sweet tooth. |
| 1:58.0 | Everybody is welcome here. Let's get started. |
| 2:02.1 | All right, we're going to be talking about blood sugar today. |
| 2:05.4 | Right. |
... |
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