A sweet tooth can cause you much more than just a sugar rush. It could make you pre-diabetic or even lead to the diagnosis of diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 18,000 young people have type 1 diabetes and more than 5,000 have type 2 diabetes. With the rise of café culture and binge eating, more and more adults are toying with the line of diabetes diagnosis and most of them are not even aware of the same.In a video going viral on social media, a person named Rahul Lalchandani who goes by the username, ‘therahulroutine’ shared how he reduced his HbA1x from 6.1 to 5.4 in 2018 with the help of some lifestyle changes whose first step was an easy-to-do exercise that could be done sitting anywhere.“At the age of 26, I did a random blood test and I found that I had elevated sugar levels. I made it a project to fix it,” began Lalchandani.He went on to share one hack that his nutritionist shared with him which was very easy to implement and is effective for anyone who is pre-diabetic or diabetic.“Most diabetologists will tell you to go for a walk after your meals to control your sugar spikes. I was in a very hectic job at that point and I told my doctor that I can’t go for a walk every time. She said just do this one exercise while you are sitting in the office,” he said.“She told me to take out 10 minutes to do calf raises while sitting in the office after my meals and it worked!”He added how he researched more about the effectiveness of calf exercises in tackling diabetes. “It turns out doing calf raises activates the soleus muscles in the calves which can lower the sugar up to 52%,” he explained.
Are calf exercises really effective in lowering sugar spikes?
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As per a study published in the National Library of Medicine, which was also cited in the viral video, the soleus muscle in the calves is capable of raising and sustaining for hours the local rate of oxidative metabolism to high levels. Thus, it improves systemic metabolic regulation and glucose regulation.Another study published in ScienceDirect stated that doing simple resistance activities such as calf raises for 3 minutes, every 30 minutes over 8 hours decreased postprandial glucose increase.What engaging the soleus muscles does is it makes the cells more responsive to insulin and improves glucose uptake. Their movement also ensures the flow of glucose and oxygen throughout the body, thus promoting better blood sugar regulation.Thus, calf raises can be one of the efforts you need to take to control your post-meal sugar spikes.
Social media reactions
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Many people in the comments agreed with the man’s advice adding how diabetic people they know follow and do the exercise.“Yes it works like amazing I had gestational diabetes at that time if I just had a little meal then the sugar levels spikes like any thing then I found this exercise and then my sugar levels came to normal” wrote a person on Instagram.“I am highly diabetic. Thanks Rahul for sharing this. I have no time to resume running or walking, but can try this..” wrote another.“My father does this 😍😍. But i never knew it was for this reason” added another user.
