The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes

Good news for gamers and other fans of indoorsy exercise: a learn about of younger adults with type 1 diabetes found that vivacious video games confer similar cardiovascular benefits to running, and are more fun to boot.

It’s fair to say that video games are not usually associated with good health outcomes. Too much sitting is a hazard for type 2 diabetes, among other negative health conditions, and while gaming may be marginally less passive than watching television, studies are not optimistic about its effect on physical health.

Active video games, however, are another story entirely, because they need players to get up off the couch and move their bodies.

The new study was published in late September in the journal Games for Health. Researchers from Brazil and England asked ten volunteers (average age: 24.9) to participate in 30-minute gaming, jogging, and sitting sessions.

The participants played Kinect Adventures!, a sports adventure game for Xbox 360 that utilizes a motion-sensing camera and requires full-body movement. Researchers instructed the brave volunteers to play 10 minutes each of the three most intense Kinect Adventures! mini-games, which required them to jump, squat, lean, and swat their way to success. For comparison, the participants also went for 30-minute treadmill runs of “moderate” intensity.

The authors found that both the treadmill and Xbox sessions resulted in broadly similar cardiovascular and metabolic effects, both during exercise and after it. Researchers tracked heart tempo and blood pressure, in addition to several less familiar measures of heart health, such as vessel diameter and endothelial function.

As for enjoyment? It’s hardly surprising that participants found that a video game was more fun than running on a treadmill.  At least running was more fun than the control session: 30 minutes of sitting still.

Although the study was not designed to focus on blood sugar control, the data that it did generate was encouraging. The young adults volunteering for the study had an average A1C of 8.6%, significantly above international blood sugar targets. During the control session, blood sugar hovered around 230 mg/dL, but both the exercise and video game sessions drove glucose levels down below 180 mg/dL, into the healthy range. The result shouldn’t be a surprise: for most women and men with diabetes, cardiovascular exercise reduces blood sugar levels.

The experiment adds to a wealth of knowledge validating active video games as exercise options. Several studies have already shown that active video games can produce the same beneficial metabolic results as traditional exercise, and a previous study by some of the same researchers found that they can lead to blood glucose improvements in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Experts almost universally see exercise as a major priority for patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and related cardiovascular issues, such as stroke; heart ailment is the leading cause of death in people with diabetes. While the health benefits of exercise are no secret, many people of all ages struggle to reach recommended amounts, a fact which has experts looking for other ways to engage diabetes patients in healthful physical activity. Active video games may be a fun and healthful option for patients that don’t relish pulling on their running shoes.

Diabetes Daily

The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes