Research

Hormonal

Cardiac autonomic neuropathy and altered autonomic tone contribute to impaired heart rate adjustment and reduced exercise tolerance in T2DM.

Your nervous system's control over your heart rate may be impaired, leading to slower heart rate adjustments during exercise. This is more common in those with longer disease duration or poor blood sugar control. Monitoring heart rate during exercise can be helpful.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
A reduced sympathetic innervation of the heart, as observed in diabetic cardiac autonomic neuropathy [80], can reduce the response of the heart to the sympathetic stimuli and thus lead to several resting and exercising anomalies in heart rhythm, heart rate adjustments, and exercising cardiac output adjustments [14], possibly negatively impacting on VO2peak and O2 kinetics.
Lorenzo Nesti et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2020

Why this rating

Evidence is mixed; some studies show heart rate abnormalities, while others in well-controlled, young T2DM subjects do not.

Source

Type 2 diabetes and reduced exercise tolerance: a review of the literature through an integrated physiology approach

Lorenzo Nesti et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2020

DOI 10.1186/s12933-020-01109-1

narrative_reviewCited 141×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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