Research
Hormonal
Exercise improves insulin sensitivity and reduces diabetes risk by enhancing microvascular endothelial function and capillary recruitment, independent of weight loss.
Start exercising regularly to improve your body's ability to use insulin. You don't need to lose weight for this to work; the exercise itself improves blood flow to your muscles, helping insulin get where it needs to go. This is the first recommended step for managing or preventing type 2 diabetes.
ModerateSupportsHIGH confidence
Exercise-mediated improvements in endothelial function may also reduce complications associated with both diabetes and other metabolic disease. Thus, while drugs to improve microvascular function in diabetes continue to be investigated, exercise can also provide many similar benefits on endothelial function and should remain the first prescription when treating insulin resistance and diabetes.
Why this rating
The paper is a review article summarizing various studies, not a primary clinical trial itself.
Source
Treating Diabetes with Exercise – Focus on the Microvasculature
Cathryn M. Kolka · Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism · 2013
DOI 10.4172/2155-6156.1000308
narrative_reviewCited 6×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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