What are the Benefits of Yoga for Diabetes Patients?

Yoga for diabetes can often be overlooked as a useful tool to manage the condition. Yoga is not only a form of exercise that can be used for weight management and for preventing prediabetes, it also can be used for promoting healthy insulin sensitivity. Yoga can decrease blood sugar levels by lowering stress levels. Using yoga for diabetes is helpful in lowering overall body weight, which also helps make cells sensitive to insulin.

Yoga exercises can lower stress levels in the body through stretching and breathing exercises. Glucagon, a hormone that raises blood sugar levels, is secreted at times of stress. When chronic stress levels are elevated in the body, so is blood sugar. Elevated blood sugar levels can decrease insulin sensitivity and hinder the ability of the body to utilize glucose efficiently for energy. Yoga for diabetes can effectively lower glucagon levels, and thus blood sugar levels, by lowering stress.

Yoga exercises also help with weight management, and yoga for obesity and weight loss can be very helpful in controlling blood sugar. Being overweight is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Overeating and under-exercising also increases the risk for prediabetes and full-blown diabetes later on in life. Yoga can decrease weight and increase insulin sensitivity through physical movement.

Yoga can be a very useful diabetes exercise, because when weight is lowered, blood sugar levels and insulin levels also are lowered. The body's cells can respond to insulin after a meal better when one uses yoga for diabetes. Any physical exercise will do, but yoga seems to be a gentler form of exercise that helps promote weight loss and healthy blood sugar metabolism.

Having excess weight around the abdominal area increases the risk of developing diabetes. Yoga can help strengthen the abdominal area through certain movements and postures as well as tone muscles of the arms and legs. Research has shown that practicing yoga can decrease the risk for gaining weight in the middle of the body, which is associated with developing diabetes.

Yoga for diabetes is very useful for controlling weight, which also helps keep down risk factors for developing diabetes. Weight loss also helps the cells of the body become more sensitive to insulin, which is important for patients who have type 2 diabetes. Yoga is also a known tool that can help lower stress, which in turn helps lower blood sugar levels. Physical movement through yoga can be seen as a positive and healthy supplemental approach to a diabetes management program.