Worried about your blood sugar? Four minutes of this exercise can help

A single minute of exercise could be enough to help people with Type 2 diabetes stabilise their blood sugar, according to an inspiring new study of “exercise snacks”.

In the study, men and women with Type 2 diabetes completed four, 60-second bursts of exertion - called “exercise snacks” – during the day while at work or home and improved many aspects of their blood sugar control.

The study, which was published in April in Diabetologia, is one of the first to study exercise snacks in a real-world setting, instead of a university physiology lab, says Jonathan Little, a professor of health and exercise science at the University of British Columbia in Okanagan and the study’s senior author.

The researchers also looked at an unusually small serving of exercise, only four minutes in total, spread throughout the day. But the impacts still managed to “be meaningful” for people’s health, Little says.

“I think this study extends our understanding on the effect and application of exercise snacks in workplace settings,” says Kathryn Weston, a senior lecturer in physical activity at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. She studies exercise snacks but wasn’t involved with the new study.

“Exercise snacks are a worthwhile, simple and generally accessible way of building short bouts of exercise” into our daily lives, she continues.

“It’s important to remember that every minute of exercise counts.”

Many Australian adults don’t exercise much. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2022, 37 per cent of adults aged 18 to 64 did not meet the physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity across five or more days a week.

We also sit for long hours, studies show: many adults spend eight or more hours chair-bound every day.

Both too little exercise and too much sedentary time are bad for us, separately and in combination. Even active people who meet the exercise guidelines but then sit for eight to 10 hours a day are at heightened risk for metabolic problems, including poor blood sugar control.

Exercise snacks are a fun-size potential solution to both too little exercise and too much sitting, Little says, requiring a surprisingly small time commitment and no changes of clothing or visits to the gym.

“Many people continue to cite a perceived lack of time as a major barrier” to getting exercise, says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and co-author of the new study.

That’s not an issue with exercise snacks, he adds. By definition, they consist of simp