Increasing number of steps per day lowers diabetes risk in women: Study

USA: A recent study in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism has revealed that greater time in any physical activity intensity is linked with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) regardless of sex, age, BMI or sedentary time.

According to the analysis of the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program data, wearable fitness devices offer new insights into the relationship between physical activity and type 2 diabetes. 

Type 2 diabetes is the most common disease, affecting 90% to 95% of people with diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the body is resistant to the action of insulin, meaning it cannot use insulin properly, so it cannot carry sugar into the cells. Type 2 diabetes most often develops in people over age 45, but more and more children, teens and young adults are being diagnosed.

"We investigated the relationship between physical activity and type 2 diabetes with an innovative approach using data from wearable devices linked to electronic health records in a real-world population," said Andrew S. Perry, M.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. "We found that people who spent more time in any physical activity had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Our data shows the importance of moving your body every day to lower your risk of diabetes."

The researchers analyzed Fitbit data and type 2 diabetes rates from 5,677 participants included in the NIH's All of Us Research Program between 2010-2021. All of Us is part of an effort to advance individualized health care by enrolling one million or more participants to contribute their health data over many years. About 75% of the participants that the researchers studied were female.

They found 97 new cases of diabetes over a follow-up of 4 years in the data set. People with an average daily step count of 10,700 were 44% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those with 6,000 steps.

Reference:

Andrew S Perry, Jeffrey S Annis, Hiral Master, Matthew Nayor, Andrew Hughes, Aymone Kouame, Karthik Natarajan, Kayla Marginean, Venkatesh Murthy, Dan M Roden, Paul A Harris, Ravi Shah, Evan L Brittain. Association of longitudinal activity measures and diabetes risk: an analysis from the NIH All of Us Research Program. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2022; DOI: 10.1210/clinem/dgac695