Why everyone, especially diabetics, should walk after dinner

If we want to control our blood sugar, prevent diabetes and obesity, digest our food more efficiently and sleep better, we’d do well to imitate the Italians.

It’s time to bring back the evening constitutional.

I was raised long before the age of the Internet and social media. After dinner in the spring and summer, it was pretty typical for us to take a stroll around the neighborhood instead of putting our noses down and reading our Facebook feed.

And most of the time, we’d meet our neighbors doing the same thing.

My mom used to tell us that an after-dinner walk was “good for our digestion.” Before she’d let us watch TV, she shooed us out the door.

Looks like mom was ahead of her time.

After-dinner walks control blood sugar

“Italians have been walking after meals for centuries,” says Loretta DiPietro, a professor of exercise science at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

There’s research that backs up the wisdom of this practice, particularly for diabetics.

In a study-co-authored by DiPietro, when people at risk for diabetes walked for just 15 minutes on a treadmill after dinner, it was more effective at preventing an after-meal “spike” in blood sugar than a single, longer walk of 45 minutes taken in the mid-morning or late afternoon.

Not hard to believe, when you consider how the human digestive system works.

Our digestive system changes food into glucose, one of the body’s main energy sources. After dinner, our glucose floods our bloodstream.

Insulin helps pull all that sugar into our cells for immediate use, or to be stored for later use. But if you have diabetes, insulin doesn’t do this job as well as it should, and too much glucose stays in the bloodstream.

This, of course, contributes to other health issues, including heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

After-dinner walks especially important for diabetics

As we get older, insulin’s response to a large meal tends to be weaker later in the day. So, eating a large dinner and then sitting in front of the TV or computer can cause high blood glucose levels that we take to bed with us.

This is especially harmful if you already have diabetes.

A 2016 study found that just ten minutes of after-meal walking helped control blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes.

“We saw the biggest differences with walking after dinner time,” compared to other times of the day, said Andrew Reynolds, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and co-author of the study.

“The muscles we use to walk use glucose for energy, drawing it out of circulation and therefore reducing how much is floating around,” Reynolds explains.

More health benefits of after-dinner walks

Besides controlling blood sugar, a post-dinner walk can impart other important health benefits:

Decreases muscle soreness. Walking after eating can help ease sore muscles from a heavy workout, or just from doing things like moving furniture around your house.

“’Motion is lotion’ for joints and muscle tissues,” says Dr. Adam Feit of Precision Nutrition, which trains nutrition coaches and works with individuals.

Post-meal walking circulates nutrients to your cells and helps remove waste products from your cells, promoting recovery.

Keeps weight under control.  “Casual or brisk walking after each meal is a great way of increasing your level of non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is the energy expended for everything we do that’s not sleeping, eating, or working out.”

In other words, after-dinner walks help your body expend caloric energy at a higher rate throughout the day.

Promotes better sleep. Walking stimulates the production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter needed to produce melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone that regulates our sleep-wake cycle.

I hope you agree that making short after-dinner walks a habit is a pretty painless way to keep your health on track!

Editor’s note: Most people with type 2 diabetes can reduce the severity of symptoms or even eliminate them altogether by making simple lifestyle changes, including natural solutions. You can find them in Forbidden Secrets From Nature’s Pharmacy to Reverse Diabetes and Blood Sugar Problems! For a preview, click here!

Sources:

1. The Case For Taking a Walk After You Eat — Time
2. Three 15-min Bouts of Moderate Postmeal Walking Significantly Improves 24-h Glycemic Control in Older People at Risk for Impaired Glucose Tolerance — Diabetes Care
3. Advice to walk after meals is more effective for lowering postprandial glycaemia in type 2 diabetes mellitus than advice that does not specify timing: a randomised crossover study — Diabetologia
4. Postprandial walking is better for lowering the glycemic effect of dinner than pre-dinner exercise in type 2 diabetic individuals — Journal of the American Medical Directors Association
5. Can walking generate serotonin? — Times of India Blog
6. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis — Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology