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 Exercising in the heat may get harder with age because older adults
don't sweat as easily to help reduce body temperature. This risk may
be even greater when people have diabetes because of diminished
blood flow in the skin and reduced ability to get rid of excess heat
by sweating, researchers note in JAMA.
One of the two studies published in the journal confirms that
physically active people with diabetes sweat less, reach a higher
body temperature and raise their heart rate more when exercising in
the heat than counterparts without diabetes. But this study also
found that one week of supervised exercise training in the heat
could help diabetics sweat more and maintain a lower body
temperature and heart rate.
"These findings are important because exercise is widely used to
manage type 2 diabetes, and because there are many workers who have
type 2 diabetes and are engaged in physically demanding jobs in hot
environments," said Glen Kenny, senior author of the study and a
researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada.
This study tested an exercise training program in 34 middle-aged and
older men who typically got at least 150 minutes of moderate
intensity physical activity a week, half of whom had diabetes. All
of the participants completed exercise tests with three 30-minute
bouts of cycling at increasing temperatures, once at the start of
the study and again about a week later.
After the first exercise test, 10 men with diabetes and 8 men
without the disease participated in a week-long exercise program to
help them acclimate to exertion in the heat, doing 90 minutes of
cycling a day in conditions similar to the exercise test.
In the second set of tests, people with diabetes who did the
exercise training program improved their ability to shed body heat
more than those without diabetes.
These results suggest that diabetics who are already physically
active may benefit from doing a similar week-long program to prepare
for workouts during the hot summer months, Kenny said by email. Even
regular exercisers still need to be careful, however.
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"Our study findings indicate that caution should be used when
performing strenuous exercise especially in the heat," Kenny said.
"Individuals should consider exercising indoors in a cool and or dry
and well-ventilated environment if it is hot outdoors," Kenny added.
"When performing activities outdoors in the heat, try to limit the
activities to the early or later hours of the day when temperatures
are at their lowest."
A separate study in JAMA offered another strategy to help diabetics
manage exercise in the heat. This study found that wetting the skin
with a cool sponge on the chest, arms, back, legs, and face may help
reduce sweating and thermal discomfort during workouts in the heat.
Researchers tested three different cooling strategies for workouts
in the heat: drinking cold water; soaking the feet and lower legs in
cold water; and sponging cold water on the body. They tested these
approaches in both humid and arid conditions in a group of young,
healthy volunteers.
Soaking the feet lowered sweating and thermal discomfort only in
hot, humid conditions; sponging cold water on the body reduced heart
rate, sweating and thermal discomfort in both humid and dry
conditions.
"Applying water to the skin enables it to evaporate, which takes
with it quite a lot of thermal energy from the body," said Ollie
Jay, senior author of the study and director of the Thermal
Ergonomics Laboratory at the University of Sydney in Australia.
"This is usually the job that sweating does, but this carries a
physiological strain" that can lead to elevated heart rate, Jay said
by email. "We also found that applying water to the skin also makes
you feel cooler."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2IveeWI and https://bit.ly/2LXW2ah JAMA,
online October 8, 2019.
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