People between ages 55 and 75 with prediabetes who exercised in resistance training regimes, along with aerobic routines, lowered their type 2 diabetes risk by 74 percent compared to a control group. Photo by Tesa Photography/Pixabay

March 6 (UPI) -- When it comes to cutting diabetes risk, the type of exercise a person engages in can matter, a new study says.

People between ages 55 and 75 with prediabetes who exercised in resistance training regimes, along with aerobic routines, lowered their type 2 diabetes risk by 74 percent compared to a control group, according to a study published in February in Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews. They worked out for 60 minutes a day on three non-consecutive day a week for 24 months.


Those results are compared to a 65 percent decrease for people who only did aerobic workouts and 72 percent of people who only did resistance workouts.

"This study showed that resistance training and resistance training plus aerobic training were as effective as isolated aerobic training in preventing overt type 2 diabetes in patients with prediabetes," the authors wrote.

After the study, the overall incidences of type 2 diabetes fell by 21 percent in the group that did combination training, by 26 percent in the aerobic-only group and, and 22 percent in the resistance-only group.

About 30 million people have type 2 diabetes, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Other studies back up the claim that exercise can cut the risk for people with type 2 diabetes.

"We showed that RT is a viable option for patients seeking to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes," the authors wrote. "This finding further expands established paradigms of lifestyle change for preventing type 2 diabetes and can inform clinician-patient discussions about delaying disease onset."