Lifestyle intervention without exercise

Normally I can scan a study and know that I don't want to read it, but this one did get my attention – in the wrong way. I felt like so many studies echo this one and are crying out for comment.

This is a study that is questionable, but the biggest key – exercise – is sadly not part of the study. Lifestyle intervention seems to be the procedure of choice for more studies. Medications seems to be the first choice. The second choice seems to be lifestyle (or dietary) intervention. Many or I should say the majority studies never mention exercise.

It seems that exercise should be the first choice, nutrition the second choice, and medications the third choice. Now granted, when first diagnosed, medications need to be the choice to bring blood glucose under tight control. Then depending on the persons health, exercise and nutrition should be started also.

Am I upset, to say the least, I am more surprised at the attitude of many researchers that totally ignore exercise or don't include this in the analysis of their studies. It is just like this does not exist and surely some people do some exercise while involved in studies unless exercise is not permitted in the studies.

This study took 93 participants who had been optimized for drug treatment and an A1c of 7.0 or greater. They also must have two of the three following conditions, be overweight or obese, have hypertension, or abnormal concentrations of lipids.

Then the researchers gave individualized the dietary instructions to optimize the intervention for part of the group and the rest were the control group. This is based on the nutritional recommendations of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. The study was for six months and participants were to continue all medical tests and treatments as usual.

At the conclusion the intervention group had declined from a mean of 8.9% to 8.4% and the control group remained unchanged at 8.6%. I will say no more other than ask if this in intervention? You may read what is written in Diabetes in Control for yourself.