DIABETES EXERCISE PROGRAMME
The Diabetes Exercise Programme at OraKinetics is a supervised exercise programme designed to provide comprehensive care to people who have diabetes.
When you have diabetes, regular exercise may help for a number of reasons:
Tone your muscles, and increase muscles sensitivity to insulin (reducing the need for insulin)
Use up energy and lower blood sugar (glucose) levels (improving your glucose control)
Help you maintain or achieve a healthy body weight
Help with the management of diabetic micro and macrovascular complications
Help to reduce your blood cholesterol levels and your blood pressure, which in turn lower your risk of heart disease
Improve the circulation of blood around the body, which reduces your risk of arterial disease
Help to reduce stress
Exercise released endorphin hormones that help you feel and sleep better
The goals of this programme are to:
Improve glucose control
Increase the functional exercise capacity of the patient
Provide safe individualised and supervised exercise programmes
Provide patient and family support, and develop basic knowledge of exercise for following programme completion
Promote positive lifestyle changes, including nutrition, weight loss, stress management and smoking cessation
Improve patient’s overall health
Eligible Candidates
Patients with any of the following conditions may be eligible for the programme:
Type I Diabetes
Type II Diabetes
Entry Criteria
A physician’s or Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) referral from Te Whatu Ora Te Pae Hauora o Ruahine o Tararua | Midcentral for admission to the Diabetes Exercise Programme. If certain entry criteria are met, the 10-week programme will be fully funded .
Diabetes Exercise Testing
All patients referred to the clinic will undergo exercise testing. This involves completion of health questionnaires, a submaximal cycle exercise test and other functional tests as required.
Exercise testing will also include monitoring of blood glucose and, in some cases, an ECG will be performed. The results obtained from the test will assist the Clinical Exercise Physiologist to design an individualised exercise programme according to the patient’s functional capability and health status.
Exercise Programme and
Monitored Exercise Sessions
Based on the results from the exercise testing, and presence of other health/musculoskeletal conditions, an individualised exercise programme will be developed.
Exercise sessions are held twice per week for the 10-week programme. Each session will generally include:
Flexibility, endurance and strength training
Continuous supervision and monitoring of exercise responses
Progression closely monitored and recorded
Patient and physician feedback provided after baseline testing and again after the 10-week re-testing
Patient Monitoring
Heart rate, blood pressure, SaO2, 30 second ECG and glucose levels will be checked before, during and after each exercise session. This ensures each patient is both safe to undertake their exercise programme and then they also recover as expected before leaving OraKinetics.