How One Woman Added Even More Exercise After a Diabetes Diagnosis

Exercise is a tool you can use almost like a diabetes drug: It can control blood sugar, lower blood pressure, make you feel better, give you more energy, and help you lose weight.

Carol Mullen, 63, of Sandia Park, N.M., considers herself a diabetes anomaly. She had never been overweight, ate moderately, walked four miles a day and had no family history of type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes two years ago during a routine physical.

"I didn't know I had anything wrong with me," she says. "I was always thirsty and growing tired, but at that point I had just turned 60 and thought that was what it was."

How Carol increased exercise
After the shock wore off, she took her doctor's recommendations to heart and bumped up her exercise regimen to include walking a couple of miles with her dogs and 50-minute workouts at a Curves gym five to six days a week. She also began taking the oral diabetes drug metformin.

A lot of women at the gym visited with each other, Mullen says, but she tried to avoid the distractions of socializing. She alternated aerobics and resistance training and did calisthenics, push-ups, sit-ups, and crunches.