Heterogeneous responses of personalised high intensity interval training on type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease risk in young healthy adults

Abstract

Hypertension, decreased glucose tolerance, adverse lipid profiles and low physical activity levels are associated with increased type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. High intensity interval training (HIIT), a low volume, reduced time, high intensity programme, may be a useful alternative to current government guidelines which specify a minimum of 150 minutes of physical activity per week. We describe a personalised programme of high intensity exercise which provides significant improvements in CVD risk markers. Healthy volunteers undertook 6 weeks of HIIT. T2DM and CVD risk predictors including glucose tolerance, VO2max, blood pressure (BP), and lipids were measured before and after HIIT. HIIT training was associated with beneficial changes in a range of predictors of blood flow and cardiovascular risk. There was a heterogeneous response to HIIT, with some subjects responding with favourable changes and others being non-responders to HIIT. In responders, HIIT was associated with a statistically significant (p = 0.023) increase in VO2max, from 45.4 (38.4,52.5) to 56.9 (51.2,65.7) (median (interquartile range)(ml/min/kg)). In responders HIIT resulted in a decrease in systolic BP from 127 (126,129) to 116 (106,122) (mmHg) with p = 0.026 and a decrease is diastolic blood pressure from 72 (69,74) to 57 (56,66) with p = 0.026. There was also some evidence of a beneficial change in blood lipid and glucose concentrations with HIIT. In conclusion, personalised HIIT has potential as an intervention to improve blood flow and cardiovascular health.

Effects of 6-Weeks High-Intensity Interval Training in Schoolchildren with Insulin Resistance: Influence of Biological Maturation on Metabolic, Body Composition, Cardiovascular and Performance Non-responses

“…Similarly, a NRs prevalence in decreased systolic BP of 12.2% was reported after endurance training (30–50 min/session, 3 days/week, 55–75% Vo 2 max, 20 weeks) in a study assessing a wide sample of subjects (Bouchard et al, 2012). Other HIIT-based studies in adults have reported a NRs prevalence in terms of decreased diastolic BP of 61.5%, and our study is in accordance with this finding, reporting a value of 58.8% (Higgins et al, 2015). …”

Prevalence of Non-responders for Glucose Control Markers after 10 Weeks of High-Intensity Interval Training in Adult Women with Higher and Lower Insulin Resistance

“…Evidence has shown the benefit in terms of decreased systolic blood pressure after HIIT interventions (Ciolac, 2012); however, in this non-hypertensive cohort, we did not observe significant training-induced changes in systolic or diastolic blood pressure (Table 2). In other studies, there was an ~60% NRs prevalence for decreased systolic or diastolic blood pressure after 6 weeks (Higgins et al, 2015) or 6 months (Moker et al, 2014) of HIIT. Interestingly, a study that explored the magnitude of the changes in blood pressure after an acute exercise session reported that this response can be used as a predictive factor for decreases in blood pressure after long-term exercise training (Hecksteden et al, 2013a).…”

“…There is limited evidence about interindividual variability in exercise training with regard to the NRs prevalence in subjects with low glucose control, and there are several methodological differences in studies comparing the NRs prevalences observed in previous studies (Boulé et al, 2005; Gremeaux et al, 2012; Yates et al, 2013; Moker et al, 2014; Winett et al, 2014; Higgins et al, 2015). For example, for glucose control variables, several authors have observed that after 3 months of strength training (2 days/week, 2 strength exercises at maximal effort), the NRs prevalence for improvements in an OGTT in pre-diabetic patients was 44%.…”

Ejercicio físico en pacientes con diabetes e hipertensión: prevalencia de respondedores y no respondedores para mejorar factores de riesgo cardiometabólicos

“…Posterior a un programa de HIIT (6 semanas), Higgins y cols. 35 reportaron una prevalencia de NRs de un artículo de investigacióñ 60% para reducir la PAS y PAD. Bouchard y cols.…”