Most people believe that preventing type 2 diabetes is mainly about losing weight.
While maintaining a healthy weight is important, new research suggests there is another factor that deserves equal attention: healthy muscles.
Scientists now say that people can have a much higher risk of diabetes if they lose muscle while carrying excess body fat.
Researchers from Curtin University led a large international study involving nearly 480,000 adults who were free of diabetes when the research began.
Participants were followed for 14 years, making it one of the largest and longest studies to investigate how body composition influences diabetes risk. The results were published in Diabetes Care.
Instead of looking only at body weight, the researchers examined both body fat and muscle health. They focused on sarcopenic obesity, a condition in which a person has too much body fat together with low muscle mass and reduced muscle strength.
Their findings showed that this combination dramatically increased diabetes risk. People with sarcopenic obesity were over three-and-a-half times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people with healthy body composition. They also faced a substantially greater risk than people who had obesity alone or muscle loss alone.
Around 15 percent of people with sarcopenic obesity developed diabetes within ten years. This compared with roughly 11 percent among people with obesity alone and only about 3 percent among those without obesity or reduced muscle mass.
The study also found that the relationship was particularly strong among women and adults under 60 years of age, suggesting muscle health may be especially important earlier in adulthood.
Muscles are one of the body’s largest users of glucose. Every time people walk, climb stairs, garden, or perform strength exercises, their muscles absorb glucose from the bloodstream for energy. Active muscles also improve insulin sensitivity, helping the body control blood sugar more effectively. When muscle mass declines, the body becomes less efficient at handling glucose, increasing the likelihood of developing diabetes.
The researchers believe doctors should consider evaluating muscle health during routine diabetes risk assessments. Simple tests of muscle strength, combined with measurements of body fat, could identify people who may otherwise appear to have only moderate risk.
The findings also reinforce the importance of regular physical activity. Resistance training, weight-bearing exercise, adequate protein intake, and reducing long periods of inactivity all help preserve muscle as people age. These habits not only improve mobility and independence but may also lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that eating more eggs is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and how to eat to reduce heart disease death risk if you have diabetes.
For more health information, please see recent studies about high-protein diets linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by one-third.
