Effects of Eating While Walking on Blood Glucose Concentrations

Majid Syed-Abdul,Dhwani Soni,Xin Liu,Jason Wagganer

doi:10.3390/endocrines1010002

Majid Syed-Abdul, Dhwani Soni + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/endocrines1010002

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Journal: Endocrines	Publication Date: Mar 10, 2020
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Southeast Missouri State University

Abstract

Eating while walking is a commonly growing practice in the United States, in part due to an increase in the number of convenient dietary products (i.e., snack bars, shakes, drinks, etc.). Although eating while walking has been shown to increase total food consumption and weight gain, the acute effects of eating while walking on blood glucose (BG) concentrations are still unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of eating while walking on BG. Twenty-two apparently healthy, male, physically active (PA, n = 10) and sedentary (Sed, n = 12) individuals volunteered for this study. Participants randomly performed the control [sit+snack (SS)] and experimental [walk+snack (WS)] protocol, with one week between protocols. Both protocols showed a significant increase in post-BG concentrations [SS (p < 0.001); WS (p < 0.01)], but post-BG concentrations for WS were significantly lower (p < 0.001) than SS. During SS, significantly higher post-BG concentrations were exhibited for the PA (p < 0.05) and Sed (p < 0.01) groups, whereas the WS protocol post-BG concentrations were significantly increased for the Sed group (p < 0.01). Lastly, individuals who exercised more and had a lower body mass index (BMI) were significantly correlated to lower BG concentrations in response to the 47 g carbohydrate (CHO) snack. However, these data are preliminary and may need further investigation.

Highlights

Eating while walking has become a common practice in the United States and in other parts of the world, especially among younger adults
The aforementioned studies failed to assess the effects of eating while walking on post-exercise blood glucose (BG) concentrations in college-aged sedentary individuals
WS Protocolyoung male, apparently healthy, sedentary Division I University students voluntarily participated in the study

Summary

Introduction

Eating while walking has become a common practice in the United States and in other parts of the world, especially among younger adults This is in part due to an increase in the number of commercially available convenient dietary products like snack bars, shakes, and other food products that are “to go” or “grab and go” [1,2,3]. When physical activity, either moderate [9,10] or vigorous-intensity [11,12], is performed before [11,13,14,15,16,17] or after [11,13] meals, BG concentrations can be significantly reduced by 17–26% [7,8,9,11,13,18] This effect is most likely due to an increase in exercise-induced uptake of BG by skeletal muscles. The aforementioned studies failed to assess the effects of eating while walking on post-exercise BG concentrations in college-aged sedentary individuals

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