Regular exercise improves cardiometabolic health and reduces risk for chronic disease. Adaptations to exercise that persist without don't persist without a continued exercise stimulus (use it or lose it). The "trained" state is maintained only with regular applications of individual exercise bouts.  Each individual exercise bout is appropriately viewed as a drug, meaning; when taken at a sufficient dose, a bout of exercise has effects on metabolic health that peak at a specific timepoint and then diminish over time. requiring a subsequent "dose" to maintain the beneficial effects.

Viewed in this context, each individual dose of exercise is important.  Tailoring the intensity, duration, 

nutritional environment and interactions with other medications to achieve the maximal benefit will likely have 

the biggest impact on metabolic health.

To optimally use exercise to minimize insulin resistance and prevent/manage Type-2 diabetes, we hope to:

1.  Better understand the mechanism by which exercise benefits metabolic health

2.  Work out the dose-response relationship between the intensity/duration/frequency of exercise and the 

benefits to metabolic health

3.  Learn how exercise interacts with energy balance, dietary nutrients, and pharmacologic agents that also 

impact metabolic health.

Here is a recent talk NEACSM 2009.pdf that summarizes much of our work in the past 4 years.