Exercise reduces risk for what 14 million have

Exercise might be just what you need if you wish to protect yourself from what approximately 14 million people living in the U.S. already have: Type 2 diabetes. Now, this number does not account for the people who have the disease but have yet to be diagnosed. And sadly, this figure continues to climb. That's why what follows is such very good news.

A new study from Johns Hopkins suggests that regular aerobic exercise and weightlifting may reduce levels of fat in the liver by as much as 40 percent. The role liver fat plays for people with type 2 is of particular importance, for it can contribute to heart attack risk when levels are high, which is oftentimes the case with people living with type 2.

For six months, one group of people with type 2 performed three 45-minute sessions of moderate aerobic exercise and three 20-minute sessions of weightlifting per week. The other group didn't perform any formal aerobic fitness or resistance training sessions.

MRI scans showed that people in the exercise group had lower levels of liver fat by the end of the study (5.6 percent) than those in the non-exercise group (8.5 percent). What's more, the exercise group also had better fitness and less body weight and fat than those in the non-exercise group.