OBJECTIVE: To summarize the research advances of exercise therapy for type 2 diabetes in recently. DATA SOURCES: An online search of American Diabetes Association (http://www.diabetes.org/home.jsp) was undertaken to identify the relevant English articles dated from 2005 to 2007 by using the keywords of "type 2 diabetes, exercise therapy". Meanwhile, the China Journal Full-text Database was searched for the related Chinese articles published from January 2001 to December 2006 with the same keywords in Chinese. Then the relevant monograph from January 1995 to December 2006 was manually searched. STUDY SELECTION: The articles about the exercise therapy for type 2 diabetes were selected according to the inclusive criteria: (1) randomized controlled trials; (2) experiments including control group that is the diet control plus medication group; (3) the experimental group was given exercise therapy based on the diet control and medication. The repetitive paper and review articles were excluded. DATA EXTRACTION: Among the 130 articles collected from the above-mentioned databases, 30 papers were included, and 5 repetitive and 2 Meta-analysis ones were excluded. DATA SYNTHESIS: (1) Moderate aerobic endurance exercise can accommodate the glucose metabolism and decrease the blood glucose, enhance insulin sensitivity, delay the emergence and development of diabetic complications, control the obesity and depress the blood lipid, and improve the body fitness. (2) Exercise therapy is suitable for the patients with impaired glucose tolerance and well controlled blood glucose as well as patients without severe complications; Physical examination is necessary before exercise therapy to make sure whether the exercise therapy could be carried out or not. (3) The exercise event varies with the disease situation: mild cases could do exercise of higher intensity, and the severe cases should do the lower intensity exercise; the suitable time is 60 to 90 minutes after meal. Warming-up and -down exercise are necessary before and after the exercise. The principle of the exercise therapy is step-by-step. CONCLUSION: Exercise therapy is an effective method in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and could prevent and control the occurrence and development of type 2 diabetes; therefore, it should be paid more attention and used widely in clinical practice.

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