The intention

Obese patients with advanced type diabetes 2 can have significant health benefits (improved condition, decrease in cardiovascular risk factors, improve sugar levels) achieve by following an exercise program in addition to the regular diet program.

The approach

The goal was 80 recruit diabetes patients for a study into the effectiveness of this program.

The result

However, after intensive recruitment campaigns, only 33 patients are motivated to participate in the study, despite considerable efforts. Of this 33 participants have only 12 (36%) participants followed the training program to the end.

The lessons

Diabetes patients are difficult to motivate to participate in an exercise program and to maintain it. This was certainly not unexpected. Obvious explanations are lack of time, limitations in transport and exercise-related complaints. However, the completed questionnaire showed that the participating patients had high depression scores, appropriate for moderate to severe depression. This sheds a completely different light on the well-known motivation and compliance issues. The lesson we can learn is that motivation and compliance problems are likely (at least partly) are depression-related problems and therefore require a very different approach than previously thought.

Author: Robert Rozenberg, sports doctor & Stephan Praet, sports doctor and sports scientist

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