A 2026 study of nearly 88,000 adults found that regular exercise may reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes at any age.
Researchers from the Netherlands’ Leiden University Medical Center studied 87,975 people from the UK Biobank who did not have diabetes when the study began. The participants wore wrist devices for seven days to measure how much physical activity they did. Their health was then monitored for an average of 7.7 years. During that time, 2,140 people developed type 2 diabetes.
Among people younger than 63, those who were less active had more than twice the relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with those who were highly active.
The less-active group did an average of 121 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week. This was below the recommended minimum of 150 minutes a week. In comparison, the more-active group exercised for an average of 409 minutes per week.
The researchers also looked at people aged 63 and older. In this group, those who were less active had a 65% higher relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
However, older adults generally have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes to begin with. Because of this, even a small increase in physical activity could lead to a greater reduction in the actual number of diabetes cases among older adults compared with younger people.
The study also examined whether the time of day people exercised made a difference. Physical activity between 1 pm and midnight was linked to a 10% lower relative risk of type 2 diabetes compared with exercise in the morning. However, the researchers did not find clear evidence that exercise timing changed the results for different age groups.
The researchers cautioned that the study was observational, which means that it found a link between physical activity and diabetes risk but could not prove that exercise directly prevented the disease.
Previous research has shown that even just a few minutes of exercise can make a positive difference – at least for people who are otherwise physically inactive.
Writing in the British Medical Journal in 2025, an international team researching what are known as “exercise snacks” reported that these periods of moderate or vigorous exercise lasting no more than five minutes led to measurable health benefits.