Résumé
Background: Type 2 Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic syndrome that leads to hyperglycemia and complications in many organ systems. There are many ways to control hyperglycemia including diet, exercise, drugs, and insulin. Aim of the study: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of diaphragmatic breathing exercises on blood sugar levels and to identify the effects of regular diaphragmatic breathing exercise on HbA1c. Subjects and Methods: The study design used was a randomized controlled trial. Random sampling technique was used. Data was collected from working female nurses of Services Hospital Lahore and Jinnah Hospital Lahore who had type-2 diabetes mellitus. By using Ballot method 64 subjects were selected and equally divided into 2 groups randomly (32 subjects were in an interventional group and 32 in the control group). Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Mean difference was measured by using independent sample t-test and paired t-test to see the pre and post effects of the same group. Results were summarized as mean and standard deviation. Results: The study results indicated that there was a significant reduction in fasting blood sugar level (p=0.009), post prandial blood sugar level (p=0.002) and post interventional blood sugar level (p=0.000) in the 9th week of the activity (breathing exercise). Pre and post the interventional mean difference in fasting blood sugar level was highly significant in the 12th week of intervention (p=0.000). No significant difference was found in the results of HbA1c (p=0.963). Conclusion: Diaphragmatic breathing exercise has favorable effects in controlling blood sugar levels among diabetes type-2 patients if it is combined with other exercises or therapies. Only breathing component cannot maintain the normal blood sugar level.
Résumé
Cadmium is a highly toxic metallic pollutant which adversely affects plant growth. A green house experiment was conducted to study the variation in growth, yield and proline content of four chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars namely ICC1069, ICC12422, ICC7589 and ICC4969 at two plant growth stages (30 and 60 days after sowing), treated with 0, 25, 50 and 100 mg Cd kg-1 soil. Plant growth, plant fresh weight, plant biomass, leaf area, total photosynthetic area, carbonic anhydrase activity, yield and proline content exhibited a dose- dependent response to Cd on four cultivars of Cicer arietinum L. The shoot and root length showed a reduction of 10.02, 10.63, 12.97, 7.93 and 4.95, 6.09, 7.85, 9.23% in all the four cultivars respectively, whereas shoot and root dry weight showed a reduction of 18.82, 27.61, 11.27, 44.59 and 10.63, 4.89, 3, 11.94% in all the cultivars respectively at 50 mg Cd kg-1 soil at 30 days of growth stage. It was a general observation from the results that all the parameters of plants were reduced in a concentration-duration dependent manner. However, the proline content of leaf is increased with the increase in Cd concentration. It showed an increase of 15.66, 17.5, 18.42 and 23.61% at 100 mg Cd kg-1 soil at 30 days of growth stage. Maximal significant reductions in the growth characteristics were observed with 100 mg Cd kg-1 soil in all the cultivars in both the samplings. Among cultivars, ICC1069 proved tolerant and showed lesser decrease in the growth characteristics, whereas ICC4969 proved as non-tolerant and showed maximum decrease in the growth characteristics.