A new study concludes that higher intensity workouts might do a better job at decreasing blood sugar levels compared to lower intensity exercises.

Researchers recruited 300 abdominally obese adults in their 40s or 50s and who got little or no exercise to determine the separate effects of exercise amount and intensity on abdominal obesity and glucose tolerance, said the study.

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Researchers found that when they got middle-aged, obese adults regularly exercising, this helped them lose some weight and some inches from their waistlines. But it took higher intensity exercise to lower their blood sugar levels that might reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes over the long term.

Besides the benefits for blood sugar, the study participants that exercised at a higher intensity also saw a bigger improvement in their cardiovascular fitness, an important factor in the risk of dying from heart disease or stroke.

"The people in this study were middle-aged, sedentary and abdominally obese," said lead researcher Robert Ross, an exercise physiologist at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

"We didn't have them running. High-intensity just meant walking briskly on a treadmill," he said, adding this was very doable.

The study participants came to five supervised sessions a week, for six months. One group did a low amount of low-intensity activity or a half-hour of slow walking. The other group continued with the low-intensity regimen but for a longer period (an hour per session, on average).

Another group did higher-intensity exercise, in this case, faster-paced walking.

It turns out the fast walkers burned the same number of calories as their slower-paced peers who walked for an hour but did so in 40 minutes.

After six months, all three exercise groups  lost a small amount of weight and one or two inches from their waistlines, on average.

But only the high-intensity group showed an improvement in blood sugar levels.

The results indicate a clear benefit from higher intensity workouts for those that want to reduce glucose levels, said Ross.

Higher intensity can be achieved simply by walking at a brisker pace. Participants were surprised by how easy it was for them to attain a high intensity exercise level.