Lifting weights not only increases muscle mass, but also helps lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, according to a new study Counsel and Heal reported.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Southern Denmark found that three and a half hours of weight training exercises each week could dramatically decrease in type 2 diabetes.

"The findings from our study...suggest that incorporating muscle-strengthening and conditioning activities with aerobic activity according to the current recommendation for physical activity provides substantial benefit for [diabetes] prevention in women," researchers said in a news release.

For the study, researchers followed 99,316 middle-aged and older women for eight years who did not have diabetes at the start of the study. They determined whether the participants' weekly time spent performing resistance exercise, lower intensity muscular conditioning exercises, such as yoga, and aerobic moderate and vigorous physical activity was associated with a reduced risk of new onset of diabetes.

By the end of the study, 3,491 women who showed no signs of diabetes or cardiovascular risk at its beginning had developed the disease.

Based on their findings, researchers concluded that women who engaged in at least 150 minutes of aerobic activity and at least 60 minutes of muscle-strengthening activities per week substantially reduced their risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with inactive women. They cut their risk of developing diabetes upward 40 percent, Counsel and Heal reported.

Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, develops when the insulin-producing cells in the body are unable to produce enough insulin, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly. It is characterized by high sugar levels in the blood.