With losing weight proving necessary to improve overall health if you are overweight or obese, exercising is considered absolutely crucial. The Express reports that researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark believe they have discovered the best time to exercise to achieve weight loss.
The team found that the relevant biological processes depend on the circadian rhythms of the cells. Specifically, a late morning workout was shown to burn more calories.
The research, which was published in PNAS journal, featured the comparison of the results of morning workouts with that of the evening. At two different points in the day, experts set mice on a high-intensity workout before studying their adipose tissue (body fat) and looking at which genes were active at these times.
Those involved with boosting the metabolism were found to be more abundant in the morning slot regardless of how much food they ate, with the genes breaking down fat by producing heat and mitochondria in the adipose tissue.
In a media release, Professor Juleen R Zierath from the Karolinska Institutet, said: ”Our results suggest that late morning exercise could be more effective than late evening exercise in terms of boosting the metabolism and the burning of fat, and if this is the case, they could prove of value to people who are overweight.”
Due to their similar basic physiological functions with humans and being a well-established model for human physiology and metabolism, mice were used in the trial. However there are also salient differences, including the fact that mice are nocturnal.
“The right timing seems to be important to the body’s energy balance and to improving the health benefits of exercise, but more studies are needed to draw any reliable conclusions about the relevance of our findings to humans,” Ms Zierath added.
The findings following a recent study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology in November 2022, which found that exercising between 8am and 11am was linked to the lowest risk of heart disease and stroke. Study author Gali Albalak, from the Leiden University Medical Centre, said: “Our findings add to the evidence on the health benefits of being physically active by suggesting that morning activity, and especially late morning, may be the most advantageous.”
British Journal of Sports Medicine found in their own research that older people that workout in the morning have better cognitive performance later in the day.
Lead author Michael Wheeler, from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, commented: “This study highlights how relatively simple changes to your daily routine could have a significant benefit to your cognitive health. It also reveals that one day we may be able to do specific types of exercise to enhance specific cognitive skills such as memory or learning.”
