Timing exercise according to a person’s natural propensity towards being a “morning lark” or an “night owl” could maximize its cardiovascular benefits, a randomized trial suggests.
Matching exercise according to individual body clocks maximized the sleep quality and several parameters of cardiovascular health of middle-aged adults with preclinical risk factors.
The findings highlight the added value of incorporating circadian biology into exercise plans to optimize health outcomes.
Reporting their findings in Open Heart, the researchers suggest that assessing for chronotype—the predisposition towards morningness or eveningness—should be considered when prescribing exercise for those at risk of cardiometabolic disease.
“Our study shows that when you exercise may be just as important as how you exercise,” researcher Arsalan Tariq, PhD, from the University of Lahore, explained to Inside Precision Medicine.
“Aligning workouts with an individual’s biological clock significantly amplifies cardiovascular and metabolic benefits, offering a simple way to personalize prevention and improve adherence.”
A person’s chronotype affects their sleeping patterns, hormonal secretion, and energy levels during the day through an internal timing mechanism.
This is regulated by the circadian clock in a system that influences various physiological processes including blood pressure, heart rate, glucose metabolism, and vascular function.
Tariq and team examined how timing exercise affected key indicators of cardiovascular health among at-risk middle-aged adults.
Participants were aged 40 to 60 years and had at least one cardiovascular risk factor, such as high blood pressure, overweight, or obesity. The group also included those with a family history of premature cardiovascular disease.
Participants were randomly assigned to exercise at a time that either matched or did not match their chronotype, between 8am and 11am or between 6pm and 9pm.
This consisted of five, 40-minute sessions per week of supervised moderate intensity aerobic exercise such as brisk or treadmill walking for 12 weeks.
Of the 134 participants who completed the 60 sessions, 70 were larks—34 of whom had exercise matched with chronotype—and 64 were owls, with 30 matched to chronotype.
Measurements taken at the start of the trial and three days after it finished showed particular improvements in sleep and systolic blood pressure among those matched with chronotype.
Sleep quality improved by 3.4 points in matched participants versus 1.2 in the unmatched on the Pittsburgh Sleep quality Index. Systolic blood pressure dropped by 10.8 mmHg compared with 5.5mmHg in matched versus unmatched groups, respectively.
Chronotype-aligned exercise also led to significantly greater improvements in diastolic blood pressure, heart rate variability, peak oxygen consumption, low-density lipoprotein, and fasting glucose compared with misaligned exercise.
“Personalized, time-matched exercise interventions may become a practical strategy in clinical and public health settings, potentially leading to better outcomes and improved engagement,” the researchers reported.
“Future research and guidelines may consider circadian factors as a core component of lifestyle-based disease prevention.”
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