We have been debating for a long time about what is the best time of day to exercise efficiently, and the question we can ask ourselves is whether it is better to get up early and go for a run with the first rays of the sun or if it is better to take advantage of the end of the day to release accumulated stress. And here science has seen that it depends more on our genetics than we think.
A revolutionary essay. This is where the era of “chronoexercise” begins, which is a discipline that does not focus on how much we train, but on how much we do in relation to whether we are ‘morning or afternoon people’. And here is a recent study published in Open Heart It has given us a lot of information about what chronobiology had been pursuing for some time.
To determine this, researchers at the University of Lahore recruited 150 adults between 40 and 60 years old. The peculiarity is that all of them were sedentary and had cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes.
What did they do? All of these patients were evaluated to determine whether they were people who ‘function’ better in the morning or afternoon, by measuring their body temperature and through specialized questionnaires. They were then prescribed exercise routines with moderate aerobic activity, such as a simple walk for 40 minutes, five days a week, for 12 weeks.
But the difference that there was here is that the group of people who trained in the part of the day that was best for them. That is, those who were morning people trained between 8 and 11 in the morning, while those who were more ‘nocturnal’ did so between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. On the other hand, the control group trained out of alignment with their own internal clock, meaning that, although they felt much more energetic first thing in the morning, they had to walk during the afternoon.
The results. Although the simple act of moving improved the health of participants who started from a sedentary attitude, the truth is that those who exercised in synchrony with their biological clock obtained much greater benefits. For example, the blood pressure of the group “aligned” to their chronotype plummeted by almost 11 mmHg, while the misaligned group dropped by half.
Because. We must understand that our body does not function the same at 8 in the morning as it does at 8 in the afternoon, and it is something that anyone can see. The person responsible for this orchestration is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus, which sets our circadian rhythms, and which means that when we force the machine at a time for which our body is not metabolically or hormonally prepared, a misalignment occurs.
Here science demonstrated that exercise, when done at the right time, acts as a powerful external synchronizer at the genetic level. And we can imagine that in each of our cells there are ‘clocks’ that indicate, for example, when they have to enter ‘sleep’ mode or be more active. And in these we find two ‘clock genes’ called BMAL1 and CLOCK, optimizing muscle regeneration processes, cellular repair and, ultimately, promoting longevity.
Its benefits. The impact of being aligned with our internal clock goes beyond our blood pressure, since in 2024 a study from Harvard University directly connected exercise with a reduction in brain stress. This means that, when exercising, cardiovascular protection was doubled in patients with depressive symptoms.
Know the chronotype. Each of us can have an idea of whether we are more productive in the morning or when the sun goes down, but if not, there are different tests that promise to give us an idea of knowing the point of the day when we are most productive. And this is essential for exercising because, for years, the culture of productivity has glorified early risers, forcing the so-called ‘owls’ to drag themselves to the gym first thing in the morning. But this changes radically, since each one has a specific moment that must be respected.
Images | aleksandarlittlewolf on Freepik
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