Exercise timing: Obesity and diabetes prevention

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CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Medscape

Exercising in the morning may have the biggest impact on the likelihood of having obesity, whereas morning and afternoon exercise appear to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, suggest two studies.

Tongyu Ma, PhD, research assistant professor with the Health Sciences Department, Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, New Hampshire, and colleagues studied data on almost 5300 individuals, finding a strong association between moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and obesity.

The research, showed that people who exercised in the morning had a lower body mass index than those who exercised at other times, even though they were more sedentary.

For the second study, Chirag J. Patel, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues examined more than 93,000 individuals and found that morning and afternoon, but not evening, exercise reduced the risk for type 2 diabetes.

However, the results, also indicated that people who undertook at least MVPA were protected against developing type 2 diabetes no matter what time of day they exercised.

Along with considering the timing of exercise, the authors suggest that it is “helpful to include some higher intensity activity to help reduce the risk of developing diabetes and other cardiovascular disease.”

Morning Exercisers Perform Less Physical Activity

Ma and colleagues highlight that “although a beneficial association among the levels of physical activity with obesity has been frequently reported, the optimal timing of physical activity for decreasing obesity remains controversial.”

The researchers analysed data including 5285 individuals aged ≥ 20 years who had physical activity measured via an accelerometer worn on the right hip during waking hours for 7 consecutive days.

The team reports that there was a strong linear association between MVPA and obesity in the morning exercisers, whereas there was a weaker curvilinear association in the midday and evening exercisers.

“This is exciting new research that is consistent with a common tip for meeting exercise goals — that is, schedule exercise in the morning before emails, phone calls or meetings that might distract you,” commented Rebecca Krukowski, PhD, professor, Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, in a release.

However, she noted that the cross-sectional nature of the study means that it is “not known whether people who exercise consistently in the morning may be systematically different from those who exercise at other times, in ways that were not measured in this study.

“For example, people who exercise regularly in the morning could have more predictable schedules, such as being less likely to be shift workers or less likely to have caregiving responsibilities that impede morning exercise,” said Krukowski, who was not involved in the study.

No Association Between Evening Activity and Type 2 Diabetes Risk

In the second study, the team studied 93,095 persons in the UK Biobank, with a mean age of 62 years and no history of type 2 diabetes, who wore a wrist accelerometer for 1 week.

The movement data were used to estimate the metabolic equivalent of task, which was then summed into the total physical activity completed in the morning, afternoon, and evening and linked to the development of incident type 2 diabetes.

However, there was no association between evening activity and the risk for type 2 diabetes, at a hazard ratio of 0.95 (P = .07).

The team found, however, that MVPA and vigorous physical activity were associated with a reduced risk for type 2 diabetes at all times of day.