Morning Exercise Productive For Fat Burning: Study

News Desk

Islamabad: “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. If this is the case, they could prove of value to people who are overweight,” said Karolinska Institute Sweden Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, and Department of Physiology and Pharmacology Juleen Zierath.

Research suggests that undertaking exercise in the morning may be the most effective way to burn fat and an increase in fat metabolism has been linked to doing physical activity at the right time of day. The findings of the research study are published in the PNAS journal.

Researchers discovered that mice who exercised during their early active phase—which is comparable to morning exercise in humans—had higher metabolic increases than mice who exercised during their typical resting period.

Because biological processes depend on the 24-hour cycle that is a part of the body’s internal clock, circadian rhythms of the cells, researchers claim physical activity at different times of the day can influence the body in different ways.

To determine how the time of day affects the burning of fat, researchers at the Karolinska Institute and the University of Copenhagen studied the body fat of mice after a session of high-intensity exercise on a treadmill performed at two points of the daily cycle.

They examined an early activity phase and an early rest phase, which in humans equate to a late morning and an early evening session.

The researchers looked at numerous markers for fat metabolism and analysed which genes were turned on in post-exercise fat tissue.

They found that physical activity at an early active phase increased the expression of genes involved in the breakdown of fat (adipose) tissue, thermogenesis (heat production) and cells in the adipose tissue that indicate a higher metabolic rate.

According to the study, these effects were seen only in mice that exercised in the early active phase and were independent of food intake.

“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, added Dr Zierath.