Performing moderate to vigorous activity (MVPA) in the afternoon or evening may improve blood glucose control to a greater extent than exercising evenly throughout the day, new research suggests.
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“This is one of the first studies where in humans the relation between timing of physical activity and insulin resistance was examined,” lead author Jeroen van der Velde, of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News.Moreover, he noted that while previous intervention studies have shown greater blood glucose reduction with high-intensity exercise performed in the afternoon compared with the morning in people with impaired glucose metabolism or type 2 diabetes, “as far as I am aware, we were the first to use a population-based study in a general population to study this.”
van der Velde agrees that the effect may be explained at least in part by the circadian rhythm of the body. “Physical activity may act as…a cue for the activation of clock genes. Previous research has suggested that our body’s muscular system and oxidative system are also affected by our circadian rhythm and their peak activity seems to be in the late afternoon. So, being mostly active in this time period…may elicit greater metabolic responses compared to being active in the morning.”
