Exercise performed at different times of the day has different effects: Scientists Latest Videos
News 24
To gain a better understanding of why the timing of exercise produces different effects, an international team of scientists carried out the most comprehensive study to date of exercise performed at different times of the day.
"A better understanding of how exercise affects the body at different times of day might help us to maximise the benefits of exercise for people at risk of diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes," said Professor Juleen R. Zierath from Karolinska Institutet and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) at the University of Copenhagen.
Almost all cells regulate their biological processes over a 24-hour period, otherwise called a circadian rhythm. This means that the sensitivity of different tissues to the effects of exercise changes depending on the time of day. Earlier research has confirmed that exercise timing according to our circadian rhythm can optimize the health-promoting effects of exercise.The team of international scientists wanted a more detailed understanding of this effect, so they carried out a range of experiments on mice that exercised either in the early morning or the late evening. Blood samples and different tissues, including brain, heart, muscle, liver and fat were collected and analysed by mass spectrometry.
This allowed the scientists to detect hundreds of different metabolites and hormone signalling molecules in each tissue, and to monitor how they were changed by exercising at different times of the day.
The result is an 'Atlas of Exercise Metabolism' - a comprehensive map of exercise-induced signalling molecules present in different tissues following exercise at different times of the day.
"As this is the first comprehensive study that summarises time and exercises dependent metabolism over multiple tissues, it is of great value to generate and refine systemic models for metabolism and organ crosstalk," added Dominik Lutter, Head of Computational Discovery Research at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center in Munich, Germany.
New insights include a deeper understanding of how tissues communicate with each other, and how exercise can help to 'realign' faulty circadian rhythms in specific tissues - faulty circadian clocks have been linked to increased risks of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Finally, the study identified new exercise-induced signalling molecules in multiple tissues, which need further investigation to understand how they can individually or collectively influence health.