A morning work-out is better for your heart than exercising at any other time, according to new research.
Those who were physically active in the morning had the lowest risk of heart disease in a 86,657-person study spanning up to eight years.
Over a 24-hour period it was found exercising between 8 A.M. and 11 A.M. carried the lowest risk of heart disease and stroke.
Those who are physically active in the early morning had an 11 percent lower risk of incident coronary heart disease, and late morning exercisers had a 16 percent lower risk.
The early morning cohort had a 17 percent lower risk of stroke too.
The trend affected women even more than men - women who were active in the early morning had 22 percent lower risk of incident coronary artery disease, and 24 percent for late morning work-out lovers.
Women who were most active in the later morning also had a 35 percent decrease in their stroke risk versus the baseline.
The pattern was persistent no matter how much exercise people did throughout the whole day, or whether participants described themselves as a morning person or an evening person.
Gali Albalak of Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, said: “It is well established that exercise is good for heart health, and our study now indicates that morning activity seems to be most beneficial.
“The findings were particularly pronounced in women, and applied to both early birds and night owls.
“This was an observational study and therefore we cannot explain why the associations were more marked in women.
“Our findings add to the evidence on the health benefits of being physically active by suggesting that morning activity, and especially late morning may be the most advantageous."
Participants wore an activity tracker on their wrists for seven consecutive days.
European Society of Cardiology researchers tracked people for incident cardiovascular disease, defined as the first hospital admission or death due to coronary artery disease or stroke.
The data included adults who were 42 to 78 years old and free of cardiovascular disease, with an average age of 62 years and women made up 58 percent of the cohort.
In the six to eight years of follow up 2,911 participants suffered coronary artery disease, and 796 had a stroke.
During a second analysis, the group was divided into four categories based on the time they were most physically active.
Group one was midday, group two early morning around 8 a.m., group three was late morning around 10 a.m., and group four exercised in the evening at around 7 p.m.
The midday exercisers were used as the reference group.
Writing in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, doctoral candidate Albalak said: “It is too early for formal advice to prioritize morning exercise as this is quite a new field of research.
“But we hope that one day we can refine current recommendations simply by adding one line: ‘when exercising, it’s advised to do so in the morning’.”
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