Washington: A recent study suggests that evening work out can be more productive. The details were published in the Journal of Cell Metabolism. Research teams looked at the association between time of day and exercise performance primarily in mice.
Because mice are nocturnal, one thing they had to do was translate mouse timing to human timing, by distinguishing between the active phase and resting phase of the mice rather than using numbers on the clock. Asher’s group started by putting mice in treadmills at different times of day within their active phase.
They examined the exercise capacity of mice upon different exercise intensities and regimens and found that overall exercise performance is substantially better in the “mouse evening” compared to the morning hours. These daily differences were diminished in mice that had mutant clocks — supporting a potential role of the clock in the observed variance in exercise performance.
To identify a potential determinant of daily variance in exercise performance, they applied high-throughput transcriptomics and metabolomics on muscle tissue. The researchers found that in response to exercise in the “mouse evening”, there were higher levels of a metabolite called ZMP (5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide). The researchers also studied 12 humans and found similar effects.