Morning exercise may have added benefits for the heart
Exercising early in the morning is associated with significant health benefits compared to exercising later in the day, according to new data to be presented at ACC.2026 in New Orleans.
Researchers tracked data from more than 14,000 study participants, using health records as well as heart rate data taken from wearable technologies.
“Any exercise is going to be better than no exercise, but we tried to identify an additional dimension relating to the timing of exercise,” lead author Prem Patel, a medical student at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, explained in a statement. “If you can exercise in the morning, it seems to be linked with better rates of cardiometabolic disease.”
Overall, participants regularly exercising in the morning were 31% less likely to have coronary heart disease, 18% less likely to have high blood pressure levels, 21% less likely to have hyperlipidemia, 30% less likely to have type 2 diabetes and 35% less likely to be obese than those exercising later in the day.
The group did emphasize that their analysis does not necessarily prove causation. Biological factors such as hormones and sleep may be the primary explanation for this finding.
“In the past, researchers have mainly looked at how much physical activity to do, the number of minutes or the intensity of physical activity,” Patel added. “Now with 1 in 3 Americans having a wearable device, we’re gaining the ability to look at exercise at the minute-by-minute level, and that opens a lot of doors in terms of new analyses.”
Patel et al. did note that additional research is needed to learn more about this association. Gaining a better understanding of this relationship between exercise timing and cardiovascular health could help inform future exercise recommendations.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.