New research is linking the circadian clock as an important factor on how the body responds to physical exercise. The studies focused on different components of exercise, thereby complementing each other.

“Circadian rhythms dominate everything we do,” adds Paolo Sassone-Corsi of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California, Irvine, who is senior author of the other paper.

Two studies appearing April 18 in the journal Cell Metabolism looked at the association between time of day and exercise performance primarily in mice. Because mice and human operate at different times, they had to translate the times where mice are most active to human time when they are most active.

High-throughput transcriptomics and metabolomics was applied on muscle tissue to determine daily variance in exercise performance. Researchers found that the response to exercise in the “mouse evening,” had higher levels of a metabolite called ZMP (5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide).

“Interestingly, ZMP is an endogenous analog of AICAR [aminoimidazole carboxamide riboside], a compound that some athletes use for doping,” says Gad Asher of the Department of Biomolecular Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who is senior author of one of the studies.

The researchers also studied 12 humans and found similar results. The people who exercised in the evening had lower oxygen consumption than those in the morning.

Its important to note that circadian clocks have been conserved throughout evolution, translating the findings to humans is not so straightforward. The fact that some people are a “morning” versus “night” people may play a role.

Human lifestyles are more complicated and so this area of research is only just the beginning.

For additional information please explore ScieneDaily.

Questions: Do you notice a difference when you exercise at different times? What kind of exercise routines do you do?

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