WEDNESDAY, April 15, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Aligning exercise timing with individual chronotype significantly benefits cardiometabolic and sleep-related outcomes in adults with cardiovascular risk factors, according to a study published online April 14 in Open Heart.
Arsalan Tariq, from the University of Lahore in Pakistan, and colleagues investigated whether aligning exercise timing with chronotype enhances cardiometabolic and sleep-related benefits. The analysis included 134 sedentary adults (aged 40 to 60 years) with cardiovascular risk factors randomly assigned to 12 weeks of either a chronotype-aligned exercise or a chronotype-misaligned exercise group.
The researchers found that chronotype-aligned exercise led to significantly greater improvements in systolic blood pressure (–10.8 versus –5.5 mm Hg). Other significant improvements with chronotype-aligned exercise were seen for diastolic blood pressure, heart rate variability, peak oxygen consumption, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting glucose, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores. There were significant group-by-time interactions observed across all outcomes (e.g., systolic blood pressure: η² = 0.095).
"Integrating the principle of 'chrono-exercise,' scheduling workouts according to an individual's internal biological clock, may offer a novel and impactful approach to enhancing outcomes in preventive cardiovascular and metabolic health," the authors write.