Any exercise is better than none, but early morning physical activity may bring added benefits, researchers say.
Tracking 14,000 U.S. volunteers sharing Fitbit-derived heart-rate data, researchers found those who frequently exercised in the morning were 31% less likely to have coronary artery disease compared to those who exercised later in the day.
They were also 18% less likely to have high blood pressure, 21% less likely to have high cholesterol, 30% less likely to have type 2 diabetes, and 35% less likely to have obesity, regardless of the total daily amount of physical activity.
Exercise between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. was associated with the lowest odds of coronary artery disease, the study found.
Researchers plan to present the findings at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology this month in New Orleans.
The data, which represents the first large study to assess exercise amount and timing based on long-term use of wearable devices, cannot show whether the relationship between exercise timing and cardiometabolic health is causal or mediated by other factors.
Biological factors such as hormones, sleep or genetics, and behavioral and psychological factors also could be involved, the researchers noted.
Further research could help to determine the role of such factors and inform exercise recommendations, the authors said.
"In the past, researchers have mainly looked at how much physical activity to do, the number of minutes or the intensity of physical activity," study leader Prem Patel, a medical student at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, said in a statement.
"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."
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