Exercise during pregnancy gives newborn brain development a head start

http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20131111-exercise-during-pregnancy-gives-newborn-brain-development-a-head-start.html

by mkempe • 12 years ago

97 17 12 years ago

nouvelles.umontreal.ca

mkempe• 12 years ago

The article mentions a planned follow-up study of the same babies at age 1, but I can't find any published results.

atmosx• 12 years ago

I'm sure moderate exercise, non polluted oxygen and so forth are helpful at any stage. As all the things we already now (rest, exercise, healthy food, etc.). But I have trouble accepting theories which are based on things that can not be quantified. We'll have to wait 60 years to asses and I'm pretty sure the results will depend mostly on standard-well known facts like family status, family income, schools etc. than the mother doing 'exercise' when the subject was a fetus.

nkuttler• 12 years ago

Women in the exercise group had to perform at least 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise three times per week at a moderate intensity, which should lead to at least a slight shortness of breath.

I find it fascinating that this even qualifies as exercise. An untrained person with a sedentary job will probably just have to climb a few stairs or walk quickly for a few minutes to get this intensity.

Who would have thought that healthy activities are.. healthy.

judk• 12 years ago

You missed the "20 minutes" part.

kohanz3• 12 years ago

As someone who just became a father (and who's wife exercised during pregnancy), remember that (a) exercise is more difficult when pregnant and (b) anything more than light/moderate exercise is not recommended.

My wife was told not to exceed 60% of her max heart rate during exercise. A slightly brisk walk on the treadmill was enough to get her there during the latter portions if the pregnancy. anything that we non-pregnant folk might consider "real exercise" would likely be too strenuous. Now, I'm skeptical as to how accurate those recommendations are, but not enough to disobey them.

antr• 12 years ago

This reminds me of http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/7871698/Paula-...

Of course, Paula's pace wasn't race pace, but still... 10km in 45min. It all depends on the women's past exercising habits. You can't ask someone who rarely/never exercises to exercise when pregnant – hence 60% HR of a fit person is not the same as 60% of a non-physically active person.

kohanz3• 12 years ago

I don't care how fit you are, almost no one is running a 10k in 45 minutes at 60% of max HR.

I'm sure in many cases more strenuous exercise is not detrimental, but of course the public health recommendations are going to play it safe.

dschiptsov• 12 years ago

Does this imply that poor village women who work pregnant are producing geniuses?

ajcarpy2005• 12 years ago

Maybe but also if they are poor, any exercise/work along with possible malnourishment could just be more of an exasperation to the underlying nutritional problem.

yaix• 12 years ago

Yep. Problem is, there are no schools around.

tokenadult• 12 years ago

What's with the spate of press releases from hospitals in Canada recently here on Hacker News? One statement in the press release seems frankly incredible to this father of four children in the United States: "Not so long ago, obstetricians would tell women to take it easy and rest during their pregnancy. Recently, the tides have turned and it is now commonly accepted that inactivity is actually a health concern." What is the definition of "not so long ago" here? My wife exercised (rather more vigorously than what's described in the press release) during all four pregnancies with our children, the first of which was more than twenty years ago. (Our oldest son is now a hacker in New York City.) It would never have occurred to us to do otherwise, and we lived in Seattle, Washington; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Taipei, Taiwan as our children were expected and born, and in all those places it seemed to be recommended for expectant mothers to exercise during pregnancy.

What has changed over twenty years in the United States are weight gain recommendations for pregnant women. As our first son was in utero, the recommended weight gain figures for pregnant women were at the peak that they ever reached. My wife, while exercising moderately but more vigorously than described in the submission here, also dutifully ate far more than she usually eats, and managed to gain up to the full recommended weight gain of that era. Later, the weight gain recommendations were actually revised downwards again. (Whew!) My petite and formerly rather slim wife ends up after four pregnancies with a baseline weight, more than a decade after her last child was born, heavier than she ever was before having children, but still at the low part of the "normal" body mass range for women in the United States, and she still exercises, more vigorously than ever. (She bicycle-commutes year-round here in Minnesota, and we do a lot of our discussion of family business on walks to do grocery shopping or visits to the library that involve us carrying objects home for a mile along our city trail system.)

On the whole, I'm rather astonished that as of the date of this press release submission (LUNDI, 11 NOVEMBRE 2013) there could be any controversy in any part of Canada that the kind of exercise described in the article could be anything but beneficial for expectant mothers and their children. How fast does news about better prenatal care spread around the world? I know that the place where we live, Minnesota, is ahead of the world curve in obstetric practice (indeed, my late father was present for my birth and the birth of two of my three siblings, very unusually for that era, beginning in the 1950s), but I didn't think after living in two countries and having children in both that ANYWHERE doubted the benefit of exercise by pregnant women.

AFTER EDIT: I'll add here some links to official statements about exercise for pregnant women.

"Physical Activity: Healthy Pregnant or Postpartum Women" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/preg...

"Exercise During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period" by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

http://www.acog.org/Resources_And_Publications/Committee_Opi...

"Exercise in pregnancy" by National Health Service (Britain):

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/pregna...

gus_massa• 12 years ago

I think that this is a typical case of a very difficult to measure thing with a very strong emotional charge. So you get a lot of contradicting advice, from very reputable and dubious source. Some advices are disguised as unreproduced medical research and some are disguised as folkloric recommendations. But the signal to noise ratio is very low and a few years later (or just a few miles away) the recommendations change or are completely contradictory. For example, the “Beethoven effect”, baby sleep position, usefulness of colors in baby toys, what to do if the baby cries at night, ...

Another field with a similar level of changes is the diets and nutrition recommendations. Are eggs good or bad for you???

kohanz3• 12 years ago

I don't think Canada is a latecomer here either. We recently had a child in Canada and all the advice we received from healthcare professionals was consistent with promoting moderate exercise.

I think the article and paper, as some scientists have a tendency to do, went overboard when making the case for why this research was needed.

js2• 12 years ago

Perhaps it's a matter of degree but a woman who posted pictures of herself crossfitting while pregnant invited no small amount of controversy just last year.

gregpilling• 12 years ago

My wife taught 5 fitness classes a week during our 4 children's pregnancy, and they are all geniuses (no bias here).

More seriously, in Arizona I have had friends that were pregnant told to "take it easy" and "don't lift more than 10 pounds" but for the most part the advice is that exercise is good. Usually instructions to avoid exercise are only given when the doctors fear losing the baby due to some other complications.

phillc73• 12 years ago

The best thing I've read all day. Three days ago my wife have birth to our son, 3.5 weeks early. She's blaming the fact that we were in the middle of a house move for bringing the birth on early. While she wasn't lifting heavy things, the new flat is on the second floor, with no lift, so twenty steps needed to be negotiated regularly. I can now tell her we were simply working on enhanced brain development for our son.

LunaSea• 12 years ago

"Breathing during pregnancy gives newborn brain development a head start"

Exercise during pregnancy gives newborn brain development a head start

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