Exercising Till End Of Gestational Term Deemed Favourable For Materno-Foetal Health

Contradictory to more traditional norms, partaking in exercise till the last trimester of pregnancy has no detrimental outcome on the weight or size of the unborn child, a novel research has indicated. This has been suggested in a study conducted by the researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid that additionally revealed the remarkable association between the weight of inactive mothers prior to getting pregnant and the size of the babies born to them.

The findings that have lately been printed in the International Journal of Obesity found that engaging in low-intensity physical activity is advantageous to the health of both the mother and the baby.

Jonatan R. Ruiz, the main author of the study and a researcher from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden states that maintaining a physically active routine all through pregnancy has no harm on the foetal health.

The study involved 160 women in the ages of 20-25 years in good health, all having languid lifestyles and not at risk of premature delivery. In this set of women, half of them adopted the exercise routine under the guidance and direction of experts from the Physical Activity and Sports Science in association with the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Unit of Hospital Severo Ochoa, Madrid.

The researchers employed several variables for assessing foetal health like body weight, size and gestation age among women and they evaluated the outcome of the exercise regimen conducted till the final trimester of pregnancy on the body weight and size of the unborn child.

All the health factors were analogous in the set of women that adopted the exercise routine when evaluated against those women that didn’t partake in any form of physical activity when pregnant; suggestive of the fact that exercising has no risk on the foetal health.

The authors additionally carried out measurements of the weight of the mother prior to getting pregnant, the foetal body size and if there was a presence of gestational diabetes. In the set of women that didn’t engage in any form of physical exercise –the control group, it was noticed that the pre-pregnancy weight were certainly related to the weight of the newly born child.

Inactive mothers of higher pre-pregnancy weight delivered heavier babies. This association however was not noticed among the set of women that adopted an exercise routine when pregnant. The experts cautioned that babies born excessively heavy (greater than four kgs) are at heightened risk of becoming diabetic and prone to particular forms of cancers during adulthood, along with birth-related complications.

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