Healthy Pregnancy

By: David Bradley

If you're having an uncomplicated pregnancy you'd better do some more exercise to make sure you and your baby are as fit as can be! That's the message that comes from a report aimed at improving the health of the nation's mums-to-be. As long as there are no complications to begin with, pregnant women should take more exercise. "The message is not getting out that women should continue to exercise during pregnancy, at least at moderate intensity," said Terry Leet of the Saint Louis University School of Public Health. Once you are, you should be doing at least half an hour of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking or swimming, at least every week day.

Researchers at Saint Louis University School of Public Health found that pregnant women were not as physically active as women who were not pregnant. They analyzed data from more than 150,000 pregnant and non-pregnant women who were interviewed by phone in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Only 16% of pregnant women and 27% of non-pregnant women were meeting the physical activity recommendation in 2000. Further, the percentage of pregnant women who said they exercised at a moderate or vigorous level was lower in 2000 than in any of the previous years.

Besides taking a brisk walk on weekdays, a healthy pregnancy could benefit from swimming and other forms of regular exercise. For more advice on a healthy pregnancy check out http://scibase.pregnopnds.hop.clickbank.net.

The findings support a recent newsletter article by Raul Artal, lead author of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology's 2002 guidelines for exercise during pregnancy and chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Saint Louis University. Artal said that not enough of his fellow obstetricians encourage their healthy patients to exercise during pregnancy. "The hesitance of obstetricians to recommend exercise to pregnant women is rooted in old-fashioned notions of pregnancy as a time of confinement," Artal wrote in the September issue of Ob.Gyn News, a publication for obstetricians and gynecologists.

"Overall, this study has vital public health implications that can assist physicians to identify patients who are at high risk for inactivity during pregnancy," Leet said. "These women should be encouraged to begin moderate activities most, if not all days of the week, as long as medical or obstetric complications do not exist." The study found that walking was the most common form of physical activity among all women surveyed. Other common physical activities were swimming and dance aerobics.