Exercise seems to be a debate whenever someone is in an altered state from what their “normal” is. It’s no different for expecting moms. One time you hear that exercise should be strictly limited, and more and more now though, you are hearing that exercise not only benefits the mom, but it also benefits the baby in her womb. We are talking moderate exercise though here, not any kind of contortionist, heavy lifting and heavy cardio work type of exercise.

The benefits that early results are showing on moderate exercise for a fetus is that it benefits the unborn baby’s cardiovascular and neurological development, helping things work better like the blood pressure, the heart rate, and the peak function of all internal organs at the time the child is still in the mother’s body.

They tested this theory by testing babies that were exposed to exercise while in the mother’s womb vs. mothers that didn’t not exercise with child, and they found that the babies who had moms who moderately exercised while pregnant with them had better autonomic responses, which means involuntary bodily functions as we discussed previously, such as heart rate, breathing and blood pressure as well as organ function.

Experts are claiming the because of these findings on how well regulated a baby’s heartbeat is in the womb, exercise may be a way for mothers to be to increase the chances their child will have a healthily functioning heart and other organs. I could definitely see how this would logically benefit the child, especially since it seems there are several crucial stages where a mother to be and her child share the same chemistry and often the same reactions to certain foods etc.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Fitness Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.