How pregnancy fitness may boosts child's heart health

Friday October 25th, 2013

Women who keep fit during pregnancy may benefit the heart health of their children throughout their lifetimes, researchers report today.

Researchers say they are the first to trace the effect of a mother's exercise through to adulthood.

So far the research has only been conducted on pigs, which can be trained to complete exercise programmes.

Writing in Experimental Physiology, the researchers say their study shows benefits on key blood vessels of the circulation in adulthood.

Researcher Dr Thomas Bahls, of Universitätsmedizin Greifswald, Germany, writes: “We are only starting to understand how exercise during gestation influences offspring adult health and disease.

"Results like ours may help to create guidelines enabling women to make the best decisions for them and their children by providing evidence based health choices.

“Physical activity may act through multiple pathways which depend on type, duration, intensity and frequency of the exercise regimen.

"Furthermore, it is essential that future research investigates the coronary circulation and also establishes what impact these reported changes in vascular function in the offspring have on cardiovascular disease susceptibility.”

The study found that as well as protecting the endothelium, which lines blood vessels, maternal exercise also protected the vascular smooth muscle.

Mothers’ exercise during pregnancy programs vasomotor function in adult offspring. Experimental Physiology 25 October 2013

Tags: Childbirth and Pregnancy | Europe | Fitness | Heart Health | Women's Health & Gynaecology

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