There has always been debate on whether or not moms should exercise while pregnant. Last month I profiled a mom that was lifting weights well into her pregnancy. You can read that here.
Well now there is a new study that correlates brain development of newborns and exercise while the mom is pregnant.
A small study in Canada, 18 women, recruited pregnant women at the start of their second trimester to exercise for as little as twenty minutes three times per week. Exercises included walking, jogging, swimming and cycling.
After the babies were born and using an EEG, the researchers measured the newborns’ brain activity while they slept when eight to 12 days old. “We used 124 soft electrodes placed on the infant’s head and waited for the child to fall asleep on his or her mother’s lap,” explained researcher Elise Labonte-LeMoyne, a Ph.D. candidate in kinesiology. “We then measured auditory memory by means of the brain’s unconscious response to repeated and novel sounds.”
“Our results show that the babies born from the mothers who were physically active have a more mature cerebral activation, suggesting that their brains developed more rapidly.”
Now what does that mean in the long run? We obviously do not know yet, however, it is one more piece of evidence that exercising while pregnant is healthy for not only the mom, but also the baby!
