Children of mothers who exercised regularly during pregnancy have half the risk of developing asthma in childhood than those of less active mothers. This is according to a new study by the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), the Kuopio University Hospital and the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare after analyzing data from almost a thousand mother-child pairs who were followed from the pregnancy until the child was seven years old.
Previous studies had already confirmed that exercise by pregnant women, among other benefits, leads to an improvement in the lung function of the newborn. Now, this new research associates for the first time the mother’s physical activity with the development of asthma in the baby.
The protective effect of exercise on the risk of asthma in the baby is as high as if one of the parents stopped smoking
A pregnant woman performs strength exercise with the help of a physiotherapist
The researchers explain that maternal exercise and child asthma risk are related to many of the same health, lifestyle and environmental factors, such as maternal weight, stress, illness, family exercise habits , nutrition or having a dog as a pet, for example. Hence, they took into account the possible impact of these factors on the results of their study and still observed that maternal exercise has an independent positive effect on the fetus and the subsequent health of the child.
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“We still do not know why exercise manifests itself with a lower risk of asthma in children, but one possibility is that it favors fetal lung maturation,” he explained when presenting the conclusions of the study. study Emma-Reetta Musakka, doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland.
The study’s lead researcher, Pirkka Kirjavainen, said that until now one of the only known effective ways to reduce the risk of asthma was to avoid tobacco smoke during pregnancy, so it is curious that moderate exercise by the mother while gestating “may have as strong a protective effect on the child’s asthma risk as if one of the parents stopped smoking.”
Staying active during pregnancy also helps make childbirth easier.
According to the researcher, “it is very encouraging to see that by doing reasonable amounts of exercise, mothers can significantly influence not only their own health but also that of their children.” The findings have recently been published in the journal MED.
The benefits of staying active
Reducing the risk of asthma is not the only positive impact that practicing physical exercise during pregnancy has. A clinical study carried out some time ago by researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in collaboration with public hospitals in this community found that it lightens labor during childbirth and reduces the process by more than fifty minutes. Other studies have proven that it also reduces the risk of cesarean section by 13% and the risk of macrosomias (or large babies) by up to 21%, in addition to preventing perineal tears by half during childbirth, among other benefits.
Another team of researchers, in this case from the University of Granada, observed the link between the levels of physical activity of pregnant women and important vital markers such as glycemic, lipid indices or inflammatory level.
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