Exercising during pregnancy may let women significantly reduce their children's chances of developing diabetes and other metabolic diseases later in life, new research suggests.
A study with lab mice has found that exercise during pregnancy prevented the transmission of metabolic diseases from an obese parent either mother or father to child.
If the finding holds true in humans, it will have "huge implications" for helping pregnant women ensure their children live the healthiest lives possible, the researchers report in a new scientific paper.
This means that one day soon, a woman's first trip to the doctor after conceiving might include a prescription for an exercise program.
"Most of the chronic diseases that we talk about today are known to have a fetal origin.
This is to say that the parents' poor health conditions prior to and during pregnancy have negative consequences to the child, potentially through chemical modification of the genes," said researcher Zhen Yan, PhD, a top exercise expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
"We were inspired by our previous mouse research implicating that regular aerobic exercise for an obese mother before and during pregnancy can protect the child from early onset of diabetes.
In this study, we asked the questions, what if an obese mother exercises only during pregnancy, and what if the father is obese?" Scientists have known that exercise during pregnancy helps lead to healthy babies, reducing the risk of pregnancy complications and premature delivery.
But Yan, the director of the Center for Skeletal Muscle Research at UVA's Robert M.
Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, wanted to see if the benefits continued throughout the children's lives.
And his work, both previous and new, suggests it does.
To determine that, Yan and his collaborators studied lab mice and their offspring.
Some of the adult mice were fed typical mouse chow before and during pregnancy, while other were fed a high-fat, highcalorie diet to simulate obesity.
