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Exercise during pregnancy can boost your baby's brain

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Mums-to-be who exercise for just 20 minutes three times a week helped give their babies a head start intellectually, according to scientists.

And the impact could benefit a child's entire life say researchers, with safe pregnancy workouts also helped to reduce the risk of childhood obesity.

Speaking about the findings, Professor Daniel Curnier, who co-wrote the University of Montreal report, said the study contradicted previous reports that women should take it easy during pregnancy.

"While being sedentary increases the risks of suffering complications during pregnancy, being active can ease post-partum (after delivery) recovery, make pregnancy more comfortable and reduce the risk of obesity in the children," he said.

"Given that exercise has been demonstrated to be beneficial for the adult's brain, we hypothesised that it could also be beneficial for the unborn child through the mother's actions."

Previously, women have been warned against exercising during pregnancy. However, in recent years it's been proven that too much inactivity can be harmful to both mother and baby.

Expectant women who took part in the study were split into two groups; an exercise or inactive sedentary group.

Those in the exercise group had to undergo at least 20 minutes of moderate cardiovascular exercise three times a week. The exercise sessions were intense enough to produce slight shortness of breath.

Women in the sedentary group did not exercise at all.

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Eight to 12 days after the babies were born, the electrical activity of their brains were measured using a "bathcap" made of electrodes.

Elise Labonte-LeMoyne, who was also on the University of Montreal team, said: "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."

The scientists are now assessing the babies' thinking, physical and language ability at one year old to see if those whose mothers exercised perform better.


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Nicola McCafferty writes for Yahoo! UK & Ireland Lifestyle.