Physical Activity, Exercise, and Health Promotion for the Pregnant Exerciser

Currently, there is consensus that maintaining light to moderate physical activity during an uncomplicated pregnancy has several benefits for the health of the woman and the fetus. Pregnancy provides good opportunities for promoting women’s health and an active lifestyle. The purpose of this chapter is to provide exercise and healthcare professionals with a basic understanding of the importance of an active lifestyle, health promotion, and education during the different stages of pregnancy, by emphasizing the benefits, correlates, and patterns of physical activity during pregnancy. We highlight the importance of healthcare professionals in promoting the benefits of physical activity and advising women on a healthy and active lifestyle during pregnancy, referring them to a prenatal exercise specialist.

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Physical Activity, Exercise, and Health Promotion for the Pregnant Exerciser and the Pregnant Athlete

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Notes

MET = Multiple of resting metabolic rate, used as a measure of exercise intensity [5].

Public health is a field that encompasses many disciplines in an effort to promote and protect health and prevent disease and disability in defined populations and communities [16]. In other words, the science and art of promoting health, preventing disease, and prolonging life through the organized effects of society [17].

Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over the determinants of health and thereby improve their health [18].

Health education can be defined as the processes through which people learn about personal health concepts and behaviors [19].

Multicollinearity occurs when independent variables in a regression model are correlated, which is a problem when the degree of correlation between variables is high enough because it can cause problems when fitting the model and interpreting the results.

Log-ratio transformation techniques allow to transfer compositional data from the constrained simplex space to the unconstrained real space, where traditional multivariate statistics may be applied.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Human Movement Science, Sport and Health, University of Graz, Graz, Austria Mireille van Poppel
  2. Norwegian Research Centre for Women’s Health, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway Katrine Mari Owe
  3. Sport Sciences School of Rio Maior - ESDRM, Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, Rio Maior, Portugal Rita Santos-Rocha
  4. Laboratory of Biomechanics and Functional Morphology, Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Human Performance - CIPER, Faculty of Human Kinetics - FMH, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal Rita Santos-Rocha
  5. Health School of Santarém - ESSS, Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, Santarém, Portugal Hélia Dias
  6. Center for Health Technology and Services Research (NursID Group – Innovation & Development in Nursing), University of Porto, Porto, Portugal Hélia Dias
  7. Department of Physical Education and Sport, University of Seville, Seville, Spain Miguel Ángel Oviedo-Caro
  1. Mireille van Poppel