Exercise is Good for the Fetus
May conducted a study of the effects of maternal exercise on the fetus. Comparing sedentary pregnant women to those who engage in moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for at least thirty minutes three times a week, May found that fetuses show the same beneficial effects of cardiovascular training as do their physically active mothers: their heart rates are significantly lower, and their heart-rate variability is greater, than those of fetuses of mothers who don’t exercise.
[...]
Exercise may even make the fetus smarter. In a recent widely praised book, Intelligence and How to Get It, University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett argues that IQ is more malleable than once believed. One of his principal pieces of advice for raising smarter kids: work out while you’re pregnant. Women who exercise while expecting tend to have larger babies who grow up to be smarter adults, Nisbett writes, perhaps because their brains are bigger.
Notes:
and may give it a larger brain.
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Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives