(Pregnancy News) How exercise and bed rest in pregnancy can co-exist (Detroit News)
Thursday, March 29th, 2007Today she teaches physical therapists nationwide how to create safe exercise programs for pregnant women on bed rest. Still, women are routinely put on bed rest if they’re having contractions before 37 weeks, bloody spotting or high blood pressure; if they have a history of preterm labor; or if the fetus isn’t growing as expected. Studies by scientists at NASA, who used bed rest to simulate weightlessness in space, found that as a result of long periods of bed rest, a person’s entire musculoskeletal and cardiovascular system becomes deconditioned. Artal, along with Grobman and two other high-risk pregnancy specialists interviewed for this article, recommend that women on bed rest see a physical therapist and, if appropriate, begin a light exercise program. Women confined to bed “need some upper-extremity exercise desperately to help them care for their child or children after delivery,” says Irion, who will publish one of the first academic textbooks to address bed-rest exercise later this year. read more
