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Why and how pregnant women should work out
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If you're pregnant and want to avoid a C-section, doing this for 2 1/2 hours every week may help, a new study says. - photo by Jennifer Graham
Pregnancy is not an excuse to skip your workout, a new study confirms.

Expectant mothers who exercise do not deliver prematurely, as was once believed, but are generally healthier and less likely to have C-sections, The Atlantic reported.

Researchers analyzed the outcomes of more than 2,000 pregnant women and found that up to 90 minutes of exercise three or four times a week is beneficial for women who are pregnant with one child and generally in good health.

Exercising women had a lower risk of gestational diabetes and hypertension and they were less likely to have a C-section. Nearly three-quarters of the women who exercised had vaginal deliveries, compared to 67.5 percent of the sedentary women, the report said.

The best exercises during pregnancy, according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are fast walking, swimming, stationary cycling, yoga and pilates.

Running may be OK for experienced runners with permission from their doctors, the ACOG says. (Elite U.S. runner Sarah Brown trained throughout her pregnancy and competed in the Olympic Trials four months after giving birth to a healthy girl. Her journey was documented by ESPN in a film series called Run Mama Run.)

But the group warns against contact sports such as soccer and basketball (not because of the exertion, but because of the risk of getting hit in the abdomen with a ball), as well as any activity that could cause you to fall, such as horseback riding, snow skiing or gymnastics.

Pregnant women also should not do hot yoga; exposure to excessive heat has been linked to neural tube defects, which is why women are also discouraged from using hot tubs or saunas during pregnancy.

Unfortunately for pregnant soccer star Sydney Leroux, there is no official guidance from the ACOG about whether water tubing while pregnant is okay. The 26-year-old, who is expecting her first child in September, has taken heat for an Instagram photo that shows her tubing with husband Dom Dwyer in her second trimester.

But lying in a tube being pulled by a boat is mild compared to surfing while nine months pregnant or lifting weights, endeavors ABC News reported in a 2014 look at pregnant women engaging in extreme sports.

Regardless of risk or intensity, there are some women who should stop exercising during pregnancy. Women expecting multiples or those who have health issues such as high blood pressure, severe anemia or placenta previa get to use their condition as an excuse to take it easy for nine months, the report in The Atlantic said.

And, sorry to disappoint, but every pregnant woman should cross skydiving off her pregnancy bucket list.

Yes, some women have jumped out of planes during early pregnancy. Not surprisingly, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists does not approve of this. No scuba diving, either.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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