Physical Activity and Exercise
Intervention: #8 Physical Activity and Exercise
Fact Check
- Engage in 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every day.
- Overweight or obese adults should perform 35 to 45 minutes per day.
Types of Movement
- Physical activity is defined as any body movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.
- Exercise is a subset of physical activity that is planned, repetitive, and structured and usually has a goal to maintain or improve at least one component of physical fitness.
- Sedentary behaviour comprises time spent in periods of little or no movement while awake (eg. sitting).
Exercise and Fertility
- Different types of physical activity (eg. recreational, household, child or adult care, transportation, work) or exercise (eg. aerobic, strengthening, low impact) may be differentially associated with infertility.
- Likewise, the intensity of physical activity (eg. light, moderate, vigorous) may also be important.
What is Too Much?
- Subfertility is associated with vigorous (exercising daily or to exhaustion) but not with lower intensity or lower frequency exercise.
- Increased risk of infertility in women who exercised vigorously (defined as aerobic activities with estimated energy requirements of 6 kcal/min) for at least 60 min per day.
- Strenuous exercise increases risk of anovulatory infertility and sperm quality.
- High intensity exercise regimens appear to affect fertility treatment outcomes
What is Just Right?
- Vigorous exercise of 30-60 min/day was associated with reduced risk.
- Moderate exercise decreases the risk of miscarriage and increases the chance of having a baby among women who undergo ART.
- A minimum of one hour exercise three times a week improved rates of implantation and pregnancy and reduced the risk of miscarriage in 436 women undergoing ICSI.
- Low to moderate exercise was also associated with increased implantation and live birth rates in 131 women undergoing assisted reproduction techniques.
- 30 minutes walks
- Yoga
- Dancing
- Leisure bike riding
- Aerobics
- Jogging
- Swimming
- Hot yoga
- Boot-camp training
- Extreme running
- Any type of vigorous or strenuous training
To try...
To Avoid...
Find the Evidence
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19801570/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5123562/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28035585/
[4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26867827_Physical_activity_and_fertility_in_women
[5] https://www.yourfertility.org.au/sites/default/files/2018-08/The_role_of_exercise_in_improving_fertility.pdf
[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17012457/