Less than HALF of mothers get enough exercise, and those with young children get the least, according to a study
- Experts said that efforts should be made to help mothers do high-intensity activities.
- Researchers from Cambridge and Southampton analyzed data from 848 women
- Women with school-age children performed about 26 m of daily physical activity
- While those with children four and under drove about 18 million per day
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Less than half of mothers get enough exercise, research suggests.
And those with the youngest children do the least.
Experts said today that efforts should be made to help mothers to participate in high-intensity physical activities.
Less than half of mothers get enough exercise, research suggests. And those with the youngest children do the least.
Rachel Simpson, a PhD student in the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “There are clear benefits, both short-term and long-term, to doing more physical activity, especially if it increases your heart rate.” .
“But the demands of being a mother can make it hard to find the time.
“We need to consider ways to not only encourage mothers, but also to make it as easy as possible for busy mothers, especially those with younger children, to increase the amount of higher-intensity physical activity they do.”
Physical activity is associated with a wide range of health benefits, from reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease to maintaining a healthy weight and better mental health.
A team of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Southampton analyzed data from 848 women, aged 20 to 32, who were recruited between 1998 and 2002 and followed for several years.
They were given accelerometers to assess their activity levels.
Women with school-age children got about 26 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, while those with children ages 4 and younger got about 18 minutes a day.
Meanwhile, mothers with more than one child got only about 21 minutes of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
But, to the contrary, mothers with several children under the age of five were found to do more light-intensity activity than those with school-age children.
NHS advice states that adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week.
Professor Keith Godfrey, from the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Center and NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, said: “It is perhaps not unexpected that mothers with young children or multiple children engage in less vigorous physical activity, but this is the first study that has quantified the significance of this reduction.
“Local government planners and leisure facility providers must do more to help mothers engage in physical activity.”
The results were published in the journal Plos One.
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