Sitting for More Than 10 Hours a Day Doubles Risk. Need to Increase Walking and Low-Intensity Activities

A study has found that the longer a woman spends sitting during pregnancy, the greater the risk of health issues related to pregnancy and childbirth, such as gestational hypertension or premature birth, while conversely, increasing light physical activity and walking can lower these risks.

A team led by Dr. Bethany B. Gibbs at the University of West Virginia announced on the 28th in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that they confirmed this association by analyzing the relationship between sedentary behavior, low-intensity physical activity, daily step count, and the risk of health abnormalities during pregnancy and childbirth in 470 pregnant women.

The research team stated that pregnant women who sit for more than 10 hours a day have more than twice the risk of health issues related to pregnancy and childbirth compared to those who do not, suggesting that reducing sitting time and engaging in low-intensity movement can be a strategy to improve pregnancy health.

Health abnormalities related to pregnancy and childbirth, such as gestational hypertension and diabetes, premature birth, and small birth relative to gestational age, occur in one out of five pregnancies. These complications pose an immediate risk to the mother and fetus and are considered warning signs of long-term risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.

The research team pointed out that while guidelines for improving pregnancy health recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate to high-intensity physical activity per week and have recently added recommendations to sit less and move more, there is a severe lack of research on how low-intensity physical activity, sedentary behavior, and daily step count are related to health abnormalities during pregnancy and childbirth.

In this study, the research team recruited 470 pregnant women under 13 weeks of gestation from university-affiliated medical centers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and analyzed the association between reducing sedentary time and moving more and health abnormalities during pregnancy and childbirth.

Using a thigh-worn accelerometer, sedentary behavior, low-intensity physical activity, and daily step count were measured during each trimester of pregnancy, and subsequently, the occurrence of pregnancy and childbirth health abnormalities, such as gestational hypertension, diabetes, premature birth, and infants small for gestational age, was checked through medical records.

Participants spent an average of 10.1 hours sitting per day, 4.6 hours of low-intensity physical activity, and an average of 6,783 steps per day. The research team divided the pregnant women into several groups based on sedentary time, low-intensity physical activity time, and daily step count to compare them.

Analysis results showed that the incidence of pregnancy and childbirth health abnormalities in the group with less time spent sitting was 19.0%, but the incidence rates in the groups with long and very long times of sedentary activity were 42.3% and 41.6%, respectively, which was more than twice as high.

Conversely, the incidence of pregnancy and childbirth health abnormalities in the group with the longest duration of low-intensity physical activity was 21.1%, which was half the level of the group with the least activity (40.3%).

In addition, the analysis showed that the incidence of pregnancy and childbirth health abnormalities in groups with moderate or high daily step counts was 36.2% and 32.2%, respectively, which was lower than that of the group with low step counts (47.7%).

The research team explained that the association between reduced sedentary behavior, increased low-intensity physical activity, increased daily steps, and a reduced risk of health abnormalities during pregnancy and childbirth was maintained even after adjusting for factors such as moderate-to-high intensity physical activity or pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI).

He further emphasized, “This shows that even without engaging in strenuous exercise during pregnancy, a lifestyle of sitting less and moving more often can be beneficial to health,” adding that “such lifestyle changes have the potential to be a strategy for improving pregnancy health.”

◆ Source: JAMA, Bethany Barone Gibbs et al., ‘Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes and Sedentary Behavior, Light-Intensity Physical Activity, and Daily Steps’,https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2026.6986?guestAccessKey=6bb26ffc-81d4-4ec1-91e2- bcc40b18db6b&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=052726