Assessment of physical activity status among pregnant women in southwestern China
Article Category: Original article
Published Online: Jul 10, 2019
Page range: 135 - 141
Received: Sep 08, 2018
Accepted: Nov 30, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/FON-2019-0020
Keywords
© 2019 Ya-Nan Yin et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Objective
To assess the patterns and intensities of physical activity among pregnant women in southwestern China, which help us create a fitness regimen based on the 2002 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) guidelines for exercise during pregnancy.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was performed to recruit pregnant women at a prenatal checking visit clinic with the self-administered Chinese version of Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ).
Results
A total of 1179 Chinese pregnant women were enrolled, of whom 92.60% were classified as not meeting the ACOG guidelines. By intensity, 47.36% of the score was attributed to light-intensity activities (1.5 to <3.0 metabolic equivalent [MET]) in the first trimester; the other 2 trimesters were similar. By patterns, about 45.15% of the score was attributed to inactivity. More than 82.35% of enrolled pregnant women regarded slowly walking as the most common type of exercise during pregnancy.
Conclusions
This study represents a group of Chinese women who maintained an inactive lifestyle, including low-intensity activities and unitary type of exercises during their pregnancy. Health-care providers are advised to provide appropriate physical activity guidelines to pregnant women. Development of MET-hours/week recommendations is warranted to promote greater physical activity during pregnancy.