As an athletic trainer with a sports medicine background, Kara Radzak was curious to know how much she could put her body through after giving birth to her first son in 2018. Radzak, a professor at UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences, browsed PubMed for evidence-based guidelines to support her recovery—to little avail.
More research was available by the time she had her second son in 2021, but she turned to social media to see what information was being shared for women like her. What she found was an algorithm full of dubious information.
“So much of what I saw online was fear-based,” Radzak said. People were saying, don’t do ab exercises, or don’t lift anything heavy. I saw a lot of stuff out there that, as a clinician, I knew wasn’t true.”
Radzak emphasized that it’s extremely beneficial to work out while pregnant or postpartum. She said there can’t be a blanket approach to physical activity during pregnancy since everyone’s journey is unique.
“There’s emerging research that shows even if you’re not physically active prior to getting pregnant, if you start to increase activity during pregnancy, it provides better birth outcomes and decreases risk for pregnancy complications,” she added.
Radzak and UNLV alumna Annie Lindsay of the University of Nevada, Reno Extension are studying the information women in Southern Nevada receive on physical activity during pregnancy and postpartum. They interviewed Clark County mothers and health care providers to better understand where they felt the information was lacking, such as timelines for returning to exercise and the rationale behind restrictions or modifications.
The collaboration is funded by the extension. Once their research is complete, the team will post a centralized online toolkit so health care providers and pregnant people can access information about continuing and returning to exercise.
“As an extension specialist working in the community, I have seen the need for greater support and encouragement of physical activity during the peripartum time period and how mom’s health and health behaviors impact their children,” Lindsay said.
Radzak said plenty of new pregnancy research is being conducted through a sports medicine and exercise science lens, but findings may not be making the interdisciplinary jump to obstetrics.
“Our knowledge of safe exercise during pregnancy and postpartum has evolved so much in the past five years, particularly regarding high-intensity interval training and strength training during pregnancy and stepwise return to activity postpartum guidelines,” she said. “Women want their providers to have that information for them, but that is difficult if providers don’t have resources to point them to.”
Radzak hopes they’ll be able to help close the information gap so mothers don’t feel lost sifting through the fear mongering on social media. And while there is still more work to do, she remains encouraged by the progress their team has made.
“Research has really taken off in the pregnancy and postpartum space, and now we’re able to collect our data and give people the information they need,” she said. “There are a lot of female researchers with stories like mine who want to see exercise science and sports science move forward. It feels great to do research in an area that needs it.”
Steven Slivka is the director of communications at UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences.
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