Exercise revisited yet again, plus a peek at a pumpkin patch

I never heard back from the email I sent to my RE, asking about this recently published study which basically says that if you exercise intensely more than 4 hours a week (and have been doing so between 1 year and 9 years) you have a significantly lower chance of your IVF being successful than if you don’t exercise at all (or if you’ve been doing that much exercise for 10–30 years).

My acupuncturist was surprised by the conclusions of the study. She is an advocate of exercise. But she is giving copies of the study to patients and telling them to ask their REs (reproductive endocrinologist AKA fertility doctor) how to proceed.

So I really have had only my own evaluation of that study to go on, and as I mentioned before, I decided to curtail my running until this last IVF cycle is over. I’d rather err on the side of not doing anything that might have a chance of hurting my success, even though I really miss the exercise.

However, today I got some new input. Julie mentioned in a recent post that she had been inspired by doctormama to start running, which is great. But I said in comments that I was curtailing my running until my new IVF was over, because of that freaking study.

But the wonderful doctormama who is a doctor/infertility patient/blogger/jogger said she thought the study was flawed. This is the first I’ve heard anyone question that study at all. I certainly did not see any press reports do any kind of detailed analysis that sought out doctors who may be dissenters.

Anyway, this is encouraging. Even though I won’t resume my running at this point in the cycle, with the stims starting in six days, I maybe will stop freaking out about whether I’ve already ruined the cycle. And I will print out that study and bring it in to my RE appointment on Friday and ask point blank then what the practice’s recommendations are. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture from the pumpkin expedition. Now David and I have historically been procrastinators, and because of this in years past we have ended up at the supermarket the morning of Halloween, picking a pumpkin from the selection of nine that were left — the albino pygmie pumpkins that no one else wanted.  But this year we got a perfectly round and very orange pumpkin, and had a lovely afternoon.

Comments

[Aurelia]

I never know what to think about those studies. Unless you have the data, it's hard to tell where they crunched their numbers. The way I read it, it's the extreme end of exercsing that could hurt you, not moderate exercise.
So maybe you could just walk in the pumpkin patch everyday?

[Cara Fletcher]

I support women who are doing some workout during their pregnancy.I wasn't able to do it when I was pregnant but know I see how important this is.

[Rodger Funderberk]

I'm surprised too. I also exercise everyday, and I think I'm in excellent physical condition. Upon reading this, I realized that I have to relax a bit. That is probably the best way to let the muscles rest.