Hey there and welcome to Pursuing Health. I'm Dr. Julie Fouche, family physician and former

CrossFit Games athlete. Here is your bonus weekly CrossFit Health Tip, which was originally

published on CrossFit.com. Enjoy.

I'm here to do a Dr. Sean Rowan who is an OBGYN and has done some very interesting

research on women exercising during pregnancy. So, how did this research first come about?

So, I got the idea to do some research on this after my wife had gone through pregnancy,

my sister was pregnant, another friend of ours was pregnant, and they were getting very

mixed signals from their providers about what they could do in pregnancy and some of them

just didn't really make any sense at all. So, that led me to do a deeper dive into what's

out there in research and there was nothing. There's very little on really a lot of things

in pregnancy because pregnant women are often excluded from studies for various reasons.

So, let us just say, hey, let's do something to see what we can change here.

And tell us a little bit about how that research was set up.

So, what we did is we found women who were looking to get pregnant in the next four to six months

that were exercising at least three times a week, and then what we did is we gave them a

loop band. That way we were measuring their parameters, their heart rate variability, their

resting heart rate, and the other things that loop measures letting them be their own control.

So, then, after they were able to get pregnant, we followed them throughout their pregnancy,

and at least six to 12 weeks postpartum. And for those listening, can you define what

heart rate variability is and what you were measuring with that? Sure. So, heart rate variability is

a measure of fitness in a way. It has other things that we can use it for, but if I'm standing here,

my heart rate is beating every, say my heart rate is 60 beats a minute. My heart is not beating

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