Postnatal Exercise to Activate Baby's Brown Fat

Overview

The purpose of this study is to learn how exercise and physical activity during pregnancy and after pregnancy may affect the composition of breastmilk. Certain changes in breast milk after exercise may have an impact on how infants use energy. Understanding this process may improve public health recommendations for exercise during and after pregnancy. This study can help investigators learn more about how maternal exercise patterns may affect body growth and obesity risk in infants who are breastfed. This research may help identify how different factors can influence healthy weight and early development in infants.

Epidemiological studies suggest that breastfeeding protects against risk of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and other childhood diseases. However, the specific compounds within breastmilk that are responsible for its protective effects are not fully understood. Moreover, prior work from this investigative team has shown that human milk composition varies substantially between individuals according to factors such as body mass index (BMI), diabetes status, diet, and physical activity. Gaining a better understanding of how modifiable risk factors may impact human milk composition would have the potential to identify strategies to enhance the health-promoting benefits of human milk. In this project, the investigators will study the impact of maternal exercise on human milk composition. The central hypothesis is that maternal exercise induces changes in breast milk metabolites and lipids that result in activation of infant brown fat, increased infant energy expenditure, and reduced obesity risk. The study will include assessments of habitual activity during pregnancy and the postpartum period, supervised bouts acute moderate exercise, as well as analysis of human milk composition, infant growth and body composition, and infant energy expenditure.