Occupational Health & Safety

Biography

Biography: Chung-Hey Chen

Abstract

“Doing the month” is Taiwan-specific socio-cultural system, women usually decrease their exercising during their postpartum periods. A growing body of evidence suggests that exercise is important contributor to maternal health and thus is beneficial to infants. Gymnastics is a preferable safe exercise for postnatal women performing regularly. To determine the effectiveness of aerobic gymnastic exercise in health promotion during postpartum, a total of 140 postnatal women without contraindications were systematically assigned, with a random start to experimental (n＝70) or a control (n＝70) group. Participants in the gymnastic exercise group were instructed to engage in aerobic gymnastic exercise at least three times (15 minutes per section) a week in addition to receiving general postnatal care similar to that in the control group for three months. Outcome measures include Perceived Stress Scale, Postpartum Fatigue Scale, Postpartum Sleep Quality Scale, and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Sixty-four women in experimental and 65 in control group completed the 4-week post-tests; 60 in the experimental group and 62 in control group completed the 12-week post-tests. Paired t-tests revealed that aerobic gymnastic exercise participants had improved significantly in perceived stress and fatigue after 4 weeks gymnastic exercise; these positive effects extended to the 12-week posttests. In addition, the physical symptoms-related sleep inefficiency of participants showed significantly improvements in the aerobic gymnastic exercise group than in the control group at the 12-week posttest. The results contribute to the further study of exercises and compact disc multimedia health education programs for postnatal women.