Guest Author - Krissi Danielsson

The past week, the media has been awash in reports about a new study, scheduled for publication this month in BJOG, in which researchers uncovered a link between strenuous exercise and increased risk of miscarriage.

The researchers interviewed 92,671 women in the Danish National Birth Cohort and uncovered a surprising three-fold increased risk for miscarriage in women who reported exercising more than seven hours per week, with the strongest association in those that engaged in high-impact exercise. The link was only seen before 18 weeks of pregnancy.

But wait? All along, doctors have insisted there is no link between exercise and miscarriages. What gives?

For starters, the researchers pointed out in the abstract that the results might have potential bias due to retrospective data collection, meaning the results relied on women's memory of their hours of exercise.

Nevertheless, the results could have interesting implications for recommendations going forward. If you are considering trying to conceive and you exercise heavily, talk to your doctor about whether you might wish to make changes to your exercise regime. Exercise has numerous health benefits, but you might feel safer engaging in a lower impact exercise such as swimming or bicycling.

Also, if you have miscarried and are feeling tempted to go back and analyze your own habits before your loss, try not to begin blaming yourself. Remember that the majority of miscarriages, particularly one-time miscarriages, involve chromosomal abnormalities -- and this is not something that would be affected by whether you exercise or not. The cards are pretty much dealt at the time of conception.

And also remember that these results may turn out to be a correlation explained by some other factor, such as the idea that women who were destined to miscarry might have experienced less morning sickness and thus were feeling more able to engage in strenuous exercise. At this point, doctors still recommend exercise during pregnancy. The American Pregnancy Association has recommendations for safety while exercising.