Being Pregnant Is Metabolically Similar To Being An Elite Endurance Athlete
We all know that pregnancy can be hard on a body. But did you know that a pregnant person has a metabolism that’s very similar to an athlete in an extreme endurance race? A team of researchers studied the metabolic rates of elite endurance runners as they completed a transcontinental
Posted — Updated“We don’t think it’s a limit on how much food’s available, or how fast you can stuff it in your face, we think it’s a limit on what your digestive tract is able to actually absorb,” Pontzer said.
What, exactly, this limit means is debatable. Did our ancestors’ long-distance, arduous travel create a mechanism that allowed us to carry bigger babies with greater frequency? Or did the metabolic limits set during pregnancy help us survive during months of physical toil?
“There’s a kind of fun evolutionary connection between these two very different tasks that we didn’t know was possible before,” said Pontzer.
Does this mean I can tell people I’m basically an endurance runner? Just kidding. It’s so cool to see what the human body can achieve, and how it all fits together!
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