Research
Energy balance
Combined diet and exercise interventions during pregnancy may reduce the risk of caesarean section compared to standard care, with moderate-quality evidence.
Adopting a healthy diet and exercise routine during pregnancy might lower your chances of needing a caesarean section. While the evidence is not conclusive, the potential benefit exists alongside other health advantages for you and your baby.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
There was also a possible reduced risk of caesarean section (RR 0.95, 95% CI 0.88 to 1.02; 6089 women; 14 RCTs; moderate-quality evidence).
Why this rating
Moderate-quality evidence per GRADE.
Source
Combined diet and exercise interventions for preventing gestational diabetes mellitus
Emily Shepherd et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2017
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd010443.pub3
Meta-analysis · 23 studiesCited 241×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Combined diet and exercise interventions during pregnancy reduce the risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) compared to standard care alone, with moderate-quality evidence showing a possible reduction in risk (RR 0.85).Moderate
- Combined diet and exercise interventions during pregnancy do not clearly reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia compared to standard care.Limited
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- Achieving type 2 diabetes remission requires significant weight loss (≥15 kg) via major caloric restriction, independent of macronutrient composition.Strong
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