Pregnant People Are the Ultimate Endurance Athletes
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Carrying an 8-pound being inside your body during the entirety of waking hours is a super-human feat, probably as physically draining as running 5,000 marathons over a terrain of hot coals and quick sand. Now research more or less backs this up: A new study published in Science Advances found, per Quartz, that the “upper limit [of]…energy that human bodies can expend consistently over time, is one pushed by endurance athletes….and people who are pregnant and lactating.”
In the study, published in Science Advances, a group of anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and public health researchers from around the world studied the metabolic rates of runners who competed in Race Across the USA, a 14-week race spanning more than 3,000 miles, in which competitors cover roughly a marathon per day, six days a week. The study found that metabolic rates in these ultra-long distance runners slowed to nearly the same rate of pregnant people.