Can stress during pregnancy erase the benefits of exercise ?

By Elodie Vaz | Published on April 29, 2026 | 4 min read


Pregnancy is a key period of “developmental programming,” during which the maternal environment can have lasting effects on a child’s health. It is already known that physical activity during pregnancy improves the offspring’s metabolism, notably by reducing the risk of obesity and energy balance disorders. Conversely, prenatal stress is suspected to disrupt this programming by altering the hormonal and metabolic signals transmitted to the fetus. A new study published on April 22 in The FASEB Journal suggests that these two factors interact: in mice, maternal stress may diminish the metabolic benefits of exercise for the offspring, particularly in males.

Understanding the combined effect of stress and exercise

The researchers aimed to determine how psychosocial stress during pregnancy influences the well-established beneficial effects of maternal exercise on the metabolic health of offspring. 

The challenge is twofold: to observe metabolic outcomes in the offspring and to identify the underlying biological mechanisms. The authors focused in particular on brown adipose tissue, a “beneficial” fat that burns energy to produce heat, unlike white adipose tissue, which stores calories.

Focus on corticosteroids

The study, titled Distinct effects of maternal stress and exercise on offspring metabolic health, was conducted using a mouse model. Pregnant females were exposed to different experimental conditions combining physical activity and prenatal stress.  

The researchers then assessed the metabolic health of the offspring, analyzing differences based on sex. They also examined molecular pathways in brown adipose tissue, with a focus on corticosteroids—hormones essential for regulating energy balance and many physiological processes.

Reduced exercise benefits in males

The results show that exercise during pregnancy does improve the metabolic health of offspring. However, these benefits are reduced when the mother is exposed to prenatal stress.  

This effect appears particularly pronounced in male offspring, suggesting a sex-specific vulnerability in metabolic programming.  

Mechanistically, maternal stress may alter corticosteroid signaling pathways in the offspring’s brown adipose tissue. This alteration could limit the tissue’s ability to burn energy, thereby compromising the metabolic benefits normally induced by exercise.  

As the authors note, “This work provides a framework for understanding how psychosocial factors can modify exercise-based interventions during pregnancy and highlights the importance of considering maternal stress context in studies of developmental metabolic programming.”

New perspectives for preventing metabolic diseases

These findings reinforce the idea that a child’s metabolic health begins to take shape in utero, under the combined influence of biological, behavioral, and psychosocial factors. Although these results still need to be confirmed in humans, they open new avenues for preventing metabolic diseases. In the future, recommendations regarding physical activity during pregnancy may need to more systematically incorporate the management of maternal stress in order to optimize benefits for future generations.



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About the Author – Elodie Vaz
Health journalist, CFPJ graduate (2023).
Élodie explores the marks diseases leave on bodies and, more broadly, on human life. A registered nurse since 2010, she spent twelve years at patients’ bedsides before exchanging her stethoscope for a notebook. She now investigates the links between environment and health, convinced that the vitality of life cannot be reduced to that of humans