& Osteoporosis
Women Runners, Amenorrhea
& Osteoporosis
These conditions - the cessation of menses and loss of bone mass - can be caused by many things, including quite serious medical problems - this page is not a replacement for seeing your Doctor. However, this web page has several articles around the effects and causes of these conditions and we hope you find it helpful.
Menstrual dysfunction and runners
No one knows the precise extent of the condition, but experts believe that as many as 44 percent of athletic women experience changes in their cycles or have seen their periods stop--known as amenorrhea--at some time, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
And it is not as benign a condition as most women believe. It can result in fertility problems--making it difficult to get pregnant--and osteoporosis, causing fractures in the short-term and possibly even in the long-term.
To be sure, amenorrhea is not a new phenomenon. Since the 1970s at least, clinicians and physiologists have been aware of it among dieters and physically active women, such as runners, ballet dancers, gymnasts and others. In recent history, amenorrhea has been linked to weight loss and low body fat, whether caused by eating disorders and dieting, high-level physical training, emotional stress or a combination of all of these factors.
But the absence of periods has been known since the dawn of time, long before the introduction of ultra marathons and the Ironman. It has been observed over centuries during periods of war, famine and extreme deprivation--among survivors of concentration camps, for example--when fertility was sacrificed for survival.
Today, however, the condition may have more to do with society's "thin-is-in" attitude of "the ideal woman as reflected by waif supermodels," noted Randy Eichner, M.D., of the University of Oklahoma Medical Center, in a paper recently released by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute.
"Girls and young women driven to excel are led to believe that the thinner they are, the better they will perform, and the better they will look doing so," he says. "They increase training and cut calories in a race to win and in a race to be thin."
Amenorrhea, which is related to a disturbance in the body's complex hormone regulation system, occurs not only in elite athletes, but also in girls and women who participate in a wide range of physical activities and who often regard themselves as "average" athletes.
While experts agree that it is important and beneficial to keep running or maintain some kind of regular physical activity, they have come increasingly to believe that there is a fine line between a level of training that is healthy and one that can lead to problems--among them, reproductive difficulties and osteoporosis. And the point at which women cross this line may vary from one woman to the next.
As Eichner points out, "in antiquity, a 35-year-old was a tribal elder, so these women died before they got osteoporosis." These days, as women live well into their 70s and even longer, osteoporosis has become more prevalent and a growing concern.
Ironically, studies have shown repeatedly that women who engage in weight-bearing exercise, such as running, can prevent osteoporosis. But experts now believe that, among women who take their training too far--to the point where hormone regulation is disrupted--the very opposite can result. "Many women have assumed that menstrual dysfunction is a normal aspect of training, and they view themselves in all other ways as being healthy," says Anne Loucks, Ph.D., associate professor of biological sciences at Ohio University in Athens . "But when their skeletons have been depleted to a level where they are experiencing an increased rate of stress fractures or the early onset of osteoporosis, that is a very serious clinical condition."