Fascinating Economist article on injuries in female athletes and menstrual cycle

[boatyardblues]

The article is about anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and the impact of the menstrual cycle on injuries during training. It underlined for me how crucial it is that we continue to use accurate definitions and language in scientific research and also flagged another sex-based challenge that female athletes have to contend with.

www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/06/18/acl-injuries-are-a-growing-problem

I’m not sure this will generate much discussion but it warranted a share. 🙂

I'm not subscribed so I can't read much. I think these results need to be highlighted so thanks for sharing. I'm not sure what to discuss though, because it's pretty cut and dry. I do wonder though if the article says which hormones are believed to play a role here and if that'll give rise to TW saying "See it impacts us too".

I also wonder if birth control impacts this as I believed most serious female athletes took birth control to limit the impact of hormonal fluxes plus the inconvenience of training and competing with periods.

I went to archive it and someone else had already done so. Does this work for you? archive.is/DaREA

It is fascinating, apparently it's one of the reasons why Chelsea w football club are so good:

www.chelseafc.com/en/news/2020/02/14/chelsea-women-tailor-training-to-players-menstrual-cycles

I got the app, it's really useful as I have hypermobilty and really notice how my joints are better at certain points of the cycle and worse at others.

Free and has nutritional tips too.

There's also implications for head injuries at different times of the cycle.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/mar/09/women-face-double-the-risk-of-concussion-in-sport-mps-told

The professor mentions the differing hormones during the cycle being important in the bit on WH.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d1z1

Looks also that the types of training exercises might not suit the female body as they will all be based on the male body. Sports associations must take this seriously and invest in research to find the best regimes for women as well as tailoring the timetable of training to take account of women's menstrual cycle. However, given the slow progress in getting suitable bras and even footwear for female sportspeople I am not holding my breath.

We are so far behind in research in all this. Decades behind.

It sounds like it might be the inflammation in the body around ovulation, which the Chelsea page mentions.

If you take ibuprofen during ovulation it can actually stop the egg being released I believe (not an effective contraception though!) and heavy periods can be slightly reduced with NSAIDs.

I have tranexamic acid on prescription for heavy periods but my GP told me ibuprofen could reduce my flow by up to 15% and to take that instead if I was caught short.

This is one of the reasons that I'm so concerned about women's sports.

For decades women were trained in the ways that were defaulted to the male style. We picked up injuries during our cycle, the ways that we were trimmed down to particular body compositions harmed us. There is a profound ignorance about the evidence-based way to train female athletees.

Article IX and more money in women's sports began to change that but at an astonishingly slow pace and it's still not trickled through to the general club level sports and activities IME.

If women's sports go - there will never be an incentive to understand the training needs of women and the influence of our hormones and our anatomical differences.

I could weep for the lost research.

[quote boatyardblues]I went to archive it and someone else had already done so. Does this work for you? archive.is/DaREA[/quote]
It did. Thanks. Very interesting indeed. Strange to see an article talking about women or bio sex without the need to dance around the language. Refreshing to read an article dealing with the actual issue for once!

Thanks for sharing boatyardblues. I think this should go into the break it down thread as it is so important. I will pop the archive link over there if I may.

Please do Helle. I didn’t create that archive link, someone else beat me to it.

Done. Thanks boatshed. It is excellent to have this evidence build.

It gets harder and harder to apply for kindness being the reason for inclusion when the known and provable risk of injury gets higher and higher.

Thanks for sharing this OP, its fascinating and as PP have said, such a shame this isn't researched and shared more widely.

I remember way back when I was on Twitter having an argument with a transwoman about TW in women's sport. She was saying that the cross hormones meant she had less testosterone than some women and that they also made her bones weaker and caused her to shrink . When I pointed out her perfomance would never be affected by a menstrual cycle she admitted its something she never considered.

Thanks, op. More more more sunlight

Interesting article.

I’d be doing quite a bit of reading about impact of mensural cycle and training as I was finding my own performance and recovery differing during my cycle last year and it’s something I hadn’t really considered before as I generally back to back the pill.

The fitr woman app says the pill can help a little to reduce fluctuations but there is still an impact / difference in hormones during what would be the normal cycle.

Really interesting, thank you for sharing.

Dr Stacy Sims talks about the changes puberty has on body shape and how they cause injuries, such as mentioned in the article. She suggests that this is one of the reasons that so many girls drop out of sport at puberty - they feel clumsy and unable to do moves that they'd been able to do for years. Her solution is that girls and women need to relearn safe movement post puberty to adapt to new body shapes.

As PP have said, it's a shame this is all so poorly understood, but at least it is starting to be discussed.

It’s really interesting, thanks.

I wonder if there’s another possible cause for so many injuries happening just before and around ovulation? Those are the days I feel very noticeably more energetic so I might be inclined to push harder in my training, possibly to an unwise extent. I wonder whether anyone’s looking at this as one possible contributer to the increase in injuries?

There's some evidence that the surge in oestrogen just before ovulation can increase injury risk, as oestrogen reduces the stiffness of tendons and ligaments.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.01834/full

I have been using this app since dropping clue. I particularly love the recipes and I find the information interesting and helpful. Great that it has the word woman in the title too.

I don’t think it is possible for transwomen to drop testosterone levels as low as the women’s normal range TheWeeDonkey so I share your at the idea of shrinking and weakening of bones. We do know that puberty blockers taken during childhood can impact bone density but that is obviously due to adolescence being a time of rapid growth and the deliberate interference with the child’s natural development.

I think it was the science of sport podcast where I heard that transwomen’s testosterone levels are remain higher than women’s and that there are health implications of lowering testosterone beyond a certain level apart from it being difficult to achieve. Also that the level of testosterone required for transwomen to compete in sports is significantly higher than any woman could has naturally.

I don't know if these researchers are being canny or have little idea what they're walking into:

twitter.com/BoisseauN/status/1406973364518916100?s=20

So MN thinks this thread belongs in Sex and Gender Debate rather than Feminism Chat? I'm furious.

How the hell is this in this section if my thread about periods and the covid vaccine remains in the Feminist Chat? Not angry with anyone on this thread, to be clear, just these new boards make ZERO sense to me.

This was in feminist chat earlier.

Honestly, everything will end up in Sex and gender thus meaning so many women will miss out on important info for their health if they've chosen to hide it

Mnhq you're going to have to think about this carefully.