© 2001 the British Journal of Sports Medicine
Commentary
Winterbourne Hospital, Herringston Road Dorchester DT1 2AR, UK gynaecology2@hotmail.com
see also page 242Female athletic activities have now achieved widespread social acceptance. Although one of the greatest public health problems is the lack of exercise, exercise induced menstrual abnormalities can produce serious life threatening abnormalities as well as subfertility. It is accepted that different levels of exercise as well as different types of exercise can cause different effects on the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis.
This paper by Ramsay and Wolman helps by providing another small piece of the jigsaw in this fascinating area. The authors do allude to body mass, but the role that this has is still under debate. There appears to be no critical fatness threshold for the maintenance of menses that is applicable to athletes in general.1 A popular theory has maintained that low body fat is the cause of amenorrhoea and 22% body fat is thought to be necessary to maintain regular menstrual cycles. This
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Br. J. Sports Med. 2001 35: 242-244.
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