Edited by Dr. Giovanna Taranto
WHO HITS?
In high-level sports where a slender body is required, capable of performing great performances such as the jumps of artistic gymnastics or dance, and the power in some specialties of athletics and swimming, the athletes, often very young, must maintain a weight optimal body, often resorting to crash diets.
The Triad does not only concern high-level athletes, but any woman who trains excessively without adequate daily caloric intake, that is, eating inadequately.
The most recent studies have shown that it is not sport itself that is the real cause of the disorders related to the triad, but an imbalance between the energy spent on training and those introduced through the diet.
WHAT IS THE TRIAD?
It is a set of physical and mental disorders which includes:
- Eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, ED-NOS)
- Menstrual cycle disorders (oligomenorrhea, amenorrhea, anovulatory cycles, LPD)
- Various degrees of decrease in bone density (osteopenia, osteoporosis)
HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?
Usually the first problem concerns nutrition, so you start to have a bad relationship with food, going from avoiding some foods considered too caloric, to the real obsession that your body is never thin enough.
Not all subjects have the same symptoms, and not all become anorexic, each individual is a case in itself.
EATING DISORDERS
They have been divided into different types based on the characteristics of behavior, they all derive from a state of psychic suffering of the person who does not accept the shapes of his body and tries to control (by decreasing it) his body weight at any cost.
BED (binge eating disorder) can be identified as the first step towards more serious disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa, even if it often goes unnoticed. It consists of recurrent binges of food (at least twice a week) whose characteristic is the loss of control over food, which in that moment has only positive aspects; the person who binges does not think about the negative aspects that his behavior can have on the state of health. .
The phenomenon of binges can easily lead the person to behaviors such as induced vomiting, the use of laxatives or drains or any other means to expel from the body everything that was introduced during the binge. This characterizes Bulimia Nervosa.
Anorexia Nervosa is the most serious disorder because it can lead the subject to literally let himself die of hunger. The anorexic subject always sees himself overweight even if his body weight is 15% lower than the norm!
In addition to the aforementioned eating disorders, there are others that are grouped into eating disorders not otherwise specified (ED-NOS: Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified).
In some cases, eating disorders are diagnosed following the absence or irregularity of the menstrual cycle in the athlete.
What triggers the triad, in fact, is not so much the eating disorder itself, but the energy imbalance, therefore even subjects not suffering from mental disorders, which then lead to eating disorders, can incur in the Triad due to too intense training. combined with a "disordered diet that leads to an inadequate quantity of available energy.
The human body has control systems capable of blocking the functioning of some physiological mechanisms when the available energies are barely sufficient for the maintenance of vital functions, such as normal cellular function, thermoregulation, etc.
The athlete's body perceives the state of energy deficiency by blocking the reproductive system, the functioning of which requires a lot of energy, starting from the limitation of the production of sex hormones such as estrogen.
Other articles on "Female Athlete Triad"
- Female Athlete Triad - Amenorrhea and Menstrual Disorders
- Triad of the female athlete and peak bone mass
