Low energy availability, not the stress of exercise, affects the release of reproductive hormones in women. It has traditionally been thought that low body weight or the stress of exercise can affect a woman's reproductive hormones. Recent research indicates that this is not the case, and that the cause of these disorders is diet, says Anne B. Loucks, Ph.D. Dr. Loucks, Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University, will discuss these research findings at the 2000 Intersociety Meeting of the American Physiological Society.
Athletic women display a disproportionately high prevalence of amenorrhea.
If this hypothesis were true, the appropriate intervention to prevent or reverse menstrual disorders in athletes would be to moderate the exercise regimen. If this hypothesis were true, the appropriate intervention would be to eat more. To test the hypothesis that LH pulsatility is disrupted by low energy availability, the subjects' dietary energy intakes were controlled. To test the hypothesis that LH pulsatility is disrupted by the stress of exercise, the researchers compared the resulting LH pulsatilities to those previously reported in women with similarly contrasting energy availabilities who had not exercised. Study results indicated that exercise appears to have no effect on the release of LH beyond the impact of the energy cost of exercise on energy availability.