DO FEMALE ATHLETES HAVE MORE TROUBLE GETTING PREGNANT LATER ON?

DO FEMALE ATHLETES HAVE MORE TROUBLE GETTING PREGNANT LATER ON?

WHAT CAUSES FEMALE ATHLETES TO HAVE TROUBLE GETTING PREGNANT

These are the issues that make it difficult for women of normal weight to get pregnant if they engage in extensive exercises.

1. Reduced fat cells

When preparing to get pregnant or compete in athletics, the body requires more fat stores to be in an optimal range. This might be the reason when lean women who engage in vigorous exercise too much take longer to conceive. About five hours of exercising a week are too much intense exercise should only take four minutes two to three times a week. This moment of work out for a female athlete is too short. They must work out extremely hard and for a longer time to improve endurance and be at the top shape to compete. Running on a treadmill for just an hour five days of the week makes it harder to conceive yet some athletes run for more than this period.

2. Disturbance of the monthly exercise

It has been clear for long that strenuous exercise may cause disturbances to the monthly cycle causing lack of ovulation and menses. It also caused fertility problems. These issues are common among the competitive female athletes and severe in marathon runners. A study by an associate professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, Lauren Wise suggests that high-intensity exercise may also disturb implantation. Implantation takes place when a fertilized egg attaches itself to the uterus.

3. Energy deficit

An energy deficit occurs when the energy intake does not meet the requirements .metabolism of the stored energy in the form of body fat, glycogen and protein accounts for the deficit. The reproduction system is extremely sensitive to energy deficit, and it might not perform optimally to allow conception. It might be a good reason because the body attempts to conserve energy by shutting down some systems like the reproduction.

Reaction to energy deficit works like the way female bodies were acting during ancient age during a famine. The reproductive system would turn off after walking for long to gather bare minimum calories. The turning helped in survival by preventing reproduction until the body accesses adequate uninterrupted energy as it indicates there are enough resources for feeding children.

Exercises among women have much benefits to overall health, well-being and competition fitness for professional athletes. The development of an energy deficiency because of inadequate energy intake to compensate for the exercise energy expenditure and this might lead to menstrual dysfunction. It is now clear that stress of the exercise does not cause reproductive dysfunction but an attempt of conserving energy. Metabolic adaptations reacting to an energy deficiency alter a normal production and reproduction hormones at all the levels of hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian (HPO) axis.

Estrogen and progesterone concentrations decline as a reaction to energy deficiency leading to a spectrum of exercise associated with menstrual disturbance (EAMD). A spectrum of EAMD includes: