Look at Allie O

Who cares who you support? You have absolutely no effect on Allie or any decision she makes. You are a nonentity in her life.

Thank you for your post. I ran between 80 and 100mpw for years and never missed a period. I was about 5'4" and 103-105lbs. I don't know my body fat%, but I do know that my body weight and composition are healthy for me. I never tried to reach a goal weight or restricted food. This is just what my body is like when I train at a high level.

The trick is this: body weight does matter, but a person can't force her/himself to reach an arbitrary goal weight if it's inconsistent with what their body needs.

If I had to bet money, I'd bet that the vast majority of consistent, high-level female distance runners get regular periods. We hear disproportionately from the ones who don't because they end up suffering terrible consequences and want to draw attention to ED warning signs.

journals.humankinetics.com

Body Composition, Energy Availability, Training, and Menstrual Status in Female Runners

Johanna K. Ihalainen

Purpose: To determine body composition, energy availability, training load, and menstrual status in young elite endurance running athletes (ATH) over 1 year, and in a secondary analysis, to investigate how these factors diffe...

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Purpose: To determine body composition, energy availability, training load, and menstrual status in young elite endurance running athletes (ATH) over 1 year, and in a secondary analysis, to investigate how these factors differ between nonrunning controls (CON), and amenorrheic (AME) and eumenorrheic (EUM) ATH. Correlations to injury, illness, and performance were also examined. Methods: Altogether 13 ATH and 8 CON completed the Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire. Anthropometric, energy intake, and peak oxygen uptake assessments were made at 4 time points throughout the year: at baseline post competition season, post general preparation, post specific preparation, and post competition season the following year. Logs of physical activity, menstrual cycle, illness, and injury were kept by all participants. Performance was defined using the highest International Association of Athletics Federations points prior to and after the study. Results: ATH had significantly lower body mass (P < .008), fat percentage (P < .001), and body mass index (P < .027) compared with CON, while energy availability did not differ between ATH and CON. The Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire score was higher in ATH than in CON (P < .028), and 8 ATH (vs zero CON) were AME. The AME had significantly more injury days (P < .041) and ran less (P < .046) than EUM, while total annual running distance was positively related to changes in performance in ATH (r < .62, P < .043, n < 11). Conclusions: More than half of this group of runners was AME, and they were injured more and ran less than their EUM counterparts. Furthermore, only the EUM runners increased their performance over the course of the year.

All I can say is Where were her parents? Where was her mother? It is normal for Moms to know when her daughters start. It is a shame that they ignored this obvious problem for so many years and it took her sponsor to address it. Was winning and scholarships more important to her parents than their child's health? Because I agree she will probably have ramifications from this her entire life. Including the stress fractures and injuries that seem to plague her. I hope she can reach her goals and am rooting for her.

Her mother was her coach in high school.

These are good questions.

I don't know if a female's bones can recover from undernourishment during important growing years. I have particularly heard age 18-22 are critical bone growth years for females. Allie may be plagued with bone injuries for the rest of her life. It's too bad her parents didn't intervene when she was in high school.

Allie's videos are refreshingly honest and hopefully helping other young females who are at risk for the same behavior.

Her bones probably won't become as strong as someone who never had an eating disorder, but bones can recover. Just as an outside observer, I'm pretty sure she has already decreased her frequency of injuries since her recovery. Her boyfriend also said as much in her most recent video, saying she was injured all the time in '21 when they met.

This describes what needs to be done to improve bone health besides eating enough and being ready psychologically:

blogs.bmj.com

Using exercise to improve bone health in athletes with Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport - BJSM blog - social media's leading SEM voice

BMJ

By Anna Boniface@AnnaBoniface Low energy availability (LEA) from insufficient energy intake to fuel training demands and daily physiological processes has a negative impact to multiple systems in the body (Mountjoy et al, 201...

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Female in my 20s. Struggled with amenorrhea for 3ish years in my teens before recovering my period around 20 (while running 70+ mile weeks in college). From my understanding, its all about energy balance. During this period, I ate much much more, but also lifted much more in the gym in the form of heavy squats and deadlifts. I had a DEXA bone density scan during amenorrhea and post amenorrhea. Thanks to the weight training and eating enough food, I managed to actually both DECREASE my body fat and INCREASE my bone density from below the mean to well above average. While I was younger than Allie is now, I definitely saw the impact of recovering bone density which I attribute to eating + lifting. Plus having recovered hormones took over 3 minutes off my 5k times (from a 19 min high schooler to low 16 collegiate runner).

In short, LIFT and eat a ton more than you think you need to!

Wtf!!! This is the sickest comment I have ever seen.

come on Brojos, make this the post of the week!

What government studies are you referring to?

Oh, please. this is one study with a total of 21 people in it (so, how many AME were there in total, how many EUM?), hardly proof of anything. And they used self-reported questionnaires. And they found elite runners were thinner than controls- a shocking finding! Do better.

There are multiple ones linked earlier in this thread. To summarize, the US Government says that the majority of female distance runners have irregular periods.

You "do better" by posting your own studies. You shoot down the women on this thread who have told you that they get regular menstrual cycles despite high mileage, dismiss evidence that amennorhea is widely-documented to be terrible for athletic performance, then shrug off a perfectly legitimate study demonstrating exactly these points. PS: good luck finding a lot of studies on elite athletes. There are relatively few in the literature.

In any case, maybe you should write a rebuttal to the journal telling them that their publication standards are weak. The other thing that you would know if you were well-versed in research is that detecting a difference in a small sample is more difficult than detecting a difference in a large sample. In other words, this is a low-power study that nevertheless found a difference in performance between girls who did and did not have regular menstrual cycles.

Out of curiosity, what is your alternative to self-report when it comes to menstrual cycles? Have you ever submitted a proposal to an IRB?

On what planet does the government track the menstrual cycles of female distance runners?

Our Government has been studying it for many years. There are dozens of studies readily available. Are you choosing to ignore all of them and just go with your feelings instead?

You seem to misunderstand the way scientific research works. Just because it's on the NIH website or NIH funded, it's not accurate to call it a "government study." What matters is if it's peer-reviewed and published in a reputable journal. One study you cite is in a Croatian journal and seems rather limited in scope. The other looks more robust, but it's not government funded -- it's funded by Northern Michigan University. Where the "dozens" of "government studies" are, I don't know, but you haven't shared any.

that said, you still haven't communicated what this has to do with Allie. Please go start your own thread (that we can all ignore).

Read sanchobaile's post about what a "government study" is. In addition, show me the study documenting that amenorrhea has either a neutral or positive impact on female sport performance. There's a world of difference between saying it's relatively common for high-mileage runners to have irregular menstrual cycles and saying that this occurence is healthy and conducive to competitive sport.

The jury seems to be out on whether amenorrhea is always associated with EDs or nutritional deficits, or whether some girls and women's bodies cannot tolerate high mileage. I have been arguing consistently in this thread that one can run high mileage and be healthy with a regular period. That doesn't mean that every girl or woman on the planet can. Maybe girls who are still going through puberty are especially prone to menstrual irregularities due to sport. I don't know, but I do know that it's dangerous to skip periods frequently. It's very likely that the vast majority of consistent and healthy female distance runners also get regular periods. This is not just an anecdotal argument or a guess. It's a logical deduction based on the available research showing that amenorrhea is associated with poor performance and injuries. Having a low healthy body weight (with regular periods) is very likely one of the many physical advantages a female distance runner can have. A lot of competitive female runners are healthy. I don't understand why some people cannot accept or handle this fact.