rede da arteecal wrote:
SDSU Aztec wrote:
Her having five stress fractures is an opinion?
Your non-medical determination of the cause is an opinion.
Are you calling her a liar? She lost her period for three years and broke five bones during that time. it's called Amenorrhea. It's a dangerous health condition with one of the negative side effects being a loss of bone (osteoporosis) due to the decreases levels of estrogen.
Do you think it's normal for a female to stop having her period and to break 5 bones? It is not. As a doctor it's pretty obvious that something was wrong and the first thing we would look at is taking steps to restore her period - with athletes it's generally due to over exercise and not enough calories. For an athlete's heath and performance, and specifically to avoid them breaking bones and being out on injury, you want to restore normal monthly cycles.
I wasn't there and I do not know what happened (however, witnesses came forward that confirmed her account of what happened) but, if someone is going to coach female athletes, this is an area that is a normal cause for concern. If a female athlete sees me with a stress fracture, I absolutely ask about their period.
There are individual difference with regard to exercise amount and number of calories that can lead to a female athlete losing her period. I believe that age and the number of years taken to build to certain mileage amounts play a role in that difference, but, still, no two athletes are alike. Putting every athlete, male or female, through the same cookie cutter program will have different results - but I would say there is an added layer of difficulty in coaching female athletes because of needing them to be mindful of their cycle. I would guess that at that stage of Mary Cain's physical development she likely needed more time to progress and adapt before she could become competitive enough to win at a professional level. It likely wouldn't have mattered who coached her, she just needed some development time for her body to adjust. It does seems pretty clear that Salazar's program was the wrong program for her at that time of her life.