Sport: The Female Athlete Triad

There are many female athletes that participate in sports today. While physical activity can bring a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, it can also bring on psychological problems. There are certain pressures that come with competing and with that can come a sleuth of problems. The purpose of this paper is to examine what is known as the Female Athlete Triad. Our goal is to get a better understanding exactly what female athletes go through and how societal factors, such as the media, can affect them.
Female athletes suffer from what is known as the female athlete triad due to their excessive training and extreme dieting. There are also instances of abuse of diet supplements and laxatives. Some of the athletes affected by this are high …show more content…
These factors are a result of minimal eating, constant dieting, and excessive training and exercise. Anorexia is the outcome of athletes who desire to perform better and believe that staying away from all bad foods will help them get there (Gavin, 2014). Excessive training also leads to amenorrhea which is the loss of their menstrual period, while osteoporosis is the outcome of poor nutrition and low calcium intake (Gavin, 2014).
There are some of the societal factors that promote the eating disorder among athletes. The book states that broader societal factors such as the way the media portrays thinness that are unattainable to the average person are significant in the development of eating disorders (Summerfield, 2015). This means that societal factors bring on a certain pressure to being thin and if it cannot be attained naturally, people will go through great lengths such as eating disorders in order to achieve their …show more content…
This is due to comorbidities and there are several types of them that are associated with eating disorders. One of those is cardiovascular disease. Some athletes develop cardiovascular disease through extreme dieting. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have the ability to weaken the heart and put strain on it. They can develop bradycardia or cardiac myopathy, among other things (Summerfield, 2015). We already noted that it can affect the endocrine system through amenorrhea and that it can also affect the muscle skeletal system through osteoporosis, but it also can affect the kidneys digestive tract. The book states that digestive tract could be damaged by the consumption of very little food, periodic food binges, abuse of laxatives, and frequent self-induced vomiting (Summerfield,