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Injury Risk During Menstruation
Puffy knees, aching joints,
sprains, strains, and tears. While these pains are usually attributed to
"over doing it", researchers have found that workout and sports
related injuries may be triggered by changes in hormonal levels during the
menstrual cycle.
Studies have shown that women can
be up to 800% more susceptible to athletic related injuries than men. To find
out why, researchers began to zero in on the menstrual cycle as a possible
answer.
At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, women
who suffered non-contact tears of their
anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), were asked to provide a detailed history of their menstrual
cycles, including frequency and regularity, date of last menstrual period,
average length of cycle, premenstrual symptoms, and oral contraceptive or
hormone replacement use. When compared to the timing of their injuries,
researchers were surprised to find that women were more likely to injure
themselves in workouts or sporting activities during menstruation with more
injuries occurring during the ovulatory phase.
Hormones reeking havoc on
injuries
The hormones estrogen and relaxin
negatively effect injury healing. Estrogen, in both endogenous estrogens
(naturally produced in the body) or exogenous (birth control pills or hormone
replacement after menopause) inhibits the growth and repair of
connective tissues (collagen,
ligaments, and
tendons). Relaxin, causes laxity in ligaments
and tendons and is at its highest levels during pregnancy to allow the pelvic
ligaments to loosen up so the newborn can be born through vaginal delivery. To
prepare for the possibility of pregnancy, relaxin increases coinciding with
the menstrual cycle causing a systemic relaxation or laxity in all the soft
tissues of a woman’s body.
Since workout and sport
activity's beneficial effects of muscle growth and strength involves the
breakdown of collagen tissue in muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joint
tissues, in order to rebuild new and stronger tissue, an understanding of how
to counteract the effects of hormones is needed.
Tips To Help Avoid Injury By
Counteract Hormonal Effects
1. Lighten or avoid working out
during the peak estrogen and relaxin days
During a normal menstrual cycle,
relaxin levels are highest during the middle of the luteal phase of the
menstrual cycle (days 20-23). Estrogen concentration rises during day 10 and
peaks on day 12. By avoiding heavy or any workouts on these days, the greatest
risk of injury can be avoided.
2. Watch Your Eating Habits
Avoid foods that may increase
estrogen levels, such as food heavy in sugar and watch your in take of
caffeine. Do not binge eat or binge starve.
3. Drink a lot of water.
Collagen is made up of nearly 70%
water by weight. Drinking filtered or natural water should be considered your
number one defense for preventing workout and sport injuries.
4. Go to the bathroom.
Drinking a lot of water also has
the beneficial effect of increasing your number of bowel movements. Increase
your intake of raw vegetables and roughage. Bowel movements eliminate toxins
in the body. Too many toxins, among other things, increases the levels of
estrogens.
5. Talk to your physician about
contraceptives.
Many doctors and researchers have
speculated that oral contraceptive pills are a risk factor for low back and
pelvic pain among women. The theory proposes that steroid hormones affect
joints and ligaments, leading to joint laxity and
low back pain. Increasingly
many physicians now feel that the estrogen "overload" caused by the
pill are why many women suffer chronic injuries and pain. In Sweden, many
general practitioners, gynecologists, and orthopedists, recommend that some
women with back problems abandon their use of oral contraceptives.
6. Talk to your physician about
Progesterone
Progesterone, a naturally
occurring hormone found in wild yams, is often prescribed to help stimulate
the body's own progesterone production and keep the estrogen in check.
Progesterone and estrogen are involved in a delicate check and balance system
during the menstruation cycle. If this balancing act is disrupted, with
estrogen being dominant or progesterone being deficient , severe symptoms of
PMS may develop. These symptoms of mood swings, cramping, and migraines should
alert you that you are at high risk for injury during your workout.
7. Talk to your doctor about
Prolotherapy
Many women will continuously push themselves
through chronic pain and injury because of their need to continue aerobics,
tennis or other activities. They will continue to do so until one or more joints
become so painful that they can no longer perform the activity. In this
situation a trip to the doctor will usually mean a suggestion of surgery,
NSAIDS (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), or
cortisone shots. Since
NSAIDs and cortisone shots have come under attack in increasing numbers in
numerous medical journals for their side effects, and the thought of surgery
and missing time from work scares away many others, sufferers have begun to
look at other options.
One procedure is usually rarely
prescribed because of the limited amount of physicians who can perform the
technique (presently about 300 in the United States) is
Prolotherapy.
Used in conjunction with a
nutritional and hormonal supplementation plan, the rebuilding process of
Prolotherapy
treatments results in new ligament growth which can be 40% stronger than the
original ligament. Consequently, the physical structure supported by this
connective tissue becomes stronger and more stable, thereby eliminating or
greatly diminishing the pain triggered by the corresponding nerves and muscles
and quickly returning people to active sport participation.
Prolotherapy is not an immediate
cure although many patients report it is. Usually treatments require two or
three sessions over a six week interval. As reported in the prestigious
medical journal Lancet, Prolotherapy has been shown to effectively
eliminate chronic pain in over 90% of cases.
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