I disagree this is a "fashion" thing. Not all eating disordered women are motivated by the same thing and female athlete triad is not all about getting into a size 0 dress. It is about ideals of performance, a desire for physical control and mixed messages that women often receive about athletic bodies (like jokes that the Williams sisters look like drag queens or that muscular women are unattractive). It belongs in sports and health, too. This is a cycle that a lot of athletes I've known (including myself) have fallen into--and I know it is quite common among some wrestlers. Some people can do cycles of training where they push their bodies to perform and then they can physically and psychologically pull back in the off-season and save their bodies but not everyone can. It would be nice for more coaches to read about this to look for signs. I wish it had been in sports for this reason. I think the point of the story is that people look for body dysmorphia among models and the painfully thin but athletes may not show the same signs and symptoms.

The fashion page is THE ideal place to print this information. Look at it this way, who needs to see it more -- the kind of woman who wants to slip into a designer size-4 dress, or the kind of woman who reads the health page?

Sue

Where I went to high school, it was known that the best of our track girls were anorexic or bulemic and did not get their periods. Our team was top in the state, male and female, because the coaches pushed so hard to preserve their reputations. The damage they did affected both the boys and the girls - my brother began smoking, and gave up the chance at track scholarships to good schools because he was so sick of running. A friend didn't get her period for over nine months and treated it as a joke. Her sister was bulemic. And no one did anything about it. Later, one of the top girls went to college and had similar problems. No one helped her until she broke her ankle. Then she got treatment for her over-exercising and anorexia. It's a real shame that more coaches don't stand up for their athletes.

I was a healthy 140 pds and 5'6 when I started running the 100 meter hurdles for a AAA level College in the 90's. My coach told me I was too fat to run in meets and until I hit 125, I was not allowed to compete, despite the fact that my running times were highly competitive for our league. Since I wanted to run, I starved myself while training 3-4 hours a day. My grades suffered as well since I could not concentrate on class or finishing assignments. It is not wonder that female student athletes who face the pressure the be thin and be at the top of their sports have so many injuries and miss their periods. This is the dark side to womens athletics at the College level.

I agree that we want to avoid eating disorders, but in many sports the only way to be competitive at an elite level is to have such low body fat that amennorhea (sp?) is common. It's possible to train like that for a season or an event, then take it down a notch and start menstruating again pretty easily. Training very hard in the build-up to a specific event - the Olympics, for example - isn't something anyone can maintain long term. It takes a toll, on men and women alike. As long as an athlete is carefully supervised and monitored, it's all a safe part of striving to be the very best.

The FDA has gone beyond even the "Seasonale" type pills that give 3-4 periods a year. Induced amenorrhea can be perfectly healthy, and we have known it for years. Any woman can get rid of her periods completely safely if she likes by taking the white pills in a birth control pack continuously without the low- or no-dose estrogen pills in the last week. My wife for one hasn't had a period in five years due to a typical IUD with a progesterone coating, and it is approved and safe.

lots of women are being encouraged to be on regimens which cause them to stop having periods and suffer the health consequences of doing so in the name of female empowerment/equality. Interestingly it is probably fine to stop having periods if it is done via the right kind of hormonal manipulation but NOT if it is a result of too little body fat.

It is very disturbing that some women are overexercising to the point of permanent injury, and it is important to realize that obsessive exercise can be a form of eating disorder. However, as an anthropologist I would disagree with the assumption that the only healthy way for a female body to operate is monthly menstruation. In many societies, including hunter-gatherer societies whose dietary, reproductive, and exercise patterns are most representative of the bulk of modern humans' existence (140,000 years or so), women menstruate infrequently. This is due to later puberty, low-fat diets, exercise, and nursing each baby for up to 5 years. It does not appear to have negative health consequences; the absence of menstruation does not necessarily indicate pathology. Our society is actually an anomaly. Western girls are hitting puberty at younger and younger ages, which seems to be linked to higher body fat ratios. Due to birth control, lack of exercise, and short breastfeeding, women in our society feel it is "natural" to menstruate every month, but this is actually highly influenced by cultural factors.

Even the FDA has recognized that there is no inherent need to menstruate every month. Recently, they approved a birth control pill that allows women to menstruate less. For anyone interested in the biological anthropology literature on the topic of menstruation, check out "New paradigms for the female reproductive system." by Beverly Strassman 1999 Journal of Women’s Health, Vol. 8, pp 193-202.