Is Aunt Flo a Fan of a Good Hard Workout?
Disclaimer: This article is about women and their “time of the month” so if you don’t want to read about it, please stop now. I mean, I would hope that you knew what this article was about from the title but I wanted to make sure.
So, while I was checking my email this morning Yahoo suggested some reading material as I waited for some pics to upload. This tasty tidbit of information supplied by my emailer of choice did catch my eye, seeing as how I am always interested in ways to skip out on my workout program even though I want to lose the weight. I don’t know, I guess that is just how I am. Anyway, according to Yahoo, this article was going to tell me everything I ever wanted to know about whether or not working out while on “that time of the month” for us women made us more prone to accidents. It said so right on the little link. I had so much hope for it. I really did.
Well, anyway, I did click on the link. And that brought me to the above article that is the pretty blue link right there in the previous paragraph I just wrote. And do you know what I found out?
…
Nothing. We go back and forth in a relatively long article about women’s health and sports and menstruating, but no conclusion is ever drawn. In fact, this article is so watered down and middle of the road that I didn’t even want to read the whole thing. But I did. Unfortunately. And I walked away from it knowing the same thing I knew before I read it, just robbed of 7 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Damn you, Yahoo!!!!
Here are some snippits for you, just to give you an idea why you don’t want to read Yahoo’s article, in case you felt the need.
Some, though not all, studies have found an increased risk of injury during certain parts of the menstrual cycle.
Hmm…some, though not all, eh? Wow, that is some pretty potent journalism. Let’s check another direct quote:
Again, the studies find inconsistent effects of uncertain importance.
This sentence is particularly good for me. This sentence means nothing. Really. I mean it. Inconsistent effects of uncertain importance? I really think this sentence should never have been written. It has absolutely no meaning. When writing papers for high school or college we would call this “fluff” or “filler”. Lots of pretty 50 cent words that come together to mean a larger word count and a longer paper to fill our goal of 5 pages when we only had four and a half. And just one more quote for you before I go:
There is no compelling evidence that exercise or athletic activities should be avoided or altered based only on the phase of one’s menstrual cycle. Promising research suggests that muscle strengthening may prevent ligament injuries, and this may reduce risk more than trying to synchronize exercise around one’s periods.
This whole article they are trying to convince you that despite there being no actual proof that women’s sports injuries are tied to the menstrual cycle that they must be tied to the menstrual cycle. And now, the final two sentences state the opposite of the whole article. And they are just as vague and noncommittal.
Here is the bottom line: women get hurt more around their periods when working out because they get frustrated much more easy. They get upset quicker and are much more rash then they would be if they were not on “the rag”. Hormones and emotions are out of control and they push themselves too hard or whatever. That is my hypothesis. And I think it’s already better then the whole article on Yahoo. Mind you, I have no medical training whatsoever. I am just a woman, and I am pretty sure that my hypothesis is just common sense.
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The Yahoo article is kind of useless. It does bring up one good point, which is actually true, but the whole article is purely arbitrary. It brings up the fact that rigorous exercise, like the type that anorexics or hard core cross country trainers and the like do, breeds grounds for amenorrhea, loss of your cycle. Usually amenorrhea is caused by hormonal imbalance, but it can also be caused by extreme stress on the body like extreme exercise.
I get a little frustrated with Yahoo answers sometimes when they try to help people self diagnose incorrectly or do idiotic things such as not exercise during their menses. When it comes down to it, you’re right. Women are not on top of their game during their cycles, so they are probably asked by coaches to not perform in competition. It just brings about more stress to the body if it has anything to do with exerting yourself more.
Yahoo should just continue to report on things that they can handle…like Angelina Jolie and her bodyguard or the baby mama drama with Britney Spears.
November 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm