Female Health: Periods, PBs and Extra Pounds

I've read a lot of articles on this topic on social media etc recently. It's scary to think that so much of your bone strength is laid down before your mid-twenties - exactly the time of life you're NOT thinking about the future etc!!

I was also really surprised to hear female runners could become ammenorrheic at relatively high / normal weights / bmi-s; I'd known about the female athlete triad for years but imagined it only affected elite athletes training very hard and with very low body weight, but (& I can't remember which episode this was!) there was a discussion on Marathon Talk recently and it seemed to suggest that it was very individual - some runners were losing their periods if their body fat went below about 20-21%, whereas others were perfectly healthy at 15% body fat. So it's worth keeping an eye on energy levels / periods etc even if you wouldn't consider yourself high risk. Also, I heard another interesting interview on 'Running on Om' podcast last year, where Lauren Fleshman was answering a query from a runner who was finding it hard to get pregnant - the runner asking the question was a recreational runner, not an elite, and wouldn't have considered herself underweight, but the advice was still to cut back on training / eat different foods / refuel after training etc etc.
Sorry, that's all very vague because I haven't included links (I THINK the Marathon Talk one was ep 408 with Liz Yelling), but to make my rambling point shorter: as well as young, elite, very light runners being affected by RED in running, it's something all women probably need to bear in mind if they're exercising and trying to conceive, and all runners probably need to pay attention to their diets / bone healthy etc. (For those of us who already eat enough, but are getting on a bit - me - a bit of strength work to preserve the bones we have probably wouldn't go astray either!)

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

12% body fat for women is a critical threshold, anything below that is actually unsafe and dangerous.

Even 15% is very low. A woman with 20% body fat would still be very lean and that would be a typical value for an (amateur) athlete, so I have serious doubts about those numbers. Anybody recommending numbers like 12-15 is grossly irresponsible.

Thanks! That’s what I thought - it was just a bit unclear - she said (& it was a video blog so that must be why I misunderstood) that a certain level of essential fat was necessary. Then in a new sentence said they’d recommend 12-15%. That must have meant 12-15% essential fat was recommended.
I was just wondering, because a lot of the articles quoted earlier in the thread seemed to say it’s quite a fine line between being lean but healthy and going into RED and I thought 12 % sounded v lean (even for an Olympian or elite - plus I think elite athletes are at their leanest for competition etc, even they don’t maintain those levels year-round.
Btw I was only asking generally because of the topics covered on this thread, I’m nowhere near those dangerous levels myself, nor am I aiming for them!
Thanks for the responses

Annie get your Run wrote: »

I’ve tried taking iron a few times over the years but it seems to have a negative affect on me (them again so have multi vits) I was assured on more than one occasion that levels were fine although I understand that ferritin (?) levels are not checked in normal bloods. I doubt my diet is any better than anyone else’s although I do eat quite an amount of broccoli!

I think everyone must just process the vitamins / minerals etc in food differently. I've been vegetarian for decades, and I look kind of pasty and anaemic, so doctors etc always think my iron will be low, and it never is - I'm bursting with iron, apparently. And like you, I don't take any special pains with my diet.

Runners do seem to get more anaemic, or at least I hear my running friends talking about it more, but I don't know if that's RED, or footstrike anaemia, or if it's just that as runners we're more tuned in to how we feel / our energy levels, so a runner might go and get checked out for drop in energy levels that might pass a more sedentary person by?

I know someone (who does run now, but wasn't running when this happened), who put her tiredness down to winter and minding a toddler for ages, until a blood test picked up very low B12 and she instantly felt better when that was replenished. But probably someone in marathon training would have noticed the dip in energy levels sooner as they're expending more energy?

Anyway, just came on to boast about my high iron levels