Folic acid supplementation and amenorrheic women athletes.

Sometimes, young sportswomen do not eat enough to remain thin and efficient. If their calories intake is very low, menstruations can stop like a postmenopausal woman because of low estrogen levels.

This can have repercussions on their health : osteoporosis but also heart diseases because of bad vascular function.

 A this study has determined if folic acid supplementation improves endothelial vascular function in runners.

Ten amenorrheic and 10 eumenorrheic women runners were treated with folic acid (10 mg/d) for 4 weeks. Brachial artery flow-mediated dilation was measured before and after folic acid supplementation.

Brachial artery flow-mediated dilation, an indicator of vascular endothelial function, improves in amenorrheic female runners after short-term supplementation with folic acid. There were no changes in eumenorrheic women.

As a lot of women athletes are amenorrheic, acid folic supplementation may be an easy and cheap way to protect them against some heart diseases.

Bibliography

Hoch, Anne Z; Lynch, Stacy L; Jurva, Jason W; Schimke, Jane E; Gutterman, David D.
Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 20(3):205-210, May 2010.