Common Health Issues Female High Performers Have

In this episode of "Spirit of an Athlete," host Amanda Smith, owner of Body Whisper Healing and creator of the Heal to Grow system, discusses common health issues faced by female high performers, including athletes, entrepreneurs, and executives. She covers physical challenges like ACL tears, stress fractures, and the female athlete triad, as well as mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and overtraining. Amanda emphasizes the importance of recognizing these issues and seeking help, advocating for a holistic approach to maintain both physical and mental well-being.

In this Episode:  

• Introduction to Health Issues (00:00:20) Overview of common health issues faced by female high performers in sports and business.
  
  
• Physical Challenges of High Performers (00:01:41) Discussion of physical injuries like muscle strains, ligament sprains, and stress fractures.
  
  
• Mental Health Issues (00:02:40) Exploration of mental health challenges, including anxiety, depression, and overtraining.
  
  
• Link Between Physical and Mental Injuries (00:03:12) Explanation of how physical injuries can lead to mental issues and vice versa.
  
  
• Female-Specific Physical Issues (00:04:47) Focus on ACL tears and their prevalence among female athletes due to bone structure.
  
  
• Understanding Stress Fractures (00:05:58) Description of stress fractures, their causes, and the importance of rest and proper form.
  
  
• The Female Athlete Triad (00:07:28) Introduction to the triad involving menstrual irregularities, low bone density, and disordered eating.
  
  
• Mental Health Challenges for Female Athletes (00:09:32) Discussion on anxiety and depression faced by female high performers under pressure.

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Transcript

0:04

So. What are the most common health issues female high performers might deal with? That's what we're covering this week on spirit of an athlete. I'm your host, Amanda Smith, owner of Body Whisper Healing and creator of the Heal to Grow system and the Gutsy Chick Quiz. Check those out at Body Whisperer healing.com. That's right. On this episode, I am going to cover the most common health issues that female high performers have to deal with. First, let's cover what a high performer is. High performers in this scenario are going to be high performing athletes, college pro level, or even athletes who are going after college or pro level play. Or I'm also going to be talking about entrepreneurs since I am one, and leaders executives, those are my high performers. So when I say that word, hopefully you guys can sink into. That's what I'm that's who I'm talking to and what I'm talking about. Okay. So we're going to break this into physical and mental so that we can quickly go through it. First I'm going to highlight some of the physical that all high performers tend to deal with. And then we're going to dive into what female high performers have to deal with. So when it comes to physical, these are the obvious ones. Your team, your coaches know something's wrong. The most common. for high performers are muscle strains and tears, ligament sprains, stress fractures, concussions. Arthritis. Arthritis, they say, is a repetitive strain. So we could lump that into sprains and strains. And now the physical or excuse me, the mental mental health issues that high performers deal with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, burnout, performance anxiety and substance abuse which could get lumped into the physical as well. Overtraining is also an issue that high performers deal with. Overtraining could be both mental and physical, so it crosses that barrier between the two, Who actually. Let's talk about that for a second. Most physical injuries create mental injuries, and most mental injuries create physical injuries. It's a whole chicken in the egg thing right there. So just know if you have a physical injury you're probably dealing with a mental injury as well. If you have a mental injury you're probably dealing with a physical injury as well. And overtraining. Overtraining shows up as fatigue, lack of of solid performances, increased injury risk, and something called overtraining syndrome, which is a mental issue. Okay. Let's dive into the female side of this. I specifically work in Body Whisperer Healing with females. I do also work with males, but I target females in my work. Here are the female physical issues that might show up for high performers. An ACL tear. Anterior cruciate ligament in your knee. No less. I have done this. I tore my ACL back in 1999 and then had a second surgery in 2001. I was a high school athlete and then a college athlete when those surgeries happened. ACLs. The reason that this seems to be coming up for females specifically, is their bone structure and the fact that they're not meant to be doing sports according to their bones. Isn't that crazy? I was told when I came out of surgery, the very first thing that I was told by my dad was, you're probably going to blow your other one. Knock on wood. I did not blow my right ACL. At least as far as I know. My left, however, they reshaped the bone during surgery so that I wouldn't tear my new ACL, which happened to come from my patella tendon. My kneecap tendon. So they turned a tendon into a ligament. Very exciting stuff. ACL tears. The way to work through this with female athletes in particular, is to strengthen the glute medius. Pay attention to gait, how they walk, how they run, or their toes pointed in. That was what I was doing called pronation. Or are there toes pointed out? Both of these indicate that there are weak glute medius, which is your rotator muscle, and your glutes strengthen those. There are a ton of ways to strengthen glute medius, but that is generally one of the biggest reasons, besides bone structure, why a female athlete would blow her ACL. I was pigeon toed, is what they call it. But pronated. And I very athletic in that that way to move. But it was not efficient for my knees. And my knees took the hit and I blew my ACL are the next physical issue that female high performers deal with are stress fractures. Stress fractures are when the bone is being tugged on and actually breaks away from the rest of the larger bone, and this is due to overuse, high stress, or again, poor form, poor form. The stress injuries that I witnessed and I did experience shin splints at one point. But stress fractures are fairly common in the shins for most female athletes. High performers. We need more rest. That's really what it boils down to. Um. And we need to work on our form. Those are the two areas that I would say go focus on fixing those two things, get more rest and work on your form to help stress fractures. Then we get into and dads, men who are listening to this episode. Strap on your woman hat. We're going to talk about the female athlete triad. This happens to executives and, um, entrepreneurs who are women because they're not paying enough attention to their body while they're doing the thing that they're doing. And high performing athletes tend to be more in the mental space than the physical space. So the female triad is irregular or absent menstrual cycles, low bone mineral density, and disordered eating. They come in three as an athlete. In high school, I was not getting enough calories and I was exercising anywhere between 6 and 8 hours a day and I was having irregular and absent menstrual cycles. This was definitely something that contributed later to bone issues, stress fractures that showed up in college. And as I go into perimenopause and menopause, this is something that I'm monitoring in my own body because I know I was a part of this. Disordered eating comes in many forms. So let's let's mention those forms really quick. Anorexia. Bulimia. Those are the two majors. And then I restricted caloric intake. And I wasn't purposely restricting my calorie intake. I didn't even know what that meant. In high school and most high school athletes don't know what that means. But I definitely wasn't getting enough calories to sustain all of the work that I was doing. And what we're finding more and more is that females need more calories than what we're giving ourselves. Okay. And now we jump over and we kind of have in that triad into the mental side, some of the mental things that mental health issues that female high performers are dealing with anxiety and depression. Top of the list. As high performers, we put a put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And as that pressure builds and we don't process it in a healthy way. Anxiety comes in. Anxiety can show up as anxiety performance, or it can show up as this internal rage going on when we're practicing by ourselves, or we're practicing with our teams and we're just putting a mask on so that we don't outwardly show that we're very frustrated with ourselves. This was definitely something that I struggled with big time as a high school and college athlete. By the time I got to college, my anxiety was really taking me out of my game. It was taking me mentally out of how well I could perform at Division One, and eventually I left Division one because the coach really didn't like how I was treating myself either. Overtraining. Overtraining is number two on this list. Overtraining Looks like I'm going to go from volleyball practice to basketball practice to softball practice, and then to the weight room and rinse and repeat on a daily basis. I was a three sport athlete, and so that kind of looked like my summers. And it was it was completely and totally overtraining. And the way this shows up for female athletes is stress fractures, eating disorders, missing periods. Those are all the signs. Helping yourself out in this scenario looks like really assessing how much you're working out and how much is necessary, and then becoming more efficient at what you're doing. And if you're a multi-sport athlete paying attention to what sport is the most important in the season, that it's the most important. That's a tricky balance, and it really does take some outside help to see this, and also to figure out how to plan what you need to be doing. And then eating disorders. This we've addressed in the female athlete triad. But eating disorders, when we're high performing executives, sometimes we skip meals because we've got work to do. And skipping meals when we're trying to work optimally, mentally it has. It takes a toll on us, especially long term. Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia generally have a lot to do with body image and pressures to make weight for certain sports, pressures to look a certain way for certain sports like cheerleading, swim wrestling, where we're wearing skintight outfits that show every ripple. Body image is definitely part of the eating disorder category. In my humble opinion, body image spurs eating disorders and vice versa. Eating disorders spur body image disorders. Woof. If you notice that you're you're a person who tends toward one of these issues. Reach out for help. That is by far the best way to help yourself in this situation. It's hard to see the trees in the forest. It's hard to see yourself and analyze yourself. If you're always in the thick of it, if you're always going and doing the sport, or always going to work, or always showing up for your clients if you're in a service Industry. Let's. Let's recap really quick. So the physical injuries that female high performers are dealing with are ACL tears, stress fractures, the female athlete triad which involves skipped or irregular menstrual cycles, eating disorder and low bone mineral density. You can find out more about your mineral density by taking a test, going to your doctor and having them test your minerals and your vitamins, and checking to see where is your folate level, your B vitamins, where's your calcium level at? Those are some of the indicators of low bone density issues. And then jumping into the mental side. We're looking at overtraining eating disorders anxiety and depression. I hope this helped you assess where you're at with all of these things and ask yourself, do I need help with any of these things? Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for listening to spirit of an athlete. If you want to find out what part of your mindset might be holding you back from healing, but has helped you as an athlete, go check out the Gutsy Chick quiz at Gutsy Chick Quiz. Com. And if you would like more of me, you can go to Body Whisper Healing and read my blog. Check out other podcast episodes. Find out how I work with my clients, and much more. Thanks for listening to this episode.