College athletes are considered the elite or the best in their own sport among young adults and some will go to any length to be just that. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an athlete is defined as "a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, and stamina ("Athlete 85). If a person is not at his/her best physical strength, agility, and stamina, can they be labeled as an athlete? The health of athletes "has become of increasing concern as a growing subpopulation of athletes is suffering from anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and other disordered eating patterns (Thompson 317). Anorexia nervosa is the disease in which individuals starve themselves in fear of being too fat. …show more content…
Walsh believes that "although these athletes may not meet the criteria for anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and typically do not have disturbances in body image, behaviors and complications similar to those seen in full-blown eating disorders are seen (583). The Female Athlete Triad was initially described in 1992 due to a concern of the health of collegiate female athletes. Disordered eating, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis are the diseases that make up the Female Athlete Triad. "Disordered eating is described as a spectrum of abnormal patterns of eating, including binging, purging, food restriction, prolonged fasting, use of diet pills, diuretics, and laxatives, and other abnormal eating behaviors (Walsh 583). Walsh states that female athletes are more likely to develop amenorrhea, both primary and secondary, than their more sedentary peers (583, 587). Amenorrhea is defined as "the absence of at least three to six consecutive menstrual cycles in women who have already begun menstruating (Walsh 578). Osteoporosis is the third disease of the Female Athlete Triad. "Half of all amenorrhea athletes have bone densities at least one standard deviation below the mean (Walsh 587). Bone density may be decreased in the sites of the body subjected to impact loading during exercising putting these athletes at an increased risk of stress …show more content…
Everyday athletes that you may not think are doing anabolic steroids or the human growth hormone are the athletes who are the big users. 1. There are three major performance enhancing drugs that are used by the super star athletes: anabolic steroids, amphetamine, and the human growth hormone pills. 2. These performance enhancing are found in just about all fifty states and the problem is rapidly growing. 3. In almost every type of sport there is one form or another of performance enhancing drugs. Some of the most common sports you will find them in are the power/strength sports and the endurance sports. 4. Athletes may come up with the strangest ways of using the drugs that can sometimes be a major threat to their lives. 5. Drug testing is a way for the sports officials to weed out the users and severally punish them by throwing them off the team and sometimes expelling them from school. Performance enhancing drugs have a major impact on sports and athletes. The sports of today are experiencing more problems with performance enhancing drugs mainly because of the popularity of the three most common drugs: anabolic steroids, amphetamine, and the human growth hormone. Many of the so called jocks that play the rough and tough sports like football are the ones who are using anabolic steroids. There are different effects for men and women but all of the problems are very serious. Males are
Dr. Pietro Tonino stated that “College athletes are putting themselves at risk for health problems that could persist long after they graduate.” (sciencedaily.com). The college athletes today risk their health when they step onto the court or field for their college, and get little in return. According to sciencedaly.com, there was a study published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine. Researches at Indiana University organized an analysis of two groups of people. One crowd was made up of middle-aged college graduates who played division one sports. The supplemented group comprised of middle-aged college graduates who did not participate in sports. The study showed they were in much poorer physical condition, and agonized from a number of things including depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. The non-athletes portrayed much less signs of wear and tear.
With television and computer so common in today’s society, more and more people spend much time at home watching sport shows. Young children grow up with their heroes being famous athletes they see on TV everyday. These young children grow up wanting to be just like the people they have watched for years on television. Becoming a great athlete is a dream of many young people and also their parents. Because steroids have seemed to make it a lot easier for people to attain the goals they have set out to accomplish, many people have turned to the drugs to gain that goal. Without thinking about the physical side effects or the mental side effects that steroids can have on them, they are willing to risk all that to become bigger, stronger, or faster just to succeed in sports whether it be in junior high, high school, college or at the professional level.
Regardless of what sport an athlete is participating, once they reach a certain level there is an enormous amount of pressure. When an athlete is depriving himself or herself of food or making themselves puke after in taking food, they can start to go down a path of malnutrition, which will have a huge toll on their performance. Athlete’s battling eating disorders may experience symptoms such as anemia, muscle loss, osteoporosis, electrolyte imbalance, heart problems and hormone changes (Harms, 2012). A large majority of the time, when athletes are dropping weight they are going to end up developing problems such as fatigue, nutrient deficiencies and impaired growth which are only going ...
According to the Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy Review’s article on the female athlete triad, in the past forty years, American women have become increasingly involved in athletics as a result of laws allowing them to participate in sports. (Lebrun and Rumball) For instance, Cathy Rigby won eight Olympic gold medals in gymnastics during the ‘60’s and 70’s when these laws were just coming into effect. (Brunet) Nevertheless, there is an ugly hidden underbelly to the many benefits of women’s increased participation in sports. Many sports have very high standards for body image, which has led to the increasing prevalence of three “separate… but interrelated conditions” collectively known as the female athlete triad. (Lebrun and Rumball) Despite Cathy Rigby’s aforementioned success, an article by Dr. Michael Brunet reveals that she was severely affected by the most well-known of the female athlete triad: the eating disorder. This eventually caused her to suffer cardiac arrest twice. (Brunet) These effects are not limited to elite athletes, however; high school athletes are also affected by the triad, particularly those participating in sports “in which leanness is perceived to optimize performance” or which use “specific weight categories.” (Lebrun) The three components of the triad, osteoporosis, amenorrhea, and disordered eating, are increasingly becoming an unfortunate effect of distorted body image on sports.
Abstract: Since the beginning of sports competition, athletes have always looked for some kind of edge over their competitors. They will do whatever it takes to be one of the elite, and that includes injecting supplements into their bodies to make them bigger, stronger, and faster. Steroid use is probably one of the most common drug misuses in sports competition. Athletes found that with anabolic steroids, one could become a better athlete twice as fast. Not until 1975 was the drug first banned from Olympic competition because of the health risks it produced.
The most detrimental of these is the female athlete triad. This can have a significant impact on the lives of many athletes. The female athlete triad is when a female athlete’s energy intake is inadequate to meet energy expenditure. This can cause the reproductive cycle to be disrupted, and amenorrhea may result. Amenorrhea refers to the absence of menstrual periods and can be caused by intensive exercising, extreme weight loss, physical illness, and stress which can all be related to the female athlete triad ("Amenorrhea”). Female athletes may respond to pressure to meet unrealistic weight or body fat levels with excessive dieting. In both instances, the unintended effect can be a cascade of events labeled the female athlete triad. Inadequate nutrition for a women’s level of physical activity often begins a cycle in which disordered eating, amenorrhea and osteoporosis occur in sequence (“11
Why do female athletes receive less media coverage than male athletes? Male athletes dominate professional sport that airs on television. The media easily overlooks female athletes except during occasion like the Winter Olympics. The articles Media Coverage of Women’s Sports is Important (Lopiano, 2008) and Take Back the Sports Page? (Sommers, 2010) acknowledge factors that determine the amount of media coverage female athletes receive. [Lopiano and Sommers address this issue in regards to media coverage on female athletes differently. Lopiano focuses on the general message the media broadcasts and Sommers uses statistics to show the difference between female and male media. Lopiano and Sommers agree that the media considers female sports less valid. Both focus on different aspects such as problem and solutions and the different consequences of unequal media coverage]. The authors discover similar as well as different factors that contribute to the inequality media coverage of both female and male athletes obtain.
...is reducing food intake. When the young gymnasts restrict their diet, they do not realize how they are harming their body and how much danger they are putting it in. http://www.examiner.com/article/osteopenia-eating-disorders-and-teens also says, that once you have lowered your bone mineral density there in no way that you can get it back. This means that when you are classified with osteoporosis, you will always have it and there is no way that you can go back to having strong bone mineral density, and your body will be prone to fractures for the rest of your life. This disease makes your body very weak and fragile, which is opposite from a gymnasts ultimate goal of having a muscular and strong body. Overall, the “Female Athlete Triad” is a very serious condition, and it puts gymnasts bodies in a great amount of danger for injuries, or later in life complications.
Warren, B.J., A.L. Stanton, & D.L. Blessing,. (1990) Disordered eating patterns in competitive female athletes. Intemational Joumal of Eating Disorders, 9(5)
Unintentionally, a lot of us have been boxed into institutions that promote gender inequality. Even though this was more prominent decades ago, we still see how prevalent it is in today’s world. According to the authors of the book, Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree define gendered institutions as “the one in which gender is used as an organizing principle” (Wade and Ferree, 167). A great example of such a gendered institution is the sports industry. Specifically in this industry, we see how men and women are separated and often differently valued into social spaces or activities and in return often unequal consequences. This paper will discuss the stigma of sports, how gender is used to separate athletes, and also what we can learn from sports at Iowa State.
In a recent study, 403 participants were first asked to answer a short questionnaire regarding their gender, age, and physical exercise habits. They then completed a questionnaire regarding perceived characteristics of a sport. In this latter questionnaire, the respondent was asked to rate to what degree the descriptor is characteristic of the sport or those practicing the sport using a seven-point scale from 1 (“Not at all characteristic of the sport/sport participant”) to 7 (“Very much characteristic of the sport/sport participant”). For each participant, the sport to be rated was randomly selected out of 41 different sports, 19 of which had been previously labeled gender-neutral, 7 of which ha...
Media plays a large role in affecting peoples thinking, opinions, ideas, etc. In essence media can shape our thinking into negative views and perspectives that are typically not true. Sometimes the media plays as a puppet master to society. Specifically, the inequity of the gender roles within sports causes for a stir in commotion that calls for some attention. In doing so the inadequate misuse of media towards women in sports causes low exposure, amongst many other things. On the other hand their male counterparts are on the other end of the success spectrum. Because of this noticeable difference, it is vital that action is taken place to level out equality within sports. Due to the power of media, it is believed that a change in media coverage
Performance enhancing drugs are known to cause numerous diseases such as tumors, cancer, and can cause fertility problems. There are numerous cases of players dying or ruining their careers because they have gotten caught up in getting bigger and taking these drugs For instance in professional wrestling alone, 28 people have died because of PED’s (All of these people are died younger than 45 years old.) (wrestlinginc.com, 2010). There are hundreds of known PED’s. The most commonly used drug is steroids which gives you an increased risk of heart and liver disease. Players use this drug because it makes you have better endurance, it makes your blood flow faster and it makes you stronger. Another popular PED is Human Growth Hormone. This drug has been and still ...
Forty-eight percent of high school students use steroids to improve athletic performance. Steroids can increase performances for athletes but steroids also affect the mind and character of the person. Some effects of steroids are impaired learning and hearing, violent behavior, and overly aggressive behavior. When women take steroids they start to show signs of masculinity such as deepening of the voice, increase in body and facial hair also the skin starts to roughen. Anabolic steroids give the one who takes them an unfair advantage in athletic competition. The advantage that they receive is not the same as natural born characteristics of ability.
Whether its baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, or tennis, sports is seen all over the world as a representation of one’s pride for their city, country, and even continent. Sports is something that is valued world-wide which has the ability to bring communities together and create different meanings, beliefs and practices between individuals. Although many people may perceive sports to have a significant meaning within our lives, it can also have the ability to separate people through gender inequalities which can also be represented negatively throughout the media. This essay will attempt to prove how gender is constructed in the sports culture while focusing on female athletes and their acceptance in today’s society.