Article: Discovering RED-S: How the Female Athlete Triad Gave Way to RED-S
This article was written by Julia Gralki. Julia wrote to me asking if I would be open to being involved in a project she was completing as part of her studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the United States. Julia is a fantastic writer and has wonderful, and informative, articles on RED-S, along with other pieces relating to endurance exercise and health. I recommend you check out her work!
Article on Beyond Limits
This is the first part of the series “RED-S: About the Pressure to Perform and Athletes Who Change the Narrative“
The first modern Olympic Games in 1896 were held without women. Four years later, women were allowed to compete in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, golf, and equestrianism. Out of 997 athletes, 22 were female.
But this isn’t an article about gender equality in sport. Rather, this is a story about a condition that was discovered because women were allowed to compete in sports: the female athlete triad.
“It was first described back in the 1980s by Barbara Drinkwater,” said Dr. Nicky Keay, a sports and dance endocrinologist from the U.K. In her more than 25 years of research, Nicky has had a tremendous influence on the knowledge of the female athlete triad and low energy availability in sport.
In 1992, the American College of Sports Medicine invited a group of experts to discuss the issue – and that’s when the term female athlete triad was coined: a triangle of disordered eating, amenorrhea and low bone density.
