The prevalence of disordered eating and possible health consequences in adolescent female tennis players from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Definition and Epidemiology of the Female Athlete Triad

“…In addition to the work of Coelho et al [17] and Hoch et al [19] as described above, Reed et al [22] and Da Costa et al [23] measured energy availability among female athletes. In a sample of 77 adolescent swimmers (age 11-19 years), Da Costa and colleagues found 16 (20.8 %) to have daily energy availability below 45 kcal/kg of lean body mass, and 6.5 % had daily energy availability below 30 kcal/kg of lean body mass [23].…”

“…However, only four studies assessing prevalence of all three Triad components have been conducted since the 2007 ACSM update [17,[19][20][21], and even then they did not all operationalize the constructs of the Triad according to the 2007 ACSM standard (see Table 1.1). One of these four studies, conducted by Schtscherbyna et al [21] in a sample of 78 elite female swimmers (mean age = 14.6 years, SD = 2.0 years), did not incorporate the concept of energy availability into the measurement of prevalence, assessing only disordered eating using three validated written measures of disordered eating risk.…”

“…Coehla et al [17] also used the 2007 Triad definition to assess prevalence of the Triad in a sample of 24 adolescent female tennis players. Although the participants were from only one sport and the sample size was small-thus producing imprecise estimates with wide confidence intervals-this study is notable because it is the first and only study to date to estimate the prevalence of the Triad using the spectrum concept.…”

“…A total of ten studies published since 1975 have assessed the prevalence of all three components of the Triad [16,17], with prevalence estimates for all three components ranging from 0 % in a sample of 82 physically active females (mean age 31 years, standard deviation (SD) = 7) [18], and 0 % in a sample of 15 women on a club triathlon team (mean age = 35, SD = 6) [19] to 15.9 % in a sample of 44 elite female endurance athletes [20]. However, only four studies assessing prevalence of all three Triad components have been conducted since the 2007 ACSM update [17,[19][20][21], and even then they did not all operationalize the constructs of the Triad according to the 2007 ACSM standard (see Table 1.1).…”

Factores asociados con la suplementación de la dieta entre los atletas brasileños

“…Perhaps without a support of qualified professionals, athletes tend to seek information from sources that are not always specialized in supplementation (3,13,16), such as the media, friends and coaches. Brazilian female tennis players who received counseling from a nutritionist did so through their own will and not due to encouragement from their team (23). A study on Canadian athletes showed that they would prefer to have an individual consultation with a professional nutritionist (3).…”