If a female athlete injures their knee, it’s off to the specialist for scans. But what if that same athlete struggles with debilitating period cramps?
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The answer for many has been to simply push through the pain – regardless of the lasting impact it’s having on their body.
It’s the taboo subject we don’t want to discuss, but women’s health – particularly menstrual health – is just as important to an athlete’s career, and now there’s a new alliance pledging to do more to open that stalled conversation and help educate the sporting world.
The Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) – combining leading health practitioners and sports scientists from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand – has been launched to help female athletes overcome prevalent health issues to reach their full sporting potential.
One athlete who described the new alliance as “game changing” is Paralympic swimmer Monique Murphy, who opened up on her debilitating five-year ordeal that involved no less than 14 doctors in a bid to finally find the answer to her pain.
But it cost her successful career in the process.
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STAR’S STRUGGLE LAID BARE
Monique Murphy is no stranger to pain – having survived a shocking fifth floor balcony fall from a suspected spiked drink that left her fighting for life in hospital. But the goal-orientated swimmer was determined to return to the pool, despite the amputation of her right leg below the knee.
With her mind focused on Paralympic glory, Murphy didn’t have her menstrual cycle for almost two years.
Describing it simply as “convenient” for a swimmer, there was a tough battle to come for the now 30-year-old 2016 Rio Paralympic Games silver medallist.
“Everything was quite focused on learning how to walk again, getting a prosthetic, fixing all the broken bones. I remember, even then, being concerned about my period – it was a function that my body sort of automatically shut down, because it wasn’t a necessary function after a trauma like that. I just remember having this gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right,” she told Fox Sports.
“When you look at it, we’re not educated about female health in the ways that we should be … so suddenly missing a period is actually quite convenient – you don’t have to deal with it, especially as a swimmer. When I mentioned it to doctors, it wasn’t of any concern. My body was just going through so much.”
But after one particularly “stressful” camp, Murphy’s menstrual health took a turn as her period returned.
“I just remember the sort of full body sickness of that experience. My heart rate was over 180 in warm up, and I just could barely function,” she recalled.
“I was bleeding a lot longer than normal.
“When I told the team doctor – it was about a week before we headed off to the Paralympics … she didn’t even make eye contact with me. That’s how insignificant the conversation was. And they said ‘Oh, your body has finally recovered from that accident. So that’s great’. And I was like, ‘I feel like I just woke up from my coma! I feel horrendous, and I’m about to go into this Paralympic competition feeling like this’. I was so overwhelmed and nervous and confused, and then I’ve got a doctor just wishing that experience to the side, and it really was like, I just have to push it to the side in order to be able to compete.
“It was very clear that my health was not a priority.
“Unfortunately, moving forward over the next few years, as the symptoms only got worse, that was just constantly reinforced.”
The diagnosis of endometriosis, and then adenomyosis finally came after years of struggle.
But by then, the damage to her swimming career was done.
“It was incredibly isolating to go through it because you were really made to feel less than for not being able to just deal with your period,” she said.
“They didn’t understand how severe these symptoms and these conditions actually are.”
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GAFA TO THE RESCUE
Launched on Friday, the Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) aims to advance female health and performance worldwide by providing athletes, coaches and support staff access world-leading evidence, performance insights and best-practice information all in the one place – and for free.
Dr Rach Harris, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Female Performance Health Initiative Project Lead, said the alliance was crucial given how much misinformation and at times, lack of information there is for female athletes and their support teams.
Dr Harris said it was important to also note how important female-specific medical study was – rather than just relying on using what works for male athletes.
“There was a real knowledge gap between what we thought our athletes knew about how their bodies were moved, and particularly in regards to things like pelvic floor health, breast health, even the way that their menstrual cycles worked,” Dr Harris told Fox Sports.
“What we’ve started to notice is that these conversations are breaking down taboo, are breaking down barriers; we’re finding that athletes are more likely to start questioning whether or not what’s happening in their own body is normal.
“We’re also starting to note that just the baseline knowledge of people within the system and the structures that sit around them is improving as well. Having said that though, there is still huge amounts of information that we really need to find out.
“Only around 6% of sports science and sports medicine research is actually based on female athletes, so all of the critical information that many of our athletes are relying on is actually being done in men.
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“We really need to make sure that we are pushing forward in this space, not resting on our laurels just because we’re launching this alliance, but making sure and progressing the space so that our female athletes are able to perform better, and also, critically, they’re optimising their health now and also into the future as well.”
Dr Harris revealed a lack of education in women’s health was contributing to some alarming results – such as gymnasts as young as 10 or 11 experiencing urinary incontinence and “leaking” during competition.
“If they don’t know that’s not normal, then they’re not necessarily going to talk about it,” she lamented.
“We also have issues in terms of we’re not asking the right questions, and there’s resourcing reasons that we don’t necessarily ask all these questions as well.
“We want to normalise these conversations for female athletes and also the people that support them, and also for sport, to understand that these are important topics for us to talk about. Again, it’s not just about performance. We want to optimise the health of our athletes now and long into the future as well.”
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Looking back, Monique Murphy can see the long-lasting negative impact endometriosis had on her swimming career, and that the mindset of simply “pushing through” is not going to cut it moving forward.
“I’m someone who fell from a fifth floor balcony – I’ve had my leg amputated, countless surgeries, and I would still have my coach come up to me and go, ‘Are you sure you’re in pain? Are you just sore today?’,” she said.
“So to have people constantly question it, because if you can just push past it, that makes everyone else’s job easier. I would constantly downplay it (the pain and discomfort). And it wasn’t really until I got my diagnosis, which took 14 doctors and five years to get, I felt that validation and realisation that I’m allowed to feel this pain and acknowledge it, and this is serious, and my career is not worth this pain.
“It felt like, from a coach’s perspective, I’m better off putting my time into another athlete that’s not so difficult, because it’s not like I rock up to training with my asthma flaring up, and then I go to the doctor and I get my medication (and) you’re all good in a week.
“The process is not that simple when it comes to endometriosis. It’s just very taxing and tiring on everybody.
“We put so much trust and faith in our coaches – what they say has incredible power. So when they tell us that we need to push through the pain a lot of the time, we do listen, and we need to remember that they don’t have medical knowledge.”
Murphy said any alliance that will help aid the education around female athletes and the challenges unique to women will only improve the sporting world.
“I’ve met so many other female athletes who are struggling with endometriosis, because as soon as you start to share your experience online, people reach out to you and the need is there, and it is so important that we provide these athletes with this resource,” she said.
“Not just to validate their experience and build their confidence and get the care that they need, but it’s also a resource that they can send their coaches so that the coaches can take some ownership on getting themselves educated and knowing how to best support their athletes.
“I think that’s what is going to be really, really pivotal.
“When I look back at what I went through – ultimately, I did end up with a hysterectomy which was a really challenging and difficult decision to have to go through – I can’t change anything that happened to me. But we can make sure that the next person’s experience is a better and a positive one.
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“Unfortunately, I’m still hearing stories where athletes are in need of more, and I think this alliance is what’s going to really help close that gap. And it’s just important we prioritise this, we make sure it’s utilized and supported, and that we throw it around like confetti.
“I do believe you can have something like endometriosis or PCOS or any one of those wonderful conditions that women are lucky enough to experience, and be an incredibly successful athlete, and that’s what I really look forward to seeing.”
Dr Rach Harris agreed it was an exciting time for the growth of women’s sport.
“We absolutely would love to collaborate on a multi nation research piece that, in itself is going to take some investment – and we will get there – but we’re not quite there yet. That is definitely some of the dreams that we have for where the Global Alliance for Female Athletes will head up,” she said.
For more information on the GAFA and information available, go to www.yourgafa.com
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