Menstrual cramps just don’t suit their style.
Female athletes react faster and make fewer mistakes during their period, even though they believe symptoms and feeling unwell will negatively impact their performance. According to a new study from University College London,.
“This research emerged from carefully listening to female soccer players and coaches,” Paul Burgess, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “We created bespoke cognitive tests to try to mimic the stresses on the brain at points in a match where they say injuries or timing issues occur at certain times in the menstrual cycle.”
The 241 participants, including several dozen men, completed mental tasks at 14-day intervals. The researchers used a period-tracking app to estimate the women’s cycle phases during the tests.
Participants also reported on their mood and symptoms.
One task tested inhibition, attention, reaction time and accuracy by showing participants smiling or winking faces and asking them to press the computer’s space bar only when they saw a smile, while another task measured spatial timing by asking participants to click when two moving balls collided on a screen.
Although participants felt worse and performed worse during their period, they also reported faster reaction times and fewer errors.
Their timing became an average of 10 milliseconds (12%) more accurate in the moving ball task, and they pressed the spacebar at the wrong time 25% less often in the smiley face task.
During the luteal phase, which begins after ovulation and lasts for 12 to 14 days before the start of menstruation, the women’s reaction times slowed, but they did not make more errors during this phase.
The researchers noted that much of the luteal phase is characterized by high levels of progesterone, “which exerts an inhibitory effect on the cerebral cortex of the brain.”
The cerebral cortex carries out important functions such as thinking, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and memory.
The findings were released Tuesday. The study, published in the journal Neuropsychology, claims to be the first to assess sports-related cognitive performance during the menstrual cycle.
“For example, there are many stories of women experiencing clumsiness just before ovulation, and our findings support this,” said study author Dr Megan Rowley. “We hope that if women understand how their brains and bodies change during menstruation, they may be able to adapt better.”
The study authors hope their work will spark conversations between coaches and athletes about performance and health, and they suggest that future studies measure participants’ hormone levels during testing.
The new study follows on from work at UCL The study found that soccer players were six times more likely to suffer muscle injuries the day before their period than during it.
“Each woman has a unique physiology, so it’s important to support and empower them in the right ways,” Dr. George Bruinbels, the study’s lead author, said last month. “If future research proves that there is an increased risk of certain types of injuries, active efforts should be made to mitigate these risks so that female athletes can exercise and compete whenever they want.”
