Sports & Health

Playing a sport during the teen years is an excellent plan to maintain healthy habits throughout life. A sports schedule often dictates ample amounts of exercise on a balanced diet along with a steady grade point average. All of which are wonderful benefits. The teenage girl athlete will most likely be a happy healthy individual with a bright future. However, the push to succeed can lead to detrimental decisions that unbalance a teen’s life drastically. A girl who feels the push to succeed over stepping healthy boundaries could have Female Athlete Triad. A female athlete, regardless of age, is susceptible to a combination of disordered eating, amenorrhea and osteoporosis. Combining all three is the Female Athlete Triad.

Disordered Eating

Eating in a disorderly manner can be a simple avoidance of “bad” foods in an attempt to loose weight. While the other extreme is an actual eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. Regardless of the severity, fiddling with a girl’s diet is a slippery slope. A coach or teammate may say that losing weight could boost performance or the girl may need a boost in self-esteem. Whatever the cause, only girls who have unhealthy eating habits should ‘diet’. Excessive dieting leads to vitamin or hormone deficiency, both of which lead to a weakened immune system. Maintaining a healthy diet is crucial to an athlete’s success, especially for a growing teenage girl.

Amenorrhea

The amount of exercise it takes to maintain a sporty body must be in balance with caloric intake. Without the proper amount of calories to burn, the body begins to burn fat and muscle. If this continues a girl’s hormones will not regulate. Unregulated hormones lead to irregular or no periods. Within the first two years of a girl’s menstrual cycle, it is normal for skipping and irregularity. However, a girl with Female Athlete Triad will no longer get her period. Intense sports training may keep a girl’s first period from ever happening. A girl who never gets her period should talk with an adult or doctor. Likewise, a girl who has her period and then suddenly stops should also talk with a health care professional.

Checking with a health care professional about missing periods is important before jumping to blame the Triad. Something else could be happening, like pregnancy or another medical condition. Sexually active girls should be open with their doctors about missing periods as well as about their sex lives.

Osteoporosis

Poor nutrition and inadequate estrogen levels can also slow development due to vitamin deficiency. Low calcium levels lead to osteoporosis, which completes the Triad. This condition weakens the bones of a growing girl, decreasing density and making her more prone to stress fractures. Osteoporosis can bench an athlete for life, especially when developed as a teen. The teen years are when bone is at its peak mass. This condition will have long terms effects for a teenage girl.

The Female Athlete Triad is dangerous and subtle. All of the symptoms must be watched closely but can hide behind positive signs such as the appearance of physical fitness and improved performance. However, these signs will disintegrate as conditions worsen and a teenage girl weakens. A doctor and possibly a therapist will need to be present along with parental guidance to rectify Female Athlete Triad in a teenage girl.

Teens are not known for their balanced eating habits. If anything, they are more known for their horrible eating habits. Pizza for breakfast, late night binges on junk food and a sad lack of vegetables all cause a great nutritional void. Poor nutrition can often contribute to negative behaviors, so this is an issue that is worth addressing. Yet, how can you address your teen’s eating without making a battle out of it?

Keep the Home Food Environment Healthy

While it is true that your teen is probably going to choose junk when eating on the go, you still have control over the home food environment. If all you have in your home is healthy food options, like fruit, veggies and yogurt, your kid will have no choice but to eat healthy when he is hungry at home. Unless he has a drivers license and plans to drive to McDonald’s every time he is hungry, and has the cash to do so, he will have to choose to eat what you buy.

You can also make subtle changes to foods your family already likes. For instance, you can swap out white rice for brown or plain pasta for whole-wheat pasta in your family’s regular meals. If you make these changes a few at a time, your teen may not even notice.

Stick with Family Meals

Studies have shown again and again that family meals are the key to keeping kids healthy, even in their teens. Teens who eat family dinners frequently are less likely to engage in risky behaviors, including eating disorders. Also, when eating dinner as a family, you can encourage good eating by modeling it yourself. If you ask your teen to eat a salad, but you refuse to, they are going to resent the request.

Have Open Conversations

Make sure your teen knows why eating healthy is important. However, when you have this conversation, you need to be careful. Body image issues are rampant at this age, and your teen needs to know that she is loved no matter how big or small she is. You need to speak in a positive way about how food affects the health of the body, focusing on all aspects of health, not just weight.

Do Not Over Stress

Yes, nutrition is important, but remember that it is life long dietary patterns that make the biggest impact on health. Occasional negative changes are not going to have as big of an impact on your teen’s lifetime. If your teen simply will not make healthy eating decisions right now, it may not be worth destroying your relationship by forcing the issue. Provide healthy options, model right eating behaviors, offer enough family meals and have open conversations about food, and eventually your teen should come around.

Photo credits: Top © Monkey Business / Fotolia. Bottom © Anatoliy Samara / Fotolia.

Pimples, zits, and the pock marks that result have long been a sort of rite of passage connected with adolescence. Even though only a few get acne severe enough to be painful, most teens have to deal with this condition, to some extent. Thanks to modern medicine, today’s teens have the potential of skipping this embarrassing part of the growing-up process. While social discomfort related to self-image is typically the worst result of acne, the side-effects of popular acne treatments are sometimes much worse and can include depression and psychosis.

The main culprit for terrible side effects is isotretinoin, most popularly dispensed by the name brand Accutane. (Additional trade names include Amnesteem, Claravis or Sotret.) For those suffering from severe recalcitrant nodular acne, this relatively new drug seemed like a godsend when it was first approved by the FDA in 1982. For those acne sufferers whose condition resisted more innocuous treatment methods such as antibiotics, it seemed like a miracle drug. Part of a class of medications referred to as “retinoids,” the drug slows the production of natural substances causing pimples to form.

Anyone looking into the possibility of using Accutane will likely notice the many warnings and cautions regarding life-threatening birth defects.

Because of the high possibility of miscarriage or birth defects, preventive measures, such as two forms of birth control and pregnancy tests at monthly doctor visits, are required for female patients undergoing treatment with isotretinoin. In addition to such precautions, patients are required to register with the iPledge program, which was expressly developed for isotretinoin users.

In addition to issues related to pregnancy, the serious side-effects of Accutane are many. Using exact phrases from the U.S. National Library of Medicine:

• Changes in your thoughts, behavior, or mental health
• Loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy
• Crying spells
• Poor performance at school or work
• Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
• Sleeping more than usual
• Changes in appetite or weight
• Withdrawing from friends or family
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• Hallucinations
• Thinking about killing or hurting yourself

While many of the side-effects may already describe your troubled teen and may actually be increased by the acne itself, these risks are still noteworthy. Again, people taking Accutane must sign informed consent wavers before they’re allowed to receive prescriptions for the medication, and each prescription consists of only a 30-day supply with no refills, forcing you to revisit the doctor each month. While the supposed Accutane-induced suicides allegedly have little-to-no legitimate case, many class-action law suits have been filed against the makers of Accutane for a variety of reasons.

At the end of the day, acne ends up looking pretty harmless compared to its antidote, Accutane. Perhaps counseling your troubled teen about self-image would be a less damaging option. The goal with such counsel is to empower your teen with life skills that will outlast their acne troubles by far, equipping them to cope with much bigger problems in their lives.