Effects of Menstrual Cycle Phase on Recovery and ACL Injury Risk Factors in Female Collegiate Athletes

The purpose of this study is to analyze how different phases of the menstrual cycle influence physiological performance, recovery, and biomechanical factors that are closely correlated with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk factors in female collegiate athletes.

 

This study will specifically compare results from tests during the luteal phase (days 20-25) and early follicular phase (days 5-10). This project will continue with the Metabolic and Exercise Physiology’s lab mission to not only carry out vital and influential research, but to also educate the people who participate in our studies.

 

The goal for this project is to translate findings into a personalized education pamphlet based on each participant’s individualized results that will provide the athletes with guidance on sleep habits, nutrition, and training strategies aimed at injury prevention and peak performance.

 

Christine Yu, author of Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, noticed a pattern in sports medicine, nutrition, and sleep research. I noticed the same pattern while researching ACL tears in 2022 after I tore my ACL for the first time. She stated in the introduction to her book, “for decades, scientists have worked under the assumption that women and men are biologically and physiologically the same, if you just ignore the reproductive organs”.

 

However, this is simply not the case and injury rates prove this fact. Women are 3-6 times more likely to tear their ACL. Despite this only 6% of ACL research focuses on women (West). In the Women’s Super League (WSL) an ACL is ruptured every 1,188 minutes, while the league’s male counterpart, the English Premier League, only experiences an ACL rupture every 8,550 minutes. These statistics are staggering and we want to help the female athletes at Binghamton learn to train most effectively based on their performance and their cycles.

 

This project will allow us to study the female athlete more holistically than ever before at Binghamton and ultimately allows us as an institution to work together to close the gap in female physiology research.