Women Archives - Bodyrecomposition

3 Less Well Known Benefits of Melatonin for Women

lylemcd — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 19:00:56 +0000

I daresay that melatonin is not the most exciting topic to be writing about in 2020 and you might wonder what I have to add. Well it’s a bit of an understatement to say I have an interest in women’s physiology.

And for that reason, I want to look at three (relatively) less well known benefits of melatonin for women. Since my voice is shot from singing karaoke (no really) and I wrote the article first, there won’t be a video.

Benefits of Melatonin for Women

Melatonin is a chemical produced in the brain that, among its other roles, regulates human sleep/wake cycles (see below). Certainly both women and men produce melatonin and it plays a similar if not identical role in both sexes. As well, there’s no doubt that it has potential benefits in both sexes.

So why am I writing an article specifically about the benefits of melatonin for women?… Keep Reading

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A History of Women in Sport: Part 2

lylemcd — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 03:19:48 +0000

In A History of Women in Sport Part 1, I looked at the changes that occurred during the 20th century in term’s women’s involvement and acceptance in sport. Today I want to follow that up by looking at the changes that have continued to occur into the modern era.

Women in Sport Part 5: The Modern Era

As I write this chapter in 2018, the status of women’s sport has changed even further with more progress having been made. At the Olympic level, women now make up 45% of the total athletes attending the games (3). A similar pattern is seen in American sports with 45% of both high-school and collegiate athletes being female (4,5). I have no statistics but get the sense that the same general pattern is occurring in many other Western countries.

In the same way, I suspect that those changes are still not occurring in less economically disadvantaged countries or where older social stigma still exists about what is and is not an appropriate role for women.… Keep Reading

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A History of Women in Sport

lylemcd — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 03:14:12 +0000

Today I want to post an excerpt from The Women’s Book Vol 2 (which will deal with training) which is A History of Women in Sport. Since it’s nearly 11 pages, I am going to divide it into two parts. Today I will look at the involvement, development and other aspects of women in sport from the turn of the century up until the start of the modern era and will finish next week with the modern era and beyond.

A Brief History of Women in Sport

In Volume 1 of this book, I addressed at least briefly that, for the majority of time sports have been contested, men have made up the majority of both competitors and coaches (it’s also likely that they were the primary audience as well).

Practically this means that the majority of athletes and coaches (and probably spectators) have been men which means that the approaches taken to training, diet, etc.… Keep Reading

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Women’s Muscular Potential

lylemcd — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 18:29:48 +0000

The following excerpt is from Chapter 18 of The Women’s Book Vol 1. The section was on the topic of goal setting and addresses the realities of women’s muscular potential in terms of how much lean body mass (LBM)/muscle they might carry. I addressed the topic in a slightly different context when I talked about genetic muscular potential and rates of muscle gain. But most of that information was discussing men. In general, women can simply cut the value in half. But this excerpt gets into it in a more specific way in terms of how much muscle a woman might realistically gain or carry.

Gaining Lean Body Mass

While the goal of gaining (or at least maintaining) LBM is an important one for all women, many readers of this book may only be interested in gaining relatively small amounts without huge consideration for the total amount that is or has been gained.… Keep Reading

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Why Isn’t There More Research on Women?

lylemcd — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 16:31:26 +0000

Since I got behind on writing this week (I had to set up for a 3 hour webinar yesterday), I’m running an excerpt from the forthcoming women’s book about research on women and why there isn’t more of it. It’s probably subtly different from what is actually in the book since I did a lot of rewriting but hopefully gets the concepts across. There’s exactly nothing practical here, it’s just kind of some interesting (I hope) blather to introduce the topic.

Research on Women: Part 1

For a number of reasons, a great deal of early research (with the possible exception of diet research) was done on males. This was especially true in the athletic realm and especially in the early days of sports science research. It wasn’t until about the 80’s when a great deal of the gender specific or comparative research really started to be done. But as more and more research started to develop that either repeated the same studies in women or compared men and women, it became rapidly clear that there were differences, some of which were subtle and some of which were distinctly not so subtle.… Keep Reading

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Female vs Male Physiology

lylemcd — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 16:45:28 +0000

Since writing The Women’s Book I get a LOT of questions about women’s physiology. While most are from women of course, I do get some from men. A specific question is how much of the information in that book applies to men with low testosterone and/or elevated estrogen levels. The answer is very little of it and to understand why I need to examine female vs male physiology.

Sex vs. Gender So I don’t Get Crucified by Jezebel

Strictly speaking, sex and gender are different. Sex is a description of biology: testicles, penis, ovaries and such. Gender refers to what someone identifies as sexually. A biological male can identify as a female and a biological female may identify as a male.

In research, scientists use sex and gender interchangeably with seemingly no general preference and I will too (as I do in The Women’s Book with the same pedantic note). I acknowledge and understand that they are NOT the same thing and it’s nothing more than a stylistic writing choice with no implication whatsoever that sex or gender are relatively more or less relevant or important than each other.… Keep Reading

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Body Fat, EA or Hormones

lylemcd — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 13:38:29 +0000

This is another excerpt from The Women’s Book, looking a bit at the cause of menstrual cycle dysfunction and, specifically, secondary amenorrhea. Even more specifically it looks at the cause of that dysfunction as it occurs in exercising women. Early theories revolved around body fat percentage although it would turn out that energy availability (EA) played a much larger role.

Some Definitions

Since this is a short excerpt from a much longer chapter, I want to define a few terms so it will make sense.

When a woman is menstruating “normally” this is called eumenorrhea (“eu” = good). In contrast, the lack of a menstrual cycle is termed amenorrhea.

Primary amenorrhea is when the onset of menstruation (called menarche) is delayed. As frequently as not this occurs in females involved in sports such as gymnastics, ballet, ice skating and other sports that “emphasize thinness” (as the literature puts it). Their intense training and dieting simply delay the normal onset of menstruation.… Keep Reading

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