Girl Gymnasts Often Found To Be Shorter Than Normal

Dec 16, 1993

M.R. Hiller

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation: United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Q: Our 12-year-old daughter trains 30 hours per week at gymnastics. My wife and I are concerned about her height and weight (4 feet 6 inches tall and 67 pounds), and limited eating. Neither of us are small people. Her coaches are nearly phobic about body fat. Could training be the cause of her not growing? If so, once she quits the sport, can she resume normal growth and achieve full height? Are there other problems that can result from heavy training of a young athlete? - Frederick T., Houston

A: Studies show that the combination of heavy gymnastic training and insufficient food intake can affect a girl's immediate and her adult height. Other health concerns for gymnasts include problems with the wrists, elbows and spine.

Similar problems have not been seen in male gymnasts.

Gymnastic training alone is not known to stunt girls' growth. But gymnastics success requires a certain body makeup - narrow hips and a high center of gravity, which allow the athlete to perform the sport's elaborate flips and twists. Under the current rules of the sport, 70- and 80-pound gymnasts under 5 feet tall dominate.

However, this girlish body composition is the genetic norm for few women. For most young gymnasts, the hormonal changes of puberty, which should start around age 12, bring growth and other physical changes, such as widening hips and a shifting center of gravity. And these changes usually reduce their success in competition.

Trouble starts when a little girl, driven by coaches' and parents' expectations and her desire to succeed, begins to eat abnormally, unknowingly preserving an unnaturally pre-adolescent figure.

Several studies have shown that nearly a third of young female gymnasts and over 65 percent of collegiate female gymnasts have some type of "disordered eating" - irregular eating, bulimia (eating, then vomiting) or anorexia nervosa (self-starvation). These disorders rob the body of the nutrients needed to work out and grow, and can result in acid burns in the esophagus and throat from vomiting; hormonal changes such as the absence of menstrual cycles; shortness of stature; heart failure; and even death.

A series of studies has shown that growth is delayed in girl gymnasts with nutritional deficiencies who train more than 18 hours a week; the question remains whether the growth deficiency is permanent.

A recent Swiss study compared the growth potential of 22 gymnasts training more than 18 hours per week with that of 21 swimmers training eight hours per week. It found that the gymnasts had far less body fat than the swimmers and would be 1 to 2 inches shorter than expected.

The work was done by Dr. G.E. Theintz, department of pediatrics at Canton University Hospital in Geneva, who suggested the cause was the inhibition of the hormone system by exercise and dieting.

Theintz's study was published in the February 1993 issue of Journal of Pediatrics.

What researchers don't know is whether the nutritional problems of the young gymnasts will cause any permanent effects other than being shorter than they might have been.

"I wonder whether we are creating a group of young women that will be scarred for life," said Dr. Kimberly Yeager, assistant director for public health practice at San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health, in an interview.

Beyond the nutritional issues, other problems that can be caused by heavy gymnastics training include:

-- Overuse syndrome: The pounding of the sport's acrobatics and hard landings can damage bones, cartilage and growth structures in wrists, elbows, shoulders and ankles. Sore wrists and especially sore elbows should not be ignored.

-- Osteoporosis: All women lose bone density after age 30. When a gymnast's poor nutrition leads to the delay of the start of menstrual cycles, bone loss can occur more rapidly. However, bone tends to increase under weight-bearing activities, and gymnastics places loads of up to 10 times the body weight on shoulders and legs. Osteoporosis is difficult to research and experts aren't sure whether it's a problem for gymnasts.

-- Spine injuries: Even though gymnasts might suffer through many backaches during their careers, studies of them after they retire do not report an inordinate amount of back problems compared to the general population. Compression fractures of the spine, as with other bones, do occur, primarily as a result of falls or "missed moves."

Overall, experts agree that nutrition is the primary problem facing gymnasts. "We see gymnasts who regularly eat half the calories they should," Yeagar said.

"The gymnasts that diet are the ones that seem to have a lot of physical problems," said Dan Benardot, nutritionist for the U.S. women's gymnastics team and a researcher in the department of nutrition and dietetics at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "We have to teach all gymnasts to eat correctly."

For free information on nutritional aspects of gymnastics, call (415) 853-2882.

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