The awareness and perceptions of undergraduate women on the health implications of menstrual dysfunction and its relation to exercise

The female athlete triad is the phenomenon in which female athletes are at an increased risk for menstrual dysfunction, disordered eating, and decreased bone mineral density due to the stress of exercise and/or sports participation. The menstrual dysfunction aspect of the triad is particularly important to highlight due to its positive perception among many female athletes, causing female athletes to fail to report menstrual dysfunction, ultimately increasing their risk of psychological disturbances and stress fractures when menstrual dysfunction is left untreated. There is a gap in the literature examining non-athletes’ knowledge and perceptions of menstrual dysfunction in relation to exercise and stress. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of non-athlete, college aged women’s attitudes and knowledge regarding exercise induced menstrual dysfunction. Eligible participants (n=381) completed a short survey adapted from Feldmen et al. (2011), addressing knowledge of exercise induced menstrual dysfunction and its health consequences as well as attitudes towards menstrual dysfunction. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics on knowledge and attitude scores and linear regression models to determine correlation between specific survey questions. The results demonstrated that overall knowledge was shown to be significantly correlated with overall attitude (p=1.028e-09; R2=0.09994), menstrual dysfunction is related to perception that menstrual dysfunction is normal (p =1.49e-10); however, menstrual status did not have a significant effect on knowledge (p =.365). Furthermore, 29.1% (n=110) of the total sample reported experiencing oligomenorrhea (irregular menstruation) which is far greater than the national average of 13.5% in the general population (Riaz & Parekh, 2023). Additionally, 4.23% (n=16) of the sample reported experiencing amenorrhea (absence of menstrual bleeding), which is slightly higher than the national average of 3-4% (Practice Committee of American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2008). The high percentage of individuals with amenorrhea and oligomenorrhea demonstrate that this is a pressing health issue for non-athletes of college age. These findings and the need for increased menstrual education at the college level to improve the health and care-seeking tendencies of college aged non-athletes will be discussed in this presentation. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.