Sports Injuries Worse During An Athlete's Period, Study Says

Key TakeawaysSports injuries tend to be more severe if they occur during a female athlete’s periodAthletes take three times as long to recover from injuries that occur during menstruationLow estrogen, iron loss and inflammation might explain this, researchers said.MONDAY, Dec. 22, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Sports injuries sustained by female athletes tend to be worse during their period, a new study reports.Injuries are more severe and take longer to heal during menstruation, researchers recently reported in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.For example, female athletes took three times longer to recuperate from muscle, tendon and ligament injuries that occurred during their period.“Menstruation itself does not increase how often injuries happen,” lead researcher Dr. Eva Ferrer, a sports medicine specialist at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, said in a news releaseHowever, “the injuries that happened during menstruation caused three times more days lost than injuries occurring at other times of the cycle,” she added.For the study, researchers monitored 33 elite soccer players for Spain over the course of four seasons, from 2019-20 to 2022-23. Players kept track of their menstrual cycles for researchers, logging bleeding and non-bleeding days.By the end, the research team had data on 852 menstrual cycles, and the athletes had sustained 80 lower limb injuries, including 11 that occurred during their periods.About 23% of injuries occurred during matches, and the rest during training. The most common were muscle injuries (58%); ligament injuries (30%); and tendon injuries (13%).Overall injury rates were about the same, regardless of whether or not an athlete was having her period, researchers found.But it took players longer to recover from injuries that occurred during their period — 684 days lost per 1,000 training hours compared with 206 days lost for injuries that happened outside menstruation.There are several ways that a woman’s period might make it more difficult to recuperate from an athletic injury, researchers said.Low estrogen levels during a woman’s period might hamper the healing process by reducing muscle repair, causing more fatigue and pain, and affecting her sleep, researchers said.“Hormonal levels may not cause the injury, but they may influence how severe the injury becomes and how long recovery takes,” Ferrer said.Additionally, iron loss from bleeding might lower an athlete’s endurance and slow their recovery, and inflammation caused by menstruation might contribute to worse tissue damage in an injury, researchers said.Athletes can take many small steps to help protect themselves from worse injuries during menstruation, Ferrer said.“Small modifications such as longer warm-ups, adjusted high-speed workload, or added recovery support may help reduce the severity of injuries if they occur,” she said.Athletes in training also might consider adapting their schedules according to the phases of their menstrual cycle.“You do not necessarily need to avoid training during your period, but you may need to adapt it,” Ferrer pointed out. “Tracking your cycle and symptoms can help guide training intensity and recovery strategies.”Researchers noted that the study could not prove a direct cause-and-effect link between menstruation and injury severity, but only show an association.Further research involving more athletes is needed to better understand these potential injury risks, researchers said.In the meantime, coaches and athletes should consider integrating menstrual cycle awareness into their health monitoring, Ferrer said.“It supports a growing movement toward female-specific sports science instead of applying male-based research models to women,” she said of the new study.More informationJohns Hopkins Medicine has more on preventing sports injuries among female athletes.SOURCES: Frontiers, news release, Dec. 16, 2025; Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, Dec. 15, 2025 .What This Means For YouFemale athletes might want to consider factoring their menstrual cycle into their training regimen to prevent more serious injuries, experts say..Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter