Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection

Women in Culture and Society

by Rose E. Frisch

Are girls entering puberty earlier than they used to? This question, which has been debated recently by doctors and scientists in the pages of Time magazine and the New York Times , proves that there is still a great deal to learn about women's reproductive health. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection is the record of one scientist's groundbreaking and decades-long work on the connections among fertility, body fat, and reproductive health in women.

Rose E. Frisch explains here how, in women, a certain amount of body fat is crucial to the reproductive system and sexual maturation. Women who are too lean are infertile and cannot conceive children; young girls who are too thin have a delayed onset of their first period. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection illuminates how and why a "critical fitness" level underlies a woman's reproductive health. In the process Frisch gives readers a comprehensive view of the research done to date on the relationship between body composition and fertility and also describes her own journey as a woman scientist working to advance her critical-fitness hypothesis both to the general public and the scientific community. Frisch answers the questions every woman has about the desirable weight for health and fertility and even includes tables to help women find their own best weight. She also demonstrates how important diet and exercise are for the long-term reproductive health of women, and shows what factors influence the onset of puberty in girls.

Each milestone of the reproductive life span is affected by food intake and energy output, the factors affecting the storage of fat. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection is a cornerstone to understanding the health of girls and women.

Genres: Health

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2002

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read.

[M. H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of the book is about the science of menarche (the onset of menstruation). The most basic finding being that girls begin menstruation when a certain percentage of their bodies is fat, and a higher percentage of body fat is required to resume menstruation if the body fat percentage drops too low. The book is well-written for a science book; I wouldn't recommend it as idle reading.

I find this book fascinating. Some of the more esoteric aspects uncovered by Rose Frisch in her research is that some body fat produces estrogen; also some body fat produces an enzyme that inhibits appetite AND is connected to sexual maturation. The long arms and legs of ballet dancers is the result of delayed puberty (due to lower body fat percentages) which delays when their bone marrow changes. Exercising levels high enough to delay menarche until the late teens or early 20s (or just interfere with "regular" cycles) dramatically decreases the likelihood of having breast cancer in later life.

And then there's this tidbit: Elephants go through menopause; and a troupe with post-menopause elephants will be healthier because those elephants will remember where the best watering holes are.