Female athletes react faster, make fewer errors on their period: study

So much for menstruation cramping their style.

Female athletes react quicker and make fewer errors on their period even as they believe their symptoms and lousy mood will negatively affect their performance, new research from University College London finds.

“This study emerged from listening carefully to female soccer players and their coaches,” senior study author Paul Burgess said in a statement. “We created bespoke cognitive tests to try to mimic the demands made upon the brain at the points in the game where they were telling us that injuries and problems of timing occur at certain times of the menstrual cycle.”

241 participants (including dozens of men) completed the mental tasks 14 days apart. The researchers used period-tracking apps to estimate the women’s cycle phase during testing.

The participants also reported their mood and symptoms.

In one assignment, they were shown smiling or winking faces and asked to press the computer spacebar only when they saw a smiley face, to test their inhibition, attention, reaction time and accuracy. A challenge that required them to click when two moving balls collided on-screen measured spatial timing.

Participants said they felt worse during menstruation and believed that it would weaken their performance — but their reaction times were faster and they made fewer errors.

Their timing was on average 10 milliseconds (12%) more accurate in the moving balls assignment, and they pressed the spacebar at the wrong time 25% less in the smiley face task.

The women’s reaction times were slower during the luteal phase — which begins after ovulation and lasts 12 to 14 days up to the start of menstruation — but they didn’t make more errors in this phase.

The researchers noted that most of the luteal phase is characterized by high levels of progesterone, and “progesterone has an inhibitory effect on the cerebral cortex” of the brain.

The cerebral cortex carries out important functions such as thinking, learning, reasoning, problem-solving and memory.

The findings were published Tuesday in the Neuropsychologia journal, with the researchers claiming their study is the first to assess sport-related cognition during the menstrual cycle.

“There’s lots of anecdotal evidence from women that they might feel clumsy just before ovulation, for example, which is supported by our findings here,” study author Dr. Megan Lowery said. “My hope is that if women understand how their brains and bodies change during the month, it will help them to adapt.”

The study authors want their work to spur conversations between coaches and athletes about performance and well-being. They suggest future studies measure participants’ hormonal levels at the time of testing.

The new study follows UCL research that found soccer players are six times more likely to suffer a muscle injury in the days leading up to their period versus when they are menstruating.

“Every woman has their own unique physiology, so it’s crucial to support and empower them in the right ways,” senior study author Dr. Georgie Bruinvels said last month. “If future research demonstrates that there are risk windows for certain injury types, we should be proactive in mitigating these risks to enable female athletes to exercise and compete on any given day.”