Women's excessive indulgence in puberty can lead to amenorrhea and infertility

Girls all love beauty, especially young girls. They may not eat or drink in order to lose weight, which may even affect the normal development of the body and may lead to amenorrhea or infertility.

Many adolescent girls advocate "skinny beauty" and start to lose weight as soon as they feel a little plump. They only eat a little at each meal and even replace main meals with fruits. Recently, experts have warned that excessive weight loss may lead to endocrine disorders, menstrual cycle disorders and even amenorrhea, affecting the normal development of adolescence.

Hypogonadotropic amenorrhea affects pubertal development. In the gynecological endocrinology clinic, we often meet many girls who lost weight in elementary school or junior high school. Not only did these girls "successfully" lose weight, some even became "skin and bones" after losing weight. When their sex hormones were checked, most of them showed low levels of follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and estradiol. This phenomenon is clinically called "hypogonadotropic amenorrhea."

He Xiukui pointed out that when girls reach puberty, the hypothalamus will secrete gonadotropin and release hormones. This hormone acts on the pituitary gland, prompting it to secrete follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone to act on the ovaries, thereby promoting the growth of follicles, the secretion of female hormones, the onset of menstruation, and the entry of sexual development. Hypogonadotropic amenorrhea is caused by insufficient secretion of gonadotropin, which results in the ovaries not receiving signals and the failure of follicle development. Generally, a sex hormone test can reveal that indicators such as follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and estradiol are all low.

Why does excessive weight loss lead to hypogonadotropic amenorrhea? He Xiukui explained that this is because when women are on an excessive diet, their bodies become malnourished, disrupting the body's normal reproductive endocrine regulation function and even shutting down the reproductive function, causing the saved nutrients to be supplied to more important organs such as the heart and lungs. The reproductive endocrine axis of the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovary in adolescent girls is not yet perfect, making them more susceptible to varying degrees of influence, which can lead to menstrual disorders or even amenorrhea.

Long-term amenorrhea in women may increase the risk of infertility and endometrial disease. Clinically, if amenorrhea is caused by excessive dieting and is still in the early stages, it is usually treated with estrogen and progesterone drugs under the guidance of a doctor, and weight is restored through a normal and balanced diet. Most girls can gradually recover and resume menstruation. However, a small number of women who blindly lose weight and suffer from amenorrhea ignore the problem, thinking that not having menstruation is easier, or find it difficult to tell others about their amenorrhea at a young age, thus delaying treatment and ultimately having difficulty recovering due to the long duration of amenorrhea.

If young women suffer from amenorrhea for a long time without intervention, not only will their internal and external reproductive organs be underdeveloped, setting the stage for future infertility, but also insufficient estrogen may lead to poor development of secondary sexual characteristics, such as breast hypoplasia, flat chest, poor bone development, failure to reach proper height, and even osteoporosis. Long-term anovulation may even increase the risk of endometrial lesions.