A review of the effect of swim training and nutrition on bone mineral density in female athletes

PURPOSE The present paper reviews the physiological adaptation to swim training and dietary supplementation relating to bone mineral density (BMD) in female swimmers. Swim training still seems to have conflicting effects on bone health maintenance in athletes. METHODS This review article focuses on swim training combined with dietary supplementation with respect to BMD in female athletes. RESULTS Upon review of previous studies, it became obvious that the majority of studies did not collect physical activity data on the swimmers outside of their swimming activities. These activities may have some influence on the BMD of swimmers and therefore, future studies need to examine additional physical activity history data as well as swim training. This additional information may help to explain why swimmers' BMD tends to be lower than the BMD of control individuals in many studies. Moreover, dietary supplementation such as calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D also affect bone health in swimmers, and it is extremely important to evaluate BMD in the context of dietary supplementation. CONCLUSION A review of the literature suggests that exercise intervention studies, including longitudinal and randomized control trials, need to attempt to introduce various exercise programs to female swimmers in order to determine the optimal exercise prescription for bone health.