2012 Volume 9 Pages 54-58
Athletes face the pressure to win, which may lead to depression and chronic fatigue syndrome. However, proper environment and treatment for athletes are not specifically studied and provided to a sufficient extent. Therefore, we have studied the relationship between the physiological and psychological factors related to those problems on female long-distance runner. Seventeen long-distance runners (runner group, 19.1±0.1 y.o., mean±S.E.) and 12 general college females (control group, 19.4±0.3 y.o.) participated in this study. Resting autonomic nervous system activity was assessed by heart rate variability power spectral analysis, which enabled us to identify separate frequency components, i. e., total power (all over autonomic nervous system activity), low-frequency power (mostly sympathetic nervous system activity), and high-frequency power (parasympathetic nervous system activity). We used the Profile of Mood States (POMS) to evaluate psychological factors. The Spearman rank correlation was calculated to assess the correlation between autonomic nervous system activity and the POMS. The results revealed that the runner group possessed significant lower heart rate (50.6±1.6 vs. 67.5±1.9 bpm, runner group vs. control group, p＜0.001, mean±S.E.), and remarkably-high total power (3,535.9±942.1 vs. 1,015.2±183.6 ms2, p＝0.018), low-frequency power (1,882.7±591.2 vs. 503.0±90.1 ms2, p＝0.034), and high-frequency power (1,653.2±477.6 vs. 512.2±124.5 ms2, p＝0.033), respectively. Interestingly, in the runner group, the sympathetic nervous system activity was significantly and inversely correlated with the Vigor of the POMS. The autonomic nervous system activity is known as “fight or flight”, and indicates that there is a possibility to reflect “stress” in the human body. Our study suggests that evaluation of autonomic nervous system activity among the female long-distance runner might be useful for developing an evaluation system to manage stress and to improve athletes’ competitive abilities.
