Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Aug 2:9:14.
doi: 10.1186/s13102-017-0079-8. eCollection 2017.

Hormonal aspects of overtraining syndrome: a systematic review

Flavio A Cadegiani  1 , Claudio E Kater  1
Affiliations

Hormonal aspects of overtraining syndrome: a systematic review

Flavio A Cadegiani et al. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. .

Abstract

Background: Overtraining syndrome (OTS), functional (FOR) and non-functional overreaching (NFOR) are conditions diagnosed in athletes with decreased performance and fatigue, triggered by metabolic, immune, hormonal and other dysfunctions and resulted from an imbalance between training stress and proper recovery. Despite previous descriptions, there is a lack of a review that discloses all hormonal findings in OTS/FOR/NFOR. The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate whether and which roles hormones play in OTS/FOR/NFOR.

Methods: A systematic search up to June 15th, 2017 was performed in the PUBMED, MEDLINE and Cochrane databases following PRISMA protocol, with the expressions: (1)overtraining, (2)overreaching, (3)overtrained, (4)overreached, or (5)underperformance, and (plus) (a)hormone, (b)hormonal, (c)endocrine, (d)adrenal, (e)cortisol, (f)GH, (g)ACTH, (h)testosterone, (i)IGF-1, (j)TSH, (k)T4, (l)T3, (m)LH, (n)FSH, (o)prolactin, (p) IGFBP-3 and related articles.

Results: A total of 38 studies were selected. Basal levels of hormones were mostly normal in athletes with OTS/FOR/NFOR compared with healthy athletes. Distinctly, stimulation tests, mainly performed in maximal exercise conditions, showed blunted GH and ACTH responses in OTS/FOR/NFOR athletes, whereas cortisol and plasma catecholamines showed conflicting findings and the other hormones responded normally.

Conclusion: Basal hormone levels are not good predictor but blunted ACTH and GH responses to stimulation tests may be good predictors of OTS/FOR/NFOR.

Keywords: Adrenal; Cortisol; Hormone; Overreaching; Overtraining; Sports endocrinology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This systematic review did not include direct human material or data, but indirectly used human subjects from the selected studies. However, all the selected studies had a statement of approval by an ethics committee. Thus, we declare that ethics approval and consent to participate is not applicable to this study.

Consent for publication

We declare that the consent for publication is not applicable to this study.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Types of selected athletes and tests performed
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Meeusen R, Duclos M, Foster C, Fry A, Gleeson M, Nieman D, Raglin J, Rietjens G, Steinacker J, Urhausen A, European College of Sport Science. American College of Sports Medicine Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the overtraining syndrome: joint consensus statement of the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2013;45(1):186–205. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318279a10a. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aubry A, Hausswirth C, Louis J, et al. The development of functional overreaching is associated with a faster heart rate recovery in endurance athletes. PLoS One. 2015;10(10):e0139754. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Le Meur Y, Louis J, Aubry A, et al. Maximal exercise limitation in functionally overreached triathletes: role of cardiac adrenergic stimulation. J Appl Physiol (1985) 2014;117(3):214–222. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00191.2014. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Le Meur Y, Hausswirth C, Natta F et al. A multidisciplinary approach to overreaching detection in endurance trained athletes. J Appl Physiol 1 February 2013 Vol. 114 no. 3, 411–420. - PubMed
    1. Schmikli SL, de Vries WR, Brink MS, Backx FJ. Monitoring performance, pituitary-adrenal hormones and mood profiles: how to diagnose non-functional over-reaching in male elite junior soccer players. Br J Sports Med. 2012;46(14):1019–1023. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2011-090492. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources