A notable point in this regard is that the physiological (i.e., medical, dental, nutritional, and biological) and psychological monitoring of high-level athletes was established for male athletes and simply extrapolated to female athletes. Indeed, one might say that in this sense, there is no real equality between women and men in sport. Yet, as women have been performing at the international level for just half a century in most sports disciplines, knowledge specifically on the elite female athlete has lagged behind that on elite male athletes. The impact of intensive physical practice on women has attracted substantial attention in recent years.
Last, we conclude with some practical guidelines for eliciting improvements in physical and cognitive performance while minimizing the health risks for female athletes. We consider the fairly frequent discrepancies and summarize the current knowledge in this new field of interest. We thus cover the research on both physiological and psychological variables, as well as on the Athlete Biological Passport used for anti-doping purposes. To examine the implicated mechanisms, as well as the potential performances and health risks in this population, we then take a broader multidisciplinary approach and report on the causal/reciprocal relationships between hormonal status and mental and physical health in young (18–40 years) healthy females, both trained and untrained. In this review, we present the current but still limited data on how normal menstrual phases, altered menstrual phases, and hormonal contraception affect both physical and cognitive performances in these elite athletes. However, despite the well-known repercussions of female sex hormones, few studies have investigated the specificities of elite female athletes. Female athletes have garnered considerable attention in the last few years as more and more women participate in sports events.
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