Endocrine aspects and responses to extreme sports

Abstract

In the last few decades, extreme sports have gained in popularity worldwide. These activities are popular not only with adventurous elite athletes but more and more everyday people are participating in extreme sports activities on a recreational basis. As an illustration of this phenomenon, a 2008 report approximated that the number of extreme sport participants in the United States alone was nearly 275 million person-events, attempting participation in 14 different types of extreme sports activities [1].