According to a recent article in The NYTimes, Girls as young as 7 are starting puberty. There are some reasons why girls are starting puberty earlier due to ongoing research. Some of the reasons young girls are increasingly starting puberty before ages 10 or 11 include:
- Overweight – Overweight girls are more susceptible to early puberty. Excess body fat serves as an additional source of estrogen and the result is earlier breasts.
- Sugar – research shows that girls who drink more sodas are also more likely to reach puberty early, regardless of whether they were overweight.
- Family stress – Strong evidence reveals that emotional stress in a girl’s family can jump-start puberty earlier. A girl who grows up without her biological father is twice as likely to get her period before age 12 compared with a girl reared with her father in the home.
- Chemicals – Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are also a concern because they can mimic hormones, like estrogen, that are the key players in a girl’s body during puberty. Many chemicals, including those in fire retardants and plastics, disrupt reproductive development in animals; however, more research is needed on humans. Chemical exposures may also disrupt girls’ puberty, but less is known in this area.
While there are many likely reasons for the start of puberty, there are some ways to protect against early puberty.
- Breast-feeding early in life appears to help. What’s more, when a mother maintains a healthy weight before and during pregnancy, her daughter is less likely to get her period early. Work by our team also shows that consuming soy foods may delay puberty.
- To buffer against stress, parents should prioritize setting aside time to engage with their daughters and bond emotionally.
- We also need to continue to improve our daily menus and enhance the quality of school lunch programs. Adults need to demonstrate healthy habits that support our own ideal weights and reduce stress levels.
Puberty is unlikely to be triggered by a single factor. It may be a combination of exposures that do real damage, as well as the timing of the exposure during development.
On a final sense a good rule of thumb is if we are not sure whether something is safe, then we should not expose our children to it in general and not only as relates to puberty.
For more on the story read it here at NYTimes photo coure: YNaija
