(C) Common Dreams
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Puberty Starts Earlier Than It Used To. No One Knows Why. [1]
['Azeen Ghorayshi', 'More About Azeen Ghorayshi']
Date: 2022-05-19
But the study turned out to be a watershed in the medical understanding of puberty. Studies in the decades since have confirmed, in dozens of countries, that the age of puberty in girls has dropped by about three months per decade since the 1970s. A similar pattern, though less extreme, has been observed in boys.
Although it is difficult to tease apart cause and effect, earlier puberty may have harmful impacts, especially for girls. Girls who go through puberty early are at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and other psychological problems, compared with peers who hit puberty later. Girls who get their periods earlier may also be at a higher risk of developing breast or uterine cancer in adulthood.
No one knows what risk factor — or more likely, what combination of factors — is driving the age decline or why there are stark race- and sex-based differences. Obesity seems to be playing a role, but it cannot fully explain the change. Researchers are also investigating other potential influences, including chemicals found in certain plastics and stress. And for unclear reasons, doctors across the world have reported a rise in early puberty cases during the pandemic.
“We are seeing these marked changes in all our children, and we don’t know how to prevent it if we wanted to,” said Dr. Anders Juul, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Copenhagen who has published two recent studies on the phenomenon. “We don’t know what is the cause.”
Obesity
Around the time that Dr. Herman-Giddens published her landmark study, Dr. Juul’s research group examined breast development in a cohort of 1,100 girls in Copenhagen. Unlike the American children, the Danish group matched the pattern long described in medical textbooks: Girls began developing breasts at an average age of 11 years old.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/science/early-puberty-medical-reason.html
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