..wuts happining?
Like Danielle said, one theory is our rich diet triggers early puberty.
In the course of a little over a century (1850-1960) the age of menarche (first period) has declined from 17 to 13 and has continued to decline and is now below 12.
Another interesting data point is that in Japan when they ate their traditional diet the average age of menarche was 17.5 but after WWII when they started to eat more rich Western foods it has dropped and now is almost as low as in the US.
Early puberty (and late menopause) is believed to increase the risk of hormone related breast, ovarian, and cervical cancers. Very early puberty causes other problems. Girls showing signs of puberty before 7 and boys before 10 are considered precocious puberty. Since puberty starts the process of maturing the bone growth plates people who hit puberty early may never reach their full height. Another concern is that early puberty can be triggered by gonadal or adrenal tumors so this needs to be investigated.
Early puberty is being caused by environmental pseudo estrogens which come from industrial chemials from which consumer products are produced. For example vinyl plastic. Vinyl (Polyvinyl Chloride) slowly deteriorates both during use as consumer products, when used to trash our highways and waterways, and in landfill and become pseudo estrogens. These chemicals saturate our environment as well as our bodies. Puberty is the natural response of a girl's body to either pseudo estrogens from the environment or natural estrogens from her ovaries. You may have noticed that early puberty if not nearly as prevalent amoung boys. That is because estrogen is a female hormone, not a male hormone.
The pseudo estrogens do tend to make males more feminine though. They looked at crocodiles(or alligators, it's been a while since I read this) who were living in a heavily pseudo-estrogenised area recently (meaning probably around three, four years ago), and found that their...bits were significantly smaller than the documented average. Unfortunately, that's all I remember from the journal.
I think a lot of the fear is that males in the areas where dumped plastics naturally end up will eventually be effected by the pseudo estrogen enough to become sterile. And since we don't exactly have a plan on getting rid of the non-biodegradable plastic, soon enough, there's going to be plastic everywhere. Hey, maybe this is our end. Kinda anticlimactic?
I don't think anyone is really sure of what the cause is of that, however I have read articles claiming that is it due to all the artificial hormones in our food which we obviously take in everyday. For example there are tons of nonsense in our milk and even on our vegatables and these can all cause young children to go into puberty at a very early age.
In my own thoughts, it may not always be the artificial hormones that makes the kids go to puberty really soon, it can be a very unusual disorder leading to precocious puberty. You've probably heard of Lina Medina right?
From what I know, its not anything to do with artificial hormones, its all from genes. Our lab is researching how maternal diet during pregnancy can influence epigenetics relating to the timing of puberty
Actually, oestrogen is not a female hormone, men have oestrogen also. Without it, they are infertile. Its also unlikely that pseudo estrogens are the cause of precocious puberty
I read something about that too, actually. From what I remember, they had a bigger effect on men than women
So, Danielle, could you share with us a male sexual characteristic that is stimulated by estrogen?
studies have shown that it is due to a higher fat content in the diets of the children.
it is a bit. I always figured we would end up blowing each other up or something
wow...i did not know that
relly?..thats crazy...=\
