Precocious Puberty Is Becoming Much More…Precocious
I recently came across some articles about puberty starting at much younger ages.
It was defined as signs of puberty before age 8 for girls and age 9 for boys. Presently it has been noted way before age 7. What can be contributing to this?
- unhealthy sugary drinks
- foods like meat and dairy from animals given hormones
- pesticides and fungicides widely used in conventional agriculture
- numerous food additives from the attractively packaged processed foods,
- countless synthetic chemicals (many with estrogen-like activity), incorporated in products surrounding us
All of these are considered as possible reasons. The natural question you will ask next is: How serious is this? Quite serious!
According to a a study done by American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), earlier puberty can cause:
- lower self-esteem
- increased likelihood to be negatively influenced by older peers
- initiate behaviors not expected at this young age
- higher rates of depression (can occur during childhood or later on in life—teen years or adulthood)
As far as the medical impact of early puberty, it comes with:
- shorter stature
- greater risk of several cancers (breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancer)
- obesity and possibly diabetes
- hypertension with its associated complications (heart and kidney disease)
These are all reasons to do our best to prevent precocious puberty by influencing the environmental factors that we can. Many of these I discussed in my posts.
- improving the quality of the foods we eat
- choosing healthier personal-care, laundry, and cleaning products, other household items (candles, air fresheners, essential oils)
- further eliminating estrogen-like chemicals by not purchasing or replacing items we got so accustomed to use (such as BPA-lined cans with foods and drinks, certain plastics, non-stick cookware with PFOA, flame retardants, aluminum, and more)
I’m also including here a few links for some of the articles that I read, along with the AAP study:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-the-early-onset-of-pub_b_677424
https://www.livescience.com/1824-truth-early-puberty.html
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/132/6/1019
