Puberty at age 8

[kmguru]

Puberty At The Age Of 8 By: Dr. Joseph MercolaSource: http://www.mercola.com, February 9, 2008
U.S. girls are reaching puberty at younger ages than ever before. In the 1990s, breast development -- the first sign of puberty in girls -- at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist.

However, by 1999, following a 1997 study that found almost half of African Americans and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society suggested changing what is viewed as “normal.”

They suggested changing puberty at age 8 from abnormal to normal, and lowering the abnormal puberty age to 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

But while some experts believe the shift is nothing to worry about, others, including parents, are alarmed.
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I think the chemicals in food has a strong influence. So, eat natural food and stay away from pesticides and herbicides. What do you think?

 

[John99]

you included the month in your link. maybe cite another source too, it is probably just something previously overlooked. i would be willing to bet that more kids go to doctors now than ever before - perception?

 

[Saquist]

Puberty At The Age Of 8 By: Dr. Joseph MercolaSource: http://www.mercola.com, February 9, 2008
U.S. girls are reaching puberty at younger ages than ever before. In the 1990s, breast development -- the first sign of puberty in girls -- at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist.

However, by 1999, following a 1997 study that found almost half of African Americans and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society suggested changing what is viewed as “normal.”

They suggested changing puberty at age 8 from abnormal to normal, and lowering the abnormal puberty age to 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

But while some experts believe the shift is nothing to worry about, others, including parents, are alarmed.
------------------------------------------

I think the chemicals in food has a strong influence. So, eat natural food and stay away from pesticides and herbicides. What do you think?

It would be logical to procede with a long term study before altering a system of known normality to the previous abnormal status.

 

[Tiassa]

(Insert Title Here)

A different article along the same lines (I had trouble finding the topic source article):

Brink, Susan. "Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected". LATimes.com. January 21, 2008. See http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-puberty21jan21,1,6376765.story​

It's a bit unsettling:

While early menstruation is a known risk factor for breast cancer, no one knows what earlier breast development means for the future of girls' health. "We're not backing up all events in puberty," says Sandra Steingraber, biologist and visiting scholar at Ithaca College. "We're backing up the starting point." She has examined the research on female puberty and compiled a summary in an August 2007 report called "The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls." The report was financed by the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group interested in exploring environmental causes of that disease.

Earlier breast development is now so typical that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of "normal" development. Until 10 years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist. Then a landmark study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics written by Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of African Americans and 15% of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Two years later, the society suggested changing what it considered medically normal.

The new "8" -- the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development -- is, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

• • •​

The medical community calls earlier puberty normal, the trend goes hand in hand with the obesity epidemic, and science has not yet pinpointed the reasons. And yet, when girls who are still children in the minds of their parents start developing breasts, many of their mothers remember that it happened later in their own lives -- and wonder why.

Theorists and advocates continue to search for definitive evidence, and little girls continue to look like young women at earlier ages. "My biologist brain says, 'There's not a lot you can conclude from the [environmental] evidence,' " Steingraber says. "But I've got a 9-year-old girl. And as a mother, I say, 'They've introduced all these chemicals into the environment, and they have no idea what it's doing. What are they, nuts?' I want data demonstrating safety, not data demonstrating ignorance."

(Brink)

As a scientific issue, the long-term data will suggest whether or not this is a crisis. For instance, while there may currently be a correlation between early menstruation and cancer, long-term data might eventually demonstrate that, if early puberty is the new "normal", the cancer issue is coincidental. Perhaps it is the food we eat. Perhaps it is a lower advent of sexual activity. Maybe it really is primarily obesity-related.

But the scientific issue is amoral. The social issue, such as Steingraber implies, is much more problematic.

 

[visceral_instinct]

That's disturbing. People hitting puberty at 8 don't get time to be kids.

 

[kmguru]

Another link:

'Why so Young?' Early Development is the New Nor

The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know

 

[kmguru]

Excerpts from the Report:

1. Our children are not adequately protected from environmental chemical exposures. Recent studies have shown that the amount of natural hormones that a child produces is much less than previous research showed. This changes how we think about the potential impact of a synthetic chemical in a child’s body: even a tiny amount could have a huge impact if, for example, the amount of synthetic chemical is roughly the same as the amount of the naturally occurring hormones. This has implications for the setting of safe levels of chemical exposures for our children. The report describes puberty as a delicate process that is inherently susceptible to disruption. To stop early puberty we need public health protections that protect the most vulnerable—our children—from harmful chemical exposures and err on the side of precaution.

2. Early puberty is hitting some girls harder than others. All of the possible causes of early puberty discussed in the report – obesity, television viewing, physical inactivity, psychosocial stressors, low birth weight, formula feeding and chemical exposures – hit poorer communities and communities of color the hardest. These are communities where poverty, racism, unemployment and exposure to toxic substances are high and access to nourishing food and safe places to exercise is low. As the author has noted, “…early puberty is not only a women's issue (because it disproportionately affects girls) but it is a class and race issue as well.” To address this disparity, we need interventions and responses to early puberty that acknowledge that low-income, overweight girls of color are most at risk.

3. We need to reach beyond our own communities and work together to address the falling age of puberty. We need to work closely with our colleagues in children’s health, women’s health and environmental health and build new collaborations with specialists working on the nutritional, behavioral and psychosocial contributors to early puberty. The author states in the report, “The problem with problems that cross multiple environmental media is that they fall between regulatory and activist cracks. On the one hand, addressing all the root causes simultaneously raises the risk for programmatic and regulatory fragmentation and leads to inertia. On the other hand, addressing one problem at a time does not begin to unknot the tangle of its interrelated causes.”

 

[John99]

A different article along the same lines (I had trouble finding the topic source article):

Brink, Susan. "Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected". LATimes.com. January 21, 2008. See http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-puberty21jan21,1,6376765.story​

It's a bit unsettling:



As a scientific issue, the long-term data will suggest whether or not this is a crisis. For instance, while there may currently be a correlation between early menstruation and cancer, long-term data might eventually demonstrate that, if early puberty is the new "normal", the cancer issue is coincidental. Perhaps it is the food we eat. Perhaps it is a lower advent of sexual activity. Maybe it really is primarily obesity-related.

But the scientific issue is amoral. The social issue, such as Steingraber implies, is much more problematic.

But what about this part?

Through the ages

Puberty involves three stages: breast development, pubic hair growth and, finally, menstruation. Because the final event is typically the most memorable for women, it has been the one most scientifically documented in studies based on self-reported memories. The first 100 years that medical records were kept on the age of onset of menstruation saw continuous drops. Between about 1850 and 1950 in Europe, the average age of a girl's first period dropped from about 17 to about 13. (The U.S. doesn't have good data earlier than the 20th century, though trends were probably similar, says Steingraber, who prepared the August 2007 report after examining hundreds of studies on potential dietary, lifestyle and environmental causes of early puberty.)

Much of that decline probably has to do with better nutrition and public health improvements that reduced the spread of infectious diseases. "Better diet, closed sewer systems, deep burial of the dead," Steingraber says. "By the beginning of the 20th century, those things were in place."

Adequate food and good health signal the brain that it's safe to reproduce, according to theories of evolutionary biology. "We're healthier and we weigh more," says Dr. Francine Kaufman, head of the center for diabetes and endocrinology at Childrens Hospital. "In some ways, puberty is a luxury."

Initially i suspected as much.

 

[Saquist]

That's why a study would be needed. Is the effects causticly enviromental or are the positively enviromental. It's urgent we determine which one before harmful effects accumulate. There will be a period of time that will serve as a wall to determine detrimental effects. Women are likely to experience that wall with child birth. If the body develops the ability to reproduce before it can tolerate the distress of labor infant mortalitiy at birth will rise , infact I believe it already has in those cases.
Essentially what I'm saying is when someone turns on a fire alarm you don't turn it off.