Why More Young Girls in the US are Reaching Puberty Earlier Than Ever Before?

In the United States, young girls are reaching puberty earlier than in the past. While the causes remain anonymous, experts fear that it might have detrimental consequences for young women’s mental and physical health. Experts said that the US’ growing obesity crisis could be the root cause, blaming poor diets for pushing up puberty. Others think violent childhoods could cause it and there is also the theory that it is linked to an imbalance of certain hormones.

There are also the negative long-term downsides, like an association between early puberty and developing cancer, which remains unexplained for now and the traumatic experiences caused by a young girl growing up just a little too quickly.

Puberty in Girls Starting Earlier

The phenomenon was first detected by Marcia Herman-Giddens, a public health expert at the University of North Carolina when she began to gather data on more than 17,000 girls in the mid-1990s in the United States.

She found that the average age of puberty was dropping, falling to 10 years old, with some girls developing as early as six. Her findings spurred continued research into the topic with experts across many fields investigating what caused this shift and its long-term effects.

Both the causes and effects of precocious puberty, when a child undergoes the process too early, are wide-reaching and cannot just be explained with a simple, one-size-fits-all solution.

Instead, the age of puberty shifting forward could be the result of a variety of factors. And the report says that the after-effects it can have on a girl’s life can be wide-reaching.

Source-IANS