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Permalink Reply by x on May 23, 2011 at 4:41pm

I think there is a good chance that the hormones ingested by animals in factory farms could be a cause of this.  I know there was a big problem in Puerto Rico where young girls were reaching puberty early.  They found that the cause was chickens imported from the US mainland that were being enhanced with hormones. 

There is an additional problem with antibiotics.  We are evolving super bacteria that live on in the meat sold to supermarkets.  Something like half of the meat in stores is contaminated by these superbugs.

Permalink Reply by Liz LaPoint on December 8, 2011 at 11:41am

Agreed. What we feed the animals that people consume can be a factor too. Hasn't the average age of puberty gone down before though? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the average age of menstruation used to be 17 and went down to 12 in the 20th century. I suppose people freaked out about that too! But below teen years is definitely worrisome.

Permalink Reply by justin gold on January 19, 2012 at 5:16am

Has the boys age lowered as well.As I can remember just having started comprehensive school(senior)in the U.K and that would have made me maybe 11 or coming up to 12 .Anyway, when we used to get changed for swimming I can remember that all of us was in awe of this one lad who practically looked like one of our fathers,he had obviously started shaving had a hairy chest,armpit hair,etc,etc, the works!!! I can still remember all of us feeling quite inadequate at the time,as none of us would get changed next to him lol

Permalink Reply by Jeniye Luckart on February 20, 2012 at 12:30pm

Yes, I would say from personal experience yes.  I have a ten year old son who started having body odor when he was 8, breakouts like a teenager at 9 (uses zit medicine nightly now), and growing hair down below at 9.  Boys are supposed to mature at around 15, so I think this is pretty early.

Permalink Reply by Rachel on May 1, 2012 at 6:59am

I was one of the girls this article mentions... I actually ended up developing a condition called PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) by about the age of 9 or 10, but it didn't really make itself obvious until I hit 15 or 16. PCOS and early puberty usually go hand-in-hand. A woman with PCOS was likely a child who hit puberty sooner than normal.

Looking at my life as a young child, I actually want to say that a bigger part of why it happened to me was the exposure to chemicals like BPA, which would have been in the bottles my mother fed me with. Also, I drank a LOT of cow's milk as a child. Given that it's usually tainted with hormones, probably more so back in the early 80's than now, that could very easily be where a greater part of my issues stemmed from.