A new study available from the journal Pediatrics [1] (subscription required) shows that girls are entering puberty at steadily younger ages. WebMD explains [2]:
The researchers assessed the onset of puberty by a standard measurement of breast development.
They compared the findings to a 1997 study of age of puberty. They found the following in a study involving girls between the ages of 6 and 8:
- 10.4% of white girls in the current study had breast development, compared to 5% in the 1997 study.
- 23.4% of African-American girls had breast development, compared to 15.4% in the 1997 study.
The early onset of puberty is found to be correlated with both race and body-mass index (BMI). But what’s causing girls to enter puberty sooner?
The researchers also collected urine and blood specimens from the girls to look at levels of compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, Biro says, to see what role these environmental exposures might play in early puberty.
”It appears that some of the endocrine-disrupting chemicals are interacting with body composition and this may be the reason some girls are going into puberty earlier and others later,” Biro tells WebMD. “That would have to be speculation,” he says of the interaction idea. “But we do know BMI is doing it.”
…Endocrine-disrupting compounds or EDCs are found in a host of consumer products, ranging from personal care products such as antibacterial soaps to furniture and anti-stain fabrics.
Yes, the same chemicals that saturate our environments are causing developmental changes in humans. Or perhaps it’s caused a combination of these chemicals and their interaction with a few extra pounds (reflected in the BMI). These are the types of unpredictable and unprecedented changes that the proliferation of untested, unregulated chemicals (and chemicals disguised as foodstuffs) throughout our lives can cause. These are the sorts of dangers that the President’s Cancer Panel warned of earlier this year [3]. As a reminder, here are the recommendations [4]of the President’s Cancer Panel:
- Protecting children by choosing foods, house and garden products, toys, medicines and medical tests that will minimize exposure to toxic substances.
- Filtering tap water, and storing water in stainless steel, glass or other containers to avoid exposure to BPA and other plastic components that some studies have linked to health problems.
- Buying produce grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, or washing it thoroughly to remove them.
- Buying meat free of antibiotics and added hormones, and avoiding processed, charred and well-done meat.
And the recommendations from this new study [5]?
Until more is known about what drives earlier puberty in girls, Biro suggests families try ”living greener, trying to minimize exposure to chemicals in the environment, and part of that might be using safer personal care products.”
Are you seeing the common pattern? If not, here are a couple of other items to consider:
- Better and prettier living through chemicals? [6] Chemicals which have been banned in Europe, yet are still widely used in the U.S.
- Cancer cells “slurp up” fructose, preferring it to glucose. [7] Dr. Anthony Heaney concluded that “efforts to reduce refined fructose intake … may disrupt cancer growth.”
- Similarly, high-fructose corn syrup has now been linked to scarring of the liver. [8]
“Our findings suggest that we may need to go back to healthier diets that are more holistic,” Abdelmalek said. “High fructose corn syrup, which is predominately in soft-drinks and processed foods, may not be as benign as we previously thought.”
The consumption of fructose has increased exponentially since the early 1970s, and with this rise, an increase in obesity and complications of obesity have been observed, Abdelmalek said.
- Almost half of the samples of high-fructose corn syrup tested in a recent study [9] were found to contain measurable levels of mercury, a known neurotoxin.
- Princeton University researchers have shown that high-fructose corn syrup promotes substantially more weight-gain than sugar [10].
But not all the news is bad. Researchers are also finding benefits that accrue when following a more traditional type of diet like the one recommended by the researchers above:
- Milk from grass-fed cows is more healthy [11], even when full-fat.
[12]Grass-fed beef. Image via Wikipedia. - A new study from Penn State [13] shows that eggs from free-range chickens provide higher levels of beneficial nutrients, including Omega-3 fatty acids.
I suppose I had better stop writing now, I’d hate to be accused of being “orthorexic“, or obsessed with healthy eating. Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association’s mental health group, explains [14]:
“Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly ‘pure’.”
Then again, I guess maybe I should accept the label. Apparently, with the release of the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, virtually everyone has some sort of mental disorder [15]:
The journal’s [Journal of Mental Health] editor, Professor Til Wykes of King’s College London, fears that, “most of these changes {to the manual} imply a more inclusive system of diagnoses where the pool of normality shrinks to a mere puddle.”
If normal behaviour is increasingly being categorised as mental illness then that creates a burden on individuals, families and on society as a whole.
As well as an emotional and social toll, there are financial implications.
It follows that money has to be set aside to care for the mentally ill and clinicians and carers have to be trained to deal with their ‘illness’.
In the end, it’s all about the money.
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