I'd bet there's more of a connection with sexualized imagery in media with the consequent release of neurotransmitters and hormones.
Of course, who'd fund that study?
Sponsored by the Trial Lawyers of America?
I know a guy whose daughter started to go through puberty at age 8. Really freaked out the mother as you might imagine. They gave her hormone treatments to kind of hold things off for a few years. They never did identify a cause though.
Funny, I thought it was related to the hormones we have in our dairy cows, to promote them to produce milk. I know it’s purely conjecture on my part, but 100% of the girls who lived on a dairy farm while I grew up with in rurual S.Dakota ‘matured’ quite early, compared to the city girls.
These girls grew up on fresh milk, right from the Separator (cream rises to the top, whole milk on the bottom). No homogenation - so they drank what the cow produced. So, while most 8th grade girls were just getting into training bras, these girls where in the ‘C’ and ‘D’ cup range. As a young boy - I noticed that.
It’s the hormones in milk.
The biggest factor besides heredity in pubertal onset is body fat, nutrition, and level of exercise. Combine higher fat, calorie dense diets with low levels of exercise and a girl’s body tells itself it’s ready for childbearing a heck of a lot quicker than a pre-teen from 1782 who is hauling well-water three times a day and eating meat twice a week.
my niece just turned 9 and is already developing...
something crazy is going on.
Great - now they’re coming after our cans?
I’ll bet Barney Frank is behind this.
This potential problem has been on the radar since the 1960s. It is based on a double problem. First, is that tiny amounts of the various hormones are very powerful in the human body. The second is that there are a lot of natural and artificial chemicals that are chemically very similar to our hormones.
A good example are plant estrogen. It is similar enough to human estrogen that our bodies recognize it and react to it. As such, it is one of the ways that our bodies know what season it is, and react accordingly. This is why “mating season” is pretty universal. Even in the oceans, over the course of a few days each year, the water is awash with hormones and the entire ecosystem enters mating season.
Inside female plants, estrogen levels also determine growth, fruit size and yield. This is why farmers spray their fields with plant estrogen.
One of the first suggested problems, again back in the 1960s, was based on a phenomenon that happens among mammals during gestation. Typically, the brain of a fetus is “female” by default. But about halfway through gestation, a male fetus will secrete testosterone from its gonads. This testosterone travels to its brain and tells it that it is a “male” brain.
But this process can be interfered with by other chemicals. This results in “gender confusion” in humans (though importantly it does NOT determine sexual preference). And plant estrogen can play a big part in this.
I hate to break everyone’s bubble about their favorite chemical industry bogeyman, but women urinate estrogen, synthetic estrogens and progestins (and their metabolites) every day. These estrogens reach our water treatment plants and end up back in our tap water. TO DATE THERE IS NO WAY TO REMOVE ESTROGENS FROM OUR WATER SUPPLY. Several people are working on nano-membranes that would filter out these types of molecules, but they are 10 years out as far as a workable, affordable technology.
I also forgot to mention that the environmental whack jobs that are claiming plastics are the cause also conveniently forget to mention this estrogen pathway as well.
Great, chemicals are sexualizing our girls at earlier and earlier ages—while feminizing the boys. Talk about frustration!