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What is a teenager?
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I’m referring to being overweight. In girls at least, weight is a big trigger to hormone release. And yes, I also mean tampered food in the sense of food that has preservatives, artificials, chemicals, etc.
GG
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@Guerrilla:
I’m referring to being overweight. In girls at least, weight is a big trigger to hormone release. And yes, I also mean tampered food in the sense of food that has preservatives, artificials, chemicals, etc.
GG
There are a lot of chemicals in our food, I can agree there.
As for “fat” girls in early Adolescence, if they lose their “fat” they generally develop smaller hips and breasts. I am putting “fat” in quotations because what these girls consider as “fat” is really their bodies developing. If the girl is really FAT, as in medically overweight/obese/morbidly obese, that’s a different story altogether.
But I’ve always been told that the reason our children are maturing earlier and earlier (as in old farts thinking kids are maturing earlier when in reality the time difference between generations is not that significant, perhaps as much as a year or two or as little as only a few weeks) is because we have better access to food and medical care, because we get enough vitamins and minerals because we take a pill for them each day, because we have better oral hygiene, etc that our bodies are growing fast enough to achieve the level of growth needed to stimulate puberty to begin.
Not so much because Aspartame is in their drinks. (I say their drinks because I have cut out all Carmel colored drinks except Tea, and yes, that includes coffee. I also cut out all carbonated drinks (with the exception of Perrier) so I don’t drink Aspartame anymore.) That’s been linked, by instructors and news reports I’ve read/heard, to increases in digestive track disorders, increased blood pressure, higher levels of sodium and thus by extension cholesterol in the body.
As far as growth hormones, I think the jury’s still out on that one. Honestly, I cut red meat from my diet this year and other than my BP dropping about 10/5 points and my cholesterol dropping a little bit, I have not noticed much of anything else.
Anyway, yea, I use my own personal experience a lot and then stuff I remember from my parents, teachers and what I’ve read and yes, I know I didn’t link 30 dozen sources to support my claims, but then again, I’m not claiming a fact, just questioning the opinion you put forth.
And yes, I know it’s only been 85 days since I began my new diet (which is severely limited sodas and sports drinks and near non-existent levels of red meat).
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See that makes no sense to me. In our society kids don’t naturally “eat” healthy, and most parents are too lazy to feed them better.
Source:
http://www.articlearchives.com/medicine-health/diet-nutrition-fitness-obesity/1803739-1.htmlThere are others, I will find them…
GG
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Increasing rates of childhood obesity and overweight in the United States may be contributing to an earlier onset of puberty among girls, according to a study in the March issue of Pediatrics.
Researchers found that a higher body mass index score in girls as young as 3 and a large increase in BMI between age 3 and the first grade are associated with earlier puberty. For the study, earlier puberty was defined as breast development by age 9.
Previous studies have suggested that U.S. girls are entering puberty at younger ages today than 30 years ago.
To study the association between weight in early childhood and the onset of puberty, researchers looked at 354 girls from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in 10 regions of the United States using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care and Youth Development study. Along with recording BMI and weight from ages 3-12, the study looked at multiple outcomes of puberty in girls, including breast development and age of the onset of menstrual periods.
Higher BMI at all ages were associated with an earlier onset of puberty.
“Beyond identifying how obesity causes early puberty, it’s also important to determine whether weight control interventions at an early age have the potential to slow the progression of puberty,” said study lead author Joyce Lee, MD, MPH, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan.
Source:
Child obesity linked to early puberty.(HEALTH FINDINGS: The latest public health studies and research)(Brief article)
Donya C. Arias. The Nation’s Health. May 2007 v37 i4 p4(1).
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2007 The Nation’s Health -
@Cmdr:
But I’ve always been told that the reason our children are maturing earlier and earlier (as in old farts thinking kids are maturing earlier when in reality the time difference between generations is not that significant, perhaps as much as a year or two or as little as only a few weeks) is because we have better access to food and medical care, because we get enough vitamins and minerals because we take a pill for them each day, because we have better oral hygiene, etc that our bodies are growing fast enough to achieve the level of growth needed to stimulate puberty to begin.
While they aren’t sure what exactly is happening (and I threw out the reason for it I’ve heard most), none of the answers I’ve heard have been “good.”
When you think about it, food in America is probably more available, but it’s more adulterated, less nutritious (fast food), and made for convenience.
GG, already got some good info posted, but here’s one from the BBC (albeit, from a few years ago): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4530743.stm
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@Cmdr:
But I’ve always been told that the reason our children are maturing earlier and earlier (as in old farts thinking kids are maturing earlier when in reality the time difference between generations is not that significant, perhaps as much as a year or two or as little as only a few weeks) is because we have better access to food and medical care, because we get enough vitamins and minerals because we take a pill for them each day, because we have better oral hygiene, etc that our bodies are growing fast enough to achieve the level of growth needed to stimulate puberty to begin.
While they aren’t sure what exactly is happening (and I threw out the reason for it I’ve heard most), none of the answers I’ve heard have been “good.”
When you think about it, food in America is probably more available, but it’s more adulterated, less nutritious (fast food), and made for convenience.
GG, already got some good info posted, but here’s one from the BBC (albeit, from a few years ago): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4530743.stm
I’ll agree that there is much more sweets, candies, salty foods and fast foods loaded with fats and other stuff out there and that they do make up a significant portion of a child’s diet.
But I think I have a strong case when I say that there is better access to fruits and vegetables (which parents foist on their children routinely) as well as multivitamins (something that we did not have 200 years ago) as well as more scientific knowledge as to what our bodies need to be healthy.
So if we compare the diet of an American adolescent in 2009 vs an American Adolescent in 1809 (200 years ago) and looked at the ages of the adults when they died (of natural causes only, not accidents, or murder, etc) I think there’s a good argument to be made that children have more calories during the day, better vitamin and mineral balances in their diet, better nutrition all around and better access to the food needed to maintain a healthy body.
It can also be said that better medical treatments (dental as well as physical) and better access to physicians and dentists add to the benefit of better access to nutritious food (which includes vitamin pills). And it is the better diet and medical treatment that allows children to enter puberty earlier and live longer - albeit, in some instances in a manner that is obese or over weight.
In other words, it’s not that children are obese that makes them enter puberty earlier, it’s that they are healthier in general that lets their bodies develop sufficiently enough to trigger puberty.
Just curious, are girls entering puberty at age 9 in Europe? I think it’s kinda silly to pick an age at random and say “this is too early” or “this is too late” if you want my opinion. Last time I checked, there was no factory producing little human girls that all entered puberty at the same time. Some girls are just early bloomers and some late. I had a friend who didn’t get her breasts to start developing until 14 years old.
Did the studies offset the number of 9 year old girls with breasts by the number of girls age 14 who had not yet developed breasts? Did the studies take into consideration increased nutrition in food as well as increased medical treatments and easier lifestyles that probably contributed greatly to the amount of young girls who could develop to the point their bodies triggered the start of adolescent development?
We’re talking the human body here. We cannot just go out and say: Red Dye number 16 is to blame for all children in the world developing mature sexual organs before the age of 13. (That’s an exaggeration on purpose, it’s supposed to be silly, but convey a point. The point is, there’s probably a lot more involved than obesity in children. )
Now, the study did say that they looked at 354 girls from 10 cities. That’s a bloody awfully small sample set don’t you think? I mean, we have a population of over 300 million. If half of those are children and half of those are women, that means 37.5 million of them are girls under the age of 18. We are looking at girls age 3 to 12 in the study, so of the 37.5 million girls under the age of 18; 19 million of them are in the ages of 3 to 12. (Just a guesstimate, not a fact.) So the study is attempting to say that these 354 girls are indicative of 19 million girls across the nation? I’m not saying they are wrong, but I am having a hard time getting it passed the “bull sh*t” detectors, if you catch my meaning.
Also, they cut off the study at age 12. That means they could not possibly have measured the number of women who do not enter puberty until the age of 14, because they never collected the data! Perhaps if they had taken 354 girls aged 10-19 (another 9 year span) and attempted to collect data on how many of them did not develop until late in life the girls 3-9 that developed early would be balanced with the girls aged 10-19 who developed late? (Probably not perfectly balanced, most girls develop breasts between the ages of 11 and 13 at least a couple of decades ago, probably still today, so there is significantly less girls to develop from 13 to 14 than there are from 9 to 11 and that will skew the balance a little.)
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I am not saying that girls develop sexually at different rates; I am saying there has been in the past a normal time of puberty for girls (11-13) at times when our diet was different from current times.
And now we are seeing a large amount of girls entering puberty earlier i.e. age 9 in Europe…
GG
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GG:
I agree that they are developing earlier. What I am questioning is the reasons they are developing earlier and the study’s procedures that you referenced. I am not saying that you or the study are wrong, I am just trying to get the information past the “bull sh*t” detectors and running into issues that I am pointing out so you can either acknowledge them as valid issues, or show me the information I need to quell my unease.
Let me just sum them up (and you can see the previous post of mine to see why they are issues)
First Set of Issues:
1) The study cut off their ages at 3 Years Old and 12 Years Old. Since the average age a girl enters puberty, that I was told in “health” class during my tenure as a student at public school, is between 11 and 13 years old, it seems they did not extend the study far enough to determine if the number of girls who are developing later in life counter balance the girls developing earlier in life.
2) Perhaps ages 13, 14 and 15 are not relevant, but I don’t see anything stating that those ages are not relevant or insignificant.
3) Why are they including girls aged 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7? Is not 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 enough? Were they seriously expecting girls as young as 3 to have breasts?
4) Are they actually seeing “breasts” or are they seeing fat? (think Man-Boobs.)
Second Set of Issues:
1) 354 girls out of about 19 million girls seems like an insufficient sample set. (19 million is a guesstimate, see above for how I got to that number. I am not claiming that number as fact, it’s just a guess as to the estimation of the number of girls aged 3 to 12 in the United States of America.)
2) Why 354 girls? Why not 300 or 400? Did they have to disqualify a lot of their sample set because they did not like the data they got from them? 354 just seems like a very odd number to choose, the human mind prefers “round numbers” like 10’s and 5’s.
3) They only selected 10 cities around the United States. Just off the top of my head I can think of more than ten different major metropolitan areas in the United States: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Saint Louis, Lexington (KY), Seattle, San Fransciso, Los Angeles, New York, Philidelphia, Boston, Birmingham (AL), Jacksonville (FL), Tampa, etc, etc, etc. That’s 15 major metropolitan areas populated by millions of people. How did they chose 10?
4) What 10 cities did they chose? The diet of an average citizen in Chicago is most certainly significantly different than the average diet of a citizen in Bradley, IL (near where the Chicago Bears go to practice football before the football season starts.) Even more so, the diet of a child in Cairo, IL is no where near the diet of a child in Evanston, IL. (Cairo is near the southern tip of Illinois and is pronounced KAI-roh. Evanston is north of Chicago.) The former is going to have much more whole grains in their diet, the later is going to have more chemicals from processed foods in their diet.
Lastly, why did the study seem to not mention anything about improved medical and dental resources in current generations than in previous as well as a significantly improved source of nutrients needed to develop healthy bodies? I’m not saying that this data is significantly increasing development, but it would be nice if they told us why it was not significant.
I am not saying you are wrong, I am not saying the study is wrong. I am just attempting to raise valid questions that I need answered in order to understand how valid the study is, or, to maybe convince you that the study is not valid.
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I have come to realize that teenagers don’t get the kind of support they need in the current society. There is a biological need for teenagers to become their own person, seperate from their parents. They don’t understand this, and their parents don’t understand this either. They act on this need by defying their parents, which often means indulging in risky or unhealthy behavior. Often parents shove money at them and tell them to go have a good time with their friends. They become facilitators of their youths bad behavior. I think we (parents) need to recognize our children need us to teach them to assume the responsibility of becoming an adult. We need to prepare them. I believe if we do this, we would see less (not none) bad behavior since they would see they are nearing that imaginary line where they become adults and will enjoy the privilages of that position. So few understand the responsibilities, especially the financial ones, but that largely comes with experience.
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I think those are all valid issues Jen, I would have done it differently myself. Personally I would have used first period as the qualifier. That’s why I said I was searching out other studies that might have better parameters…
GG
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Oky-doky. We’ll just go with “it’s flawed, but we have nothing better to use at this time.” :)
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I just was searching for a different study. Out of curiosity are you playing the devil’s advocate?
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/children/03/31/early.puberty.wmd/
find the mistakes in this study and lets talk about it.
Herman-Giddens, ME, Slora, EJ, Wasserman, RC, et al., Secondary Sexual Characteristics and Menses in Young Girls Seen in Office Practice: A Study from the Pediatric Research in Office Settings Network, Pediatrics, 1997; 99: 505-512.
GG
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Best way I’ve seen teens (like me) discribed. So so true
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What is the best way?
GG
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A person who can’t remember to walk the dog, but never forgets a phone number.
A weight watcher who goes on a diet by giving up candy bars before breakfast.
A youngster who receives his/her allowance on Monday, spends it on Tuesday, and borrows from his/her best friend on Wednesday.
Someone who can hear a song by Madonna played three blocks away but not his mother calling from the next room.
A whiz who can operate the latest computer without a lesson but cannot make a bed.
A student who will spend 12 minutes studying for her history exam, and 12 hours for her driver’s license.
A youngster who is well informed about anything he doesn’t have to study.
An enthusiast who has the energy to ride a bike for miles, but is usually too tired to dry the dishes.
A connoisseur of two kinds of fine music: loud and VERY LOUD
A young woman who loves the cat and tolerates her brother.
A person who is always late for dinner but always on time for a “raid” in Warcraft
A romantic who never falls in love more than once a week.
A budding beauty who never smiles until her braces come off.
A boy who can sleep until noon on any Saturday when he suspects the lawn needs mowing.
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Ah the original quote. The only one I am iffy on in that quote would be the one about Madonna…
GG
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Kick them out of the house while they still know everything.
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I read in some magazines that Teen is a modern invented age between childhood and adult (Apparently, there were no teenager during the Middle-Age for example)
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A teenager is someone whose age in numbers ends with teen ( 13-19 ) so it has always existed. Maybe nobody coined the term until modern times, but they always existed.
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I think before, there was childhood and adult. Once the child was ready, he became an adult with all the responsibilities.
Nowadays, we have the teenagers. They have more responsibilities than child, but do not have the power of the adults. Isn’t this problematic?
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