I feel that most of the women in SC200 can attest to the debilitating pain a menstrual brings. Being that I will be suffering for the next 40 years or so, I think it is incredibly problematic that young girls are subject to getting their periods earlier due to a diet they cannot help (if my hypotheses is correct). Since I feel so strongly about modified crops causing problems I then had to be skeptical.
A menstrual cycle, according to WebMD is once a month the female uterus grows a thickened lining that holds a fertilized egg. If there isn’t a fertilized egg available the uterus will shed the lining resulting in bleeding from anywhere in between 3-7 days.
On average, in the early 19th century puberty started anywhere between 15-17 years old. Now the average age of the first period is anywhere between 8-12.
So far most researchers agree the age of the onset of puberty is starting earlier; but they haven’t seem to find one solid reason.
Since there’s no ethical way to experiment on human subjects, they did a similar accidental test on cattle. What occurred was cattle were accidentally fed grains that had a chemical similar to estrogen (a female sex hormone) called PBB. Daughters of the pregnant women eating the PBB laced meat began menstruating earlier than most of their peers.
In most of the research done it appeared to be multiple anecdotes which individually could of been caused by multiple third variables. Another problem arising is the effect of the chemical compound BPA which mimics estrogen as well. They act like steroids in the body which can alter the start of puberty. The other side to this argument however is BPA has been around since 1891. And now only 7 percent of Americans don’t have traces of BPA in them. Also BPA’s are currently used in everyday plastics and other products.
I didn’t find sufficient evidence to reject my hypotheses of modified crops causing menstrual cycles to appear early. Right now the answer isn’t known yet. Feel free to cut my blog up. I’m interested in your feedback. Thanks!
For years my Mom has always joked around about this topic. She always says there’s something in the water. Well after reading this artical what my Mom said has some truth to it. This is interesting and kinda scary at the same time. As a person who might have children in the future, I’ll keep this in mind if I have a girl.
http://www.obgyn.net/sexual-health/first-menstruation-average-age-and-physical-signs
These are two topics that I would never think correlated together. I loved reading this post I found it to be very different than other things I’ve read and actually makes me think about whether things in our lives are more interconnected than we thought. I wonder if the pain you get when on your menstrual cycle could be caused by an outside force as well.
That is an interesting observation. I would’ve never thought my monthly cramps could be from an outside force. I did notice while I was vegetarian the pain I would get wasn’t nearly as bad. But they’re a plethora of confounding variables that could be associated with my observation. Thanks for the comment! 🙂
The issue of modified food is widely discussed in today’s society and there is a lot of misinformation surrounding the topic, so I was very interested to read how those modified foods could be effecting our lives. I also like that you noted the potential problems with your study. I’d be interested to see if you found any additional studies corroborating your hypothesis.
I remember reading about something similar about 8 years ago, but it was mainly talking about hormones fed to chick that effect girls puberty. The study found that due to increases in hormones in meat chickens, it was making girls breasts grow sooner as well as menstrual flow increase. I think there is a lot of research that needs to be done on these topics, though the idea of genetics and genetically modified food is a great advancement in science and humanity, we still don’t know enough about its long term effects on people.
This is an interesting article because my youngest sister had to get something put into her body to momentarilly stop her from getting her menstrual cycle too early. She was 9 years of age when she first experienced it which makes me wonder whether she really needed to get something put in her body to stall her from going through puberty.
I’m assuming a doctor had something to do with your younger sister having something put into her body to prevent her menstrual from coming at that time. But I wonder how that made your sister feel psychologically. Because it appears that her body is “wrong” instead of trying to help her with her new one. However, that point directly contrasts my entire blog post lol. Thanks for the comment! 🙂