Thursday 19 May 2022 09:25 PM Young girls are starting to undergo puberty as young as six years old trends now
Young girls in America are experiencing puberty at an earlier age than biologists would particularly expect, with black girls undergoing the process a year earlier than their peers on average, experts warn.
The phenomena was first detected by Dr Marcia Herman-Giddens, a public health expert at the University of North Carolina, when she began to gather data on more than 17,000 girls from the mid-1990s on.
She found that the average age of puberty was dropping, falling to ten years old, with some girls developing as early as age six.
While there are no concrete reasons to explain what is happening, experts tell the New York Times they believe it has been caused by a combination of increasing obesity rates, the prevalence of chemicals used in plastic and the stress they are feeling in every day life.
Experts also warn that girls that undergo these early puberties are at an increased risk of developing multiple types of cancer and suffer from mental health issues like depression or anxiety.
Young girls are having puberty at earlier ages, with the average age dropping down to ten years old in the U.S., with experts unable to pin down an exact reason
Herma Giddens, who at the time was serving as a director of a child abuse team at Duke University - also in North Carolina - noticed that many of the children that had been abused were developing breasts as young as six or seven years old.
Young girls usually go through puberty in their early teens, with those that start showing signs of the development around age ten being considered early.
She told the Times that the number of girls that were developing quickly did not 'seem right'. With little available data for her to investigate, she started to gather data herself.
That led to a 1997 study that changed the medical field, and the understanding doctors had about puberty in young women.
Dr Marcia Herman-Giddens (pictured), a public health expert at UNC, first noticed the trend when she was helping child abuse victims at Duke University
Extended research found that young girls in the U.S. were instead having puberty at around ten years old, earlier than any previous average data had shown. On average, the puberty age for young girls seemed to be moving up around three months each decade.
Black girls in particular were developing early, with the average age of puberty
