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I remember being one of the last of my friends to get my period. It was totally embarrassing and even today I have difficulty telling people how old I actually was. By today's standards I would have been considered an alien when I finally got my first period at age 15. I wish I'd known back then that it was actually a good thing.
Kids today are hitting puberty earlier than ever before. The EPA and National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences concluded that girls are getting their period earlier and developing breasts at a younger age and that's at least partly due to environmental changes. The study also found that premature puberty can lead to all sorts of issues down the road including a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, breast cancer in girls, and a heightened risk of testicular cancer in boys. According to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health the average age for girls getting their first period has declined from age 13.3 in 1920 to 12.4 in girls born after 1980. Though early puberty can be somewhat hereditary, there are also some environmental aspects that parents can and should control to keep kids from growing up too young.
- Avoid foods with added hormones
Eat organic meat and dairy. Traditional meat and dairy is laden with hormones (amongst tons of other evils) that can mimic estrogen. Not to mention what it does to the environment. The typical dairy farm (5,000 heads) produces as much waste as a town of about 100,000 people.
- Serve foods with detoxifying abilities
Organic broccoli is a great choice. Just make sure to serve tons of fiber filled organic fruits and vegetables to constantly detoxify your kids and keep their systems as clean as possible from environmental hazards.
- Drink and cook with filtered water
Keep your kids safe by making sure that the water that they drink is as clean as possible. Again, make sure that they drink a lot of it to detoxify the system but stay away from plastic water bottles because of the risk of BPA. One of the supposed problems with BPA is that it can cause earlier puberty in kids.
- Keep your kids fit
Paul Kaplowitz, Ph.D. author of Early Puberty in Girls: The Essential Guide to Coping with this Common Problem, found that being just 10 percent overweight increases the chance of early breast development by 10 percent. Avoid this issue with my guide to keeping your kids lean.
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