The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Why Kids Are Starting Puberty Earlier Than Ever Before

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

The average age of puberty has been rapidly declining in recent decades. A concerning analysis found that girls are now starting puberty 3 months earlier every decade. For boys, there's been a staggering 15-fold increase in precocious puberty over the last two decades. What's causing this alarming trend, and what can we do about it? In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Josh Axe dives into the potential culprits behind the premature onset of puberty in children and the serious risks it poses to their health and well-being. He explores the latest research linking factors like chemical exposure, obesity, stress, and more to this disturbing phenomenon. You’ll discover: The top 5 foods and everyday products containing hormone-disrupting chemicals that may trigger early puberty Staggering statistics on how much earlier puberty is starting in kids today compared to just a few decades ago Long-term health consequences of precocious puberty like increased cancer risk, mental health issues, and more Practical tips on creating a low-toxin home environment to reduce your child's chemical exposure Simple lifestyle strategies to help prevent obesity and chronic stress - two key drivers of early puberty Don't miss this vital episode packed with actionable advice to safeguard your children's healthy development. Tune in and walk away armed with the knowledge to protect your kids from the alarming rise of premature puberty. Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter ------  Links:  https://ijponline.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13052-021-01015-6  https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/puberty-starts-earlier-in-many-american-boys-201210225437  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201908/why-more-kids-are-starting-puberty-earlier-ever  https://healthmatters.nyp.org/what-to-know-about-puberty-starting-earlier/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2730250  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33148304/  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/science/early-puberty-medical-reason.html https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/04/why-is-puberty-starting-younger-precocious https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465479/ https://www.news-medical.net/health/Chemicals-in-Cosmetics-Soaps-and-Perfume-and-Early-Puberty.aspx#:~:text=Phthalates%20and%20early%20puberty,-Other%20chemicals%20commonly&text=Another%20study%20measuring%20high%20molecular,by%209.5%20months%20on%20average.  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008450  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8622967/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe show where each and every week I cover the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, and spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, we're going to be exploring a crisis when it comes to puberty. The New York Times recently put out an article titled, Puberty starts earlier than it used to, and no one knows why. Well, actually, I know why. I'm going to be sharing why kids are developing. sometimes five years earlier now, which is causing them to age faster, which could take years off of their life, causing numerous health issues. And I'm going to point out exactly why that is. So here's the reality. It's true. The average age that children start going through puberty is getting

earlier and earlier and earlier. And I'm going to go through the research that proves why today. So coming up on today's episode, I'm going to go through some shocking statistics on this topic and what it means for these kids and your kids. And I'll also be sharing what we can do to stop this. Hey, also, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss an episode. Just know if you subscribe, it allows this podcast to get more popular and allows me to bring on better, more prominent guests for you to learn from. So thanks so much for being part of the show and helping me grow it and influence others for the good. All right, so let's dive in.

Here is study number one. an analysis of international studies from 1977 to 2013 showed that girls started puberty about three months earlier every single decade. And for boys, research has shown a 15-fold increase in precocious, which is early puberty, over the last 20 years. And in 1968, the average age of voice break was 15.

So this is a normal thing in puberty, a voice is boycraft. That was the average age, around 1960, it was 15. In 2019, it was 13 years of age. Now, here's the crazy part. In the 18th century, so a little bit over 100 years ago, it was recorded to be around the ages of 17 or 18. If you do the math here pretty easily,

and you say it could have gone from 18 to 13, that means that boys today are aging, five years faster, they're hitting puberty five years earlier than they did back in the 1800s. And the same study showed a sixfold increase in precocious puberty in girls over the same period of time. Now you can see here in this graphic, which is very telling, you can see up here, you know, around that 16 and a half. Now this is for women, the age of mencies, you can see here closer to 16 years of age or 16 and a half. And all the way puberty is happening earlier and earlier and earlier, now around 12 and a half years of age. Now, that was in 2000.

So now, and I can tell you when I ran my functional medicine clinic, I was surprised when families would come in and we would start to see young girls hitting their menstrual cycle closer to men's around 12 years old when it should be around 16 and a half. So this means, again, that a lot of young girls are aging four to five years earlier and hitting puberty, four to five years. earlier than they should, and there's major health consequences from this. So doctors across the world have also reported a rise in early puberty cases during the pandemic. So we saw a magnification during the pandemic, and a study in Italy found an increase in new diagnoses of precocious puberty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and here's what they correlated it with. The extra use of electronic devices in the increases in stress and obesity. In 2020, there was a 108% increase in patients who referred for suspected, precocious puberty. Now, study number two here is this.

Developmental psychologist Jane Mendo reports that girls who get their periods early are especially subject to distress and more likely than others to suffer from anxiety. panic attacks, body dissatisfaction, substance abuse, suicidality, depression that extends into adulthood, and they're more likely to be singled out for sexual harassment at school. And some studies show a link to long-term health risks, including breast cancer and testicular cancer, uterine cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, metabolic disorder such as type 2. diabetes and shorter adult height so they don't grow to their full height and don't develop, especially this is important for athletics.

Here are a few things I want to get into that we're seeing maybe causing these issues. And foods grown with exposure to chemicals and pesticides are a culprit, according to a study out of Denmark. Daughters born to mothers who are exposed to a mixture of pesticides during their first trimester of pregnancy, experienced first signs of puberty significantly earlier, on average, at eight or nine years of age, than daughters born to non-exposed female workers on an average of 10.5 years of age. We're talking about a two-and-a-half year difference alone from mothers who are exposed to pesticides during pregnancy. That's not even counting what the child is fed growing up.

residues of growth hormones in conventional milk were up to 20 times higher than that found in organic dairy products. Did you hear that? If you buy organic milk versus conventional, conventional dairy has 20 times more growth hormones, chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics in it, specifically growth hormone than in organic milk. And antibiotic residues were detected. in 60% of conventional milk samples. So we know, and listen, here's some of the antibiotics that are found in conventional dairy. So listen, if you go out to almost any conventional store and you buy milk that's not organic, here are the chemicals and the antibiotics you're going to find in your milk supply.

Benzopenicillin, tetracycline, oxytrecycline, chlorotetrocycline, tetracycline, and tetracycline, and streptomycin. Listen, there's a lot more on this list. You can see some of them here, but let me just point this out. Some of these are antibiotics that are used for acne. Some of them are used to treat a lot of different types of infections, specifically, typically fungal and bacterial infections as well. These are all found in the milk supply, all of these.

And so this is why consuming organic natural foods is so important. If not, what it's doing to our kids is causing them to age more quickly, have anxiety, depression, having, we talked about acne, a lot of other health issues if they're consuming conventional meat, dairy, or any conventional food products and processed foods are also going to contribute to this, but especially foods that are sprayed with chemicals. Now, here's another big cause. Obesity has been linked to earlier periods in girls since the 1970s. Numerous studies since have established that girls who are overweight or obese tend to start their periods earlier than girls who have an average normal weight. In one decade-long study, nearly 1,200 girls in the state of Louisiana found that those children who were obese had earlier periods.

Now, here's why this is, and you may not realize this, but body fat acts as an organ. Did you know that? So like your liver or your heart or your lungs, well, body fat acts as an organ. And body fat secretes growth hormones and chemicals that cause you to age faster, causes something called inflamaging.

So you age more quickly with this inflammation due to obesity from insulin levels being too high. So just know if your child is overweight, especially due to the foods they're exposed to and stress levels, they're aging more quickly, so they're going to hit puberty more quickly. In this study as well, I want to point out or another study, the girls with the earliest breast development in a 2000-ice study had the highest urine levels

of sphalates, which are endocrine disruptors, that are used to make plastics more durable. These phallates are found in fragrant shampoos, so even the shampoos your kids are using if they're not natural. Perfumes, deodorants, deodorants have other issues like aluminum in them. Toothpaste, which those are another problem. They have fluoride, nail polish, sunscreen, and lip balm. Now, think about how many girls are using fragrant shampoos, perfumes, deodorants. They're using toothpaste. Nail polish is very toxic, sunscreen, lip balm. All of these have these phallates, which have been shown to increase rates of puberty or hitting puberty earlier. Here's another surprising one. Stress is also a puberty,

with familial disruption, including father absenteeism. So if the father's not around or they don't have supportive family members, that increases stress, which causes children to age faster. This is one of the biggest stressors, also divorce rates. If parents go through a divorce, it's much more stress on the children, according to this study, and single-parent families have rapidly escalated in many countries compared to the past. Now, know this. Some of these things are out of your control, but what you can do for both yourself and your kids is do everything you can to eliminate the chemicals and create a stable family

environment that lowers your kids' stress rates. Now, listen, there's good stress, right? Athletics and your kids learning and growing, we want some good stress. But negative stress around relationship tension and around chemicals and obesity to where the body is secreting. hormones that cause inflammation, inflammation that causes them to age faster, this is the culprit of early pubescence in children today. Here are some things that you can do in order to help your kids or, listen, maybe you don't have kids yet, or maybe you're a grandparent, but you just want to spread this truth because, listen, you might save someone's life. You may transform someone's life by sharing this information with them, because we're talking about millions and millions of kids

hitting puberty five years earlier than they should think about that. Many kids, according to the 1800, should be hitting puberty around 17 or 18, and now they're hitting it around 12 or 13 years of age. It's crazy. So here are some things you can do. Number one, eat organic to avoid hormones and pesticides in your food, especially meat products, dairy products, and the dirty dozen. Okay, meat and dairy products.

Now, listen, I'm a big fan of, wild organic meat, wild cop fish, pastured eggs, and raw organic fermented dairy, okay? But I am not a fan of any conventional meat and any conventional dairy products because of the toxic load. There's something called the law of bioaccumulation. If you eat meat and dairy regularly,

what will happen is all of the, here's the principle, remember this. You are what you eat what they ate, or you are what you eat, eat what they had injected into them. So 80% of the antibiotics given today in the United States are not given to humans. They're given to livestock like cows. So we are getting the majority of our antibiotics exposure, not by taking conventional antibiotics, but by our meat and dairy supply that has all of this antibiotic residue. As I showed there, the dairy products, all of those

different antibiotics are found in conventional dairy products. some of them are going to be found in meat supply as well. So no, by simply changing up and buying organic meat products and dairy, you can radically improve your health and the health of your children. And again, eat meat, eat wild organic, don't eat anything conventional. Number two, children should be more active. Gen Z spends an average of seven hours a day on their phones. think about that seven hours a day on their phones this is according to studies being active will reduce obesity and in turn help to prevent early puberty and listen what i would do is limit children's screen time to maybe an hour a day in the afternoon and that's it and also what should they be exposing themselves

to things that are going to help them grow and develop or else don't give them a tablet or a phone at all in junior higher high school. I mean, when I see the parents who I see really raising up great kids, they're very, very set on either not having kids on social media at all or having very strict boundaries and also helping dictate what they're exposing themselves to on a regular basis. Think about this. We've heard the principle you are what you eat.

Now, that includes growth hormones and everything else, but also children are what they consume, what they watch on TV, the music they listen to, what they're looking at, on their screen on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. And so you really wanna make sure that they're feeding themselves

things that are going to help them also reduce stress, right? This is a major stressor. What happens is this dopamine, your kids get on this dopamine addiction, and this continues to cause stress levels and cortisol to be high, causing them to age more quickly. Most people don't realize how when stress hormones get elevated,

like noropreneffrine and cortisol and many of the other stress hormones. When stress hormones are high, that causes inflammation, which leads to something called inflamaging where you age more quickly. So your children, you really need to be aware of how much screen time they're having a week

and do everything you can to get them outside. Children being outside is one of the greatest things they can also do to detox their body. When you're indoors, you don't have many plants. There aren't a lot of things that support detoxification. When children are outside in nature, your body can naturally detoxify at a higher level, which can turn back the clock on their aging or pause them aging so quickly.

And step number three, avoid chemicals. Doing everything to support your kids and getting natural deodorant and natural toothpaste. It's free of the chemicals as much as you possibly can. And avoiding things, as I mentioned, like the spallates. These are, you know, in order to avoid those, non-toxic shampoo, as I mentioned, a deodorant, toothpaste, and everything else will help your kids tremendously. And listen, if your child does start puberty early,

talk with them and make sure they feel supported. Many kids who experience early puberty become antisocial in their teen years because they feel like they can't relate to their friends and classmates at their same age. And at the same time, start taking these actions now to help slow down the clock on their aging and to make them feel more accepted and included as well.

So remember these solutions. Number one, eat organic. Number two, reduce exposure to chemicals. Number three, reduce screen time. And number four, spend more time outdoors in nature. If you can support your kids in doing this, they're gonna age more slowly, live longer, and have much, much better health.

Hey, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on early puberty. Did you know that a lot of kids today are aging and hitting puberty up to five years earlier compared to the 1800s? And have you noticed this? Again, I noticed this when I was in practice, how early children were starting to hit their, hitting pubescence. And I want to know, have you seen this? Have you been around high schoolers recently in junior hires and actually seen this? I think a lot of us have experienced this. And again, one of the best things you can do is share this,

video, share this podcast, because more people need to know the truth about what chemicals are doing to ourselves and our children. They're causing us to age more quickly and causing major, major health issues. And I want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Dr. Josh Axe show. Remember, each and every week, I cover the science and principles and how to grow your body, your mind, and your spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. And if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this. And remember, every time you subscribe and share, you're making this channel more popular, which allows me to bring on more high-profile guests so we can transform more lives in the

process, including yours and mine. I want to say, hey, thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much for listening. Can't wait to see you on the next episode.