loginSugary Drinks Linked With Earlier Menstruation
It is well known that drinking soft drinks and other sugary beverages is bad.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, sugar-sweetened soft drinks contribute to the development of diabetes and heart disease in women.
A new study now suggests that, girls who drink a lot of soft drinks and other sugary beverages may get their first menstrual periods earlier than girls who don't often consume these drinks.
The research involved more than 5,500 U.S. girls ages 9 to 14 who had not yet had their first periods at the study's start. Researchers asked the girls questions about their diets, including how frequently they consumed soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages (such as fruit drinks and iced tea), and tracked the girls for five years (from 1996 to 2001).
Girls who drank more than 1.5 servings of sugary drinks daily started their menstrual periods nearly three months earlier than those who consumed two or fewer sugary drinks per week, the study found.
"Our study adds to increasing concern about the widespread consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks among children and adolescents in the USA and elsewhere," study author Karin Michels, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement.
The results are important because researchers have observed that girls may be entering puberty at younger ages, but the reason for this change remains unclear, she said.
The researchers said that a one-year decrease in the age at which a girl starts her period is linked with a 5 percent increase in the individual's risk of breast cancer, and so a three-month decrease in age of first period could have a "modest impact" on breast cancer risk.
The impact of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption on age of first period, and possible breast cancer risk, should not be overlooked, because unlike most other predictors of a girl's age at her first period, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is something people can change, the researchers said.
Comments
Comments
