I’ve heard that hormones injected into cows are transferred into their milk and are a cause for teenage and preteen girls developing even younger. Specifically their breasts and periods.
Is this true, and, is it a fact that younger women have bigger boobs and also menstruate at a younger age? Is this something that has changed on average, or have there simply been more cases found at the extremes? My perception of everyday life is that I am often confused as to the age of young women due to a) makeup and b) very developed features.
I used to think it was cow hormones, too, until I ran across the case of the 11-year girl at my school who’s been mensturating since she was nine… and she’s lactose intolerant.
You should know that it isn’t clear at all that young women are going through puberty at an earlier age than they were, “back in the day.”
There was a scare regarding this exact issue a few years ago, but it was based primarily upon a good, well randomized study of modern young women compared to a study of girls in a British orphanage in the late 19th century. See the difference?
Essentially it seems that better nutrition and less stressful childhoods have more effect on this measure than any possible effects from cow-milk or whatever. The hormones that are in this milk are generally ones that your body knows how to deal with naturally and are digested into their constituent amino-acids rather than absorbed to have whatever effects they had in the thing you’re eating/drinking.
A similar thing happened with supposedly lowering sperm counts. Basically, the newer study took a broader range of cities into account when finding subjects, but the old study was just based on New York or another city with normally lowered sperm counts for some unexplained reason.
I’ve heard many theories, which seems to indicate that nobody really knows. Some of them is the cow’s milk theory, but then again who really drinks that much milk anyway? Another indicated that excess nutrition has something to do with this, which sounds logical. Another theory, which is also tied to declining sperm count in males, is the wide spread use of birthcontrol pills, which works it’s way around the cycle and eventually ends up in the water supply.
The folks over at Nioxin want you to believe it’s all because of plastic, polymers and copolymers in everything we eat, drink, wear and use. I’m not sure if their website gets into it or not, but I know that their reps rely heavily on it in their sales pitch, so that they can show you that their product doesn’t have plastics etc. They blame everything from advanced development to hair loss to cancer on plastics.
Personally, I think it sounds a little paranoid.
Strange that I just read something about that. The numbers went something like: No Hormone Cow - 1.5ng, the Hormone injected cow had about 1.7ng of the stuff in it. Our bodies produce about 160,000ng per day. Sorry for the weak memory no cite post - I will try to find the page I was reading from last week.
Most beef cattle are given a small, time-release hormone pellet (smaller than a No. 2 pencil eraser) that is implanted in the back side of the ear and disappears well before harvest. This helps the beef industry produce a leaner and less expensive product for consumers.
The hormone growth promoters do not increase the amount of hormones in beef by any appreciable amount. A 3-oz. serving of beef from a steer raised without hormone implants contains 1.3 nanograms of estrogen (a nanogram is one-billionth of a gram) and the same size serving from an implanted steer contains 1.9 nanograms. A difference of seven-tenths of a billionth of a gram is insignificant given that the average adult woman naturally produces 480,000 nanograms of estrogen daily and an adult man produces 136,000 nanograms.
Hormones are present in many types of foods and have no effect on human health. Both plant and animal foods naturally contain some hormones but beef contains significantly lower amounts of estrogen than other foods including cabbage, potatoes, peas, milk, soybean oil and wheat germ.
I’ll just add that I think girls’ breasts are larger on average than when I was a teenager (high school class of '78). But it’s not hormones - it’s that girls now are quite a bit heavier on average, and breast size increases with general body fat.
I think what kanicbird mentioned is probably what’s behind early development of females. I’ve read somewhere that a girl begins menstruation when she reaches an approximate weight of 105 lbs. Because of the high-fat and high-calorie content of many Western diets being eaten even at an early age, girls reach this threshold quicker than in previous generations, and as a result, that’s why it seems females these days mature quicker than before.
Hormones generally are not proteinaceous, AFAIK, but yeah, the body has a digestion mechanism. That’s not to say that they (and hormone mimics) don’t have any effect on us. It’s just not as much as one might think.
Somewhere in one of my New Agey/Paranoid stuff somewhere ( What?) I read that cows milk really isn’t suitable for human digestion…I’m gonna have to go-a-digging for this info. Something about of all the milk producing animals, the cow is the least best for drinking and meat usage. ( One cow feeds one man…something along those lines.)
Ooops, sorry. I was thinking that the majority of sex-linked hormones like estrogen, progesterin, etc. were polypeptide hormones rather than steroidal. A quick googling demonstrates that you’re more correct for these types of hormones.
Although aren’t a lot of mitogen hormones still proteins? Like IGF-1, IGF-2, HGH, etc? What are they pumpin’ Bessy the Cow up with to make them nice full uddies’?
I’m pretty sure PETA says that, but I’m not sure anyone reputable does. Let us know. I’ve been drinking nothing but soy milk for the last 3 years anyway.
There is another theory, with some evidential support, that girls enter puberty earlier in the absence of a continuously present adult male. Whether that is pheromonal or psychological or a bit of both is unknown. However the data to hand last time I checked suggested that the decrease in the average age of menarche could be explained entrely due to the increase in single parent families.
Yes to the first question. Many growth factors are proteins (or polypeptides, like insulin).
Bessy the Cow receives a type of somatotropin (a protein hormone), I think.
In contrast with steroid hormones that can be eaten and still have some effect on the body (birth control pills, for example), protein hormones have to be injected or implantes, else the body will digest it before they have any effect (insulin shots).
Nutrition and overnutrition are definitely suspects right off the bat. Also consider that fat/excess fat is a product of excess nutrition.
Girls who are very active/atheltic can have delayed periods. Girls who are very thin and lack body fat can have delayed periods.
Given all the nutrition and over nutrition, you have to be suspect of these issues. It would seem to me that adding fat and nutrition, and taking away activities leads to earlier development.
I read something very similar a decade ago. The author suggested it was related to an absent bio-dad. No man, step-dad or mom’s boyfriend in house led to earlier puberty.