I met this person today that claimed they were 24 but looked about 13 although this person had an I.D. it was still hard for me to believe. They said that they had a “delay in puberty” I have heard of late bloomers but that was crazy. Assuming that this was a really a 24 year old how could someone be 10 years late on puberty? And if it’s true my Mother said that every child actor would be delaying puberty on purpose.
24 is certainly not 10 years ‘late’. Perhaps five, at most. The onset of puberty in modern western society is far earlier than in early times - for reasons nobody quite understands, although it’s almost certainly to do with diet. People suffering from anorexia can often pass through teenage years with virtually no physical ‘changes’, their body preserving what little energy it has for mere survival rather than potential reproduction.
Puberty can be artificially delayed, at least. My brother did not enter puberty until his thirties, after having been on a growth hormone treatment for most of his life. He still looks like he’s in his mid-teens.
There was an Oprah show a while back (no, I don’t watch Oprah, but my ex did :o) about a guy who for some reason had been brought up as a girl, and who had received hormone injections to make him more womanly. Whether intentionally or as a side-effect, his puberty was delayed, too, and still looked, in his late twenties/early thirties, very young.
I don’t know the answer to the question, BUT. I had a cousin that at 16 could pass easily for 10 or so. His mother took him down to get his drivers license on his birthday and the people giving the test wouldn’t believe her when she said he was 16. She had to go home and get his birth certificate.
It worked out pretty good for him in the end though. At about 20 he started growing up. Now he’s in his late 40’s/early 50’s and looks like he’s 35, maybe. Got a great looking wife and three killer daughters.
I just remembered, he also had some sort of bone problem. Up untill about 10 or so he always had a broken bone somewhere. He could be running through the yard and fall down on the grass and POP, there went another one. That’s also gone away. In his late 20s he got into motocross and did a lot of racing. In spite of some which he never, far as i can remember, ever broke any more bones.
I know a girl who is having growth problems. They have delayed puberty in her so that she will continue to grow. It is possible.
Sure, a person can be ten years “late” for puberty in the same sense that some people never go through puberty. In both cases, a disease or abnormality is almost certainly present and puberty won’t commence until the problem is treated. So, it’s not that puberty’s late, it’s never gonna come without therapy.
Some relatively common causes of “late” puberty include:
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Turner’s Syndrome (in girls) i.e. XO chromosomes instead of XX
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Klinefelter Syndrome (in boys) i.e XXY chromosomes instead of XY
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congenital underfunctioning of the pituitary gland (either sex)
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acquired pituitary gland diseases (either sex)
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Kallmann’s Syndrome (usually boys) i.e. lack of the hormones that stimulate the testicles/ovaries
Any of the above can cause “late” puberty.
Note that, in boys in particular, delayed puberty is often associated with tall stature. This happens because testosterone is not present to “close off” the growing end of long bones in the body. In the absence of testosterone, they keep growing. Somewhat paradoxically, testosterone does, however, cause an initial growth spurt of the bones.