For the last few years, many people considered a variety of reasons in where to apportion blame for young girls suffering earlier and earlier periods, all ranging from pesticides, to non-organic foods, to obesity and stress. However, no one up to this point had ever considered that a vitamin or mineral deficiency could possibly be a root cause of premature adolescence.
From research completed at the University of Michigan:
Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health measured the blood vitamin D levels in 242 girls ages 5-12 from Bogota, Colombia, and followed them for 30 months. Girls low on vitamin D were twice as likely to start menstruation during the study than those with sufficient vitamin D, said epidemiologist Eduardo Villamor, associate professor in the U-M SPH.
Interesting. Villamor continued his research and claimed that variation occurred in the girls’ results due to their geographical location as well – it appeared that young females in areas more prone to sunshiny days were less likely than those who lived in areas with less hours of sun exposure to suffer premature menarche. In another interesting coincidence, young women with darker skin living in temperate areas naturally have a lower level of Vitamin D than those of young women possessing lighter skin pigmentation, and those darker-skinned young women are subsequently blessed by Mother Nature’s gift anywhere from a year to one-and-a-half years earlier than lighter-skinned women on average. Villamor also asserts that there is almost a year’s difference in the menstruation of those groups who had sufficient Vitamin D levels than those who did not regardless of skin color:
In the research by Villamor and colleagues, 57 percent of the girls in the vitamin D-deficient group reached menarche during the study, compared to 23 percent in the vitamin D-sufficient group. In terms of age, girls who were low in vitamin D were about 11.8 years old when they started menstruating, compared to the other group at about age 12.6 years old. This 10-month difference is substantial, Villamor said, because even though 10 months may not seem like a long time, at that age a lot is happening rapidly to a young girl’s body.
Vitamin D has long been responsible for helping to fortify bone density levels, mood elevation, and immune function. It’d be interesting to see if it served a purpose in promoting reproductive health in young women as well.
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