PUBERTY

If you haven’t already, you’re probably going to notice some changes happening to your body, sometime soon.

If you are anything like me, you might have been aware of an older sister going through these changes and wondered when the same might happen for you. You might be dreading it, welcoming it, or even cursing that those changes haven’t come soon enough. Maybe it came ‘too early’ or perhaps if nothing is happening, you feel it might be ‘too late’.

What are we talking about? Yep, you guessed it.

Puberty.

So what exactly is puberty?

If you look at the word root, ‘puber’ comes from the Latin meaning fully grown, or mature. It’s related to other concepts too, like the mons pubis – the fatty mound at the front of your pelvis where pubic hair begins to grow. In fact, there is a word for young people as they reach this age: pubescent.

Even while you were developing in the womb as a fetus, your brain was secreting pulses of hormones that worked in concert to develop your ovaries (see McCartney, 2010). After birth, this process pauses, and for reasons not yet fully understood, as you approach age 10, the pulses start up again, secreting these hormones mostly when you are asleep. This happens well before you see any physical changes associated with puberty. If you haven’t noticed any hair sprouting under your arms, or had a growth spurt, you are ‘pre-pubescent’.

Inherently, the changes of puberty can start quite early – around eight or nine – and last quite a long time – up to six years!

Although the changes of puberty are outlined along a loose timeline below, they can really occur in any order, unique to you, and one change flows into the next, with another starting before the previous one is complete. If you are really worried that you haven’t noticed any aspect of puberty, you can always see your doctor. They can reassure you and undertake any investigations that might be required to check if there might be another reason puberty hasn’t yet happened for you.

How do you know when it begins?

One of the first changes of puberty comes in fact with a beautiful name: breast budding. Your breasts begin to develop with breast tissue growth underneath the nipples and the small surrounding halo of pigmented skin, the areolae. Breast enlargement continues to occur until a delineation in the contour of your breasts is made by the areolae. Eventually, the contour of the areolae join the curve of your breasts to form their mature shape, with just the nipple otherwise protruding.

Just as your breasts begin to bud, pubic hair growth also begins. Sometimes this can occur before breast changes. It’s another signal that your sex hormones are warming up, and that your menstrual period may not be far away.

But first, the growth spurt! Did you know that the age your period begins is related to your height? The earlier your period, the shorter your adult height.

The menstrual cycle has its own dedicated page. Check it out!

Your body takes some time to adjust to the establishing hormonal routine, so period can be light, sporadic or irregular for up to a year. The knowledge and information about periods can be complex, but it doesn’t need to be, as the details are magnificent.

Underarm hair is actually one of the last pubertal changes to occur, but more likely than not, you’ll have already noted a change to the way you produce body odour and/or sweat. That change comes about because our sweat glands also mature under the influence of sex hormones to become active.

When will it happen for me?

The beginning of your own personal puberty is often very similar to when your Mum experienced it (Boswell, 2004). However, what’s interesting is that you have to have a certain percentage of body fat and weigh a certain amount, before puberty can commence.

Often girls who are very active (competitive swimming, dancing, team sports, triathlons etc) might not reach that critical mass until later, because of the intensity of their training and their level of physical output. If the energy equation is not balanced (energy in = energy out), weight loss or weight gain will occur.

So, if the body is deprived of requisite nutrients longer term, medically relevant conditions can develop, such as brittle hair and nails, and the inability to regulate body temperature.

Deliberately restrictive eating patterns can also develop into eating disorders, like anorexia or bulimia nervosa. On the other hand, too much weight can also cause a whole host of health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and strokes.

Too much weight is a major driver of generations of girls starting puberty earlier and earlier. What’s important while keeping your body fit, healthy and active, is to ensure it receives the nourishment it needs to carry out all of its essential functions of balance (homeostasis).

Body issues and what can come up...

Certainly, puberty brings up lots of common bodily issues, like concerns about what you look like, if your breasts/tummy/hips/thighs are too big or too small; sometimes girls learn to be ashamed of their natural distribution of body fat.

Some people may even feel that their body is the ‘wrong’ gender, they should not be female (or male) and may seek to delay puberty and ultimately look to change bodily sex. Puberty can also affect your mood and sleep, and symptoms of depression can develop (Quevedo et al, 2009; Wang et al, 2016).

While puberty can be challenging, it can also be a beautiful experience, to be embraced as part of one’s maturation and development. One of it’s natural consequences is an increasing interest in sexual relationships (not just romantic fantasies). We talk more about relationships here. If you are in any way concerned about your body or the way it challenges YOU as it changes and develops, it can be well worth discussing with a trusted medical professional or counsellor.

REFERENCE LIST

Boswell, H.B. (2014). Normal Pubertal Physiology in Females. Chapter 2 in Dietrich J. (eds) Female Puberty. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0912-4_2, accessed 24 January 2021.

MacCartney, C.R. (2010). Maturation of sleep-wake GnRH secretion across puberty in girls: potential mechanisms and relevance to the pathogenesis of polycystic ovary syndrome. . doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2826.2010.02029.x, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441996/ accessed 24 January 2021.

Quevedo, K.M., Benning, S.D., Gunnar, M.R., Dahl, R.E. (2009). The onset of puberty: effects on the psychophysiology of defensive and appetitive motivation. Developmental Psychopathology, 21(1): 27-45. doi:10.1017/S0954579409000030. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2929819/ accessed 4 March 2021.

Hui Wang, H., Lin, S.L., Leung, G.M., Schooling, C.M. (2016). Age at Onset of Puberty and Adolescent Depression: “Children of 1997” Birth Cohort. Pediatrics, 137(6) e20153231. doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-3231. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/137/6/e20153231 accessed 4 March 2021.