Puberty is an inevitable part of human maturation, and it increasingly appears to hold a key to understanding individuals’ risk for developing poor health outcomes later in life. Research in girls has established a significant relationship between disease risk and the timing of puberty onset.
Early puberty has been connected to a higher risk for illnesses including endometriosis, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer, depression, eating disorders, uterine fibroids, and osteoarthritis, as well as all-cause mortality. Many of these health outcomes exist on a sliding scale where the risk increases as the age of puberty onset decreases. On the other end of the spectrum, late puberty has been associated with celiac disease, asthma, and poor sleep, but it’s also protective against some conditions. Both early and late puberty — before 8 and after 13 years old — are associated with early menopause, which comes with its own health risks.
