From The New York Times
18 June, 2008


Mother’s Diet May Affect Daughter’s Puberty

What you eat during pregnancy and nursing may affect the age at which your daughter starts puberty, suggests a new animal study.

The findings, presented this week at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco, are important because a girl’s age at first menstrual period may influence her lifelong health. An early first menstrual period, before the age of 12, is a risk factor for breast cancer, teenage depression, obesity and insulin resistance.

The investigators, from the University of Auckland, fed pregnant rats a high-fat diet throughout pregnancy and lactation. Another group of rats received a regular diet of rat chow. After the baby rats were weaned, they also ate either regular chow or a high-fat diet.

The onset of puberty was much earlier in all the rats whose mothers ate a high-fat diet, regardless of whether the baby rats ate high-fat or regular diets. Baby rats that ate a high-fat diet also had early puberty even if their mothers ate a healthful diet. Rats exposed to a combination of a high-fat diet inside the mother’s womb and a high-fat diet after birth also had early puberty, but it wasn’t any earlier than other rats eating a fatty diet.

“This might suggest that the fetal environment in high-fat fed mothers plays a greater role in determining pubertal onset than childhood nutrition,” said Deborah Sloboda, lead author of the study.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/...ghters-puberty/

Mum's diet linked to onset of puberty

Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Dani Cooper
ABC News


Children whose mothers eat a high-fat diet during pregnancy are likely to enter puberty earlier and become obese as adults, a study presented in the US earlier today suggests.

Dr Deborah Sloboda, of The Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland, says rats born to mothers fed a high-fat diet during pregnancy began menstruating much earlier than compared with the offspring of pregnant rats fed a normal diet.

And the implications of a mother's diet lasted a lifetime, Sloboda says, as rats born to mothers fed a high-fat diet had a higher amount of body fat as adults even if they ate a regular diet while young.

The findings were presented this week to the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Fransisco.

Sloboda says the early onset of puberty in girls, marked by an early first menstrual period (menarche) is a risk factor for obesity, breast cancer in adulthood, teenage depression and diabetes.

Her research examined how prenatal nutrition and nutrition during childhood interact to alter reproductive maturation.

Control
During the study all rats born to mothers fed a high-fat diet entered puberty earlier than control specimens.

The combination of a high-fat prenatal diet and a high-fat diet after birth did not make the early-onset puberty any earlier.

"This might suggest that the foetal environment in high-fat fed mothers plays a greater role in determining pubertal onset than childhood nutrition," Sloboda says.

Among the adult rats that had a maternal high-fat diet, the study shows alterations in sex hormones, including increased levels of the ovarian hormone progesterone in females.

Sloboda says this shows that maternal high-fat nutrition may also "influence reproductive maturation and reproductive capacity in adult offspring".

Exciting
Reproduction expert, associate professor Roger Hart, of the University of Western Australia School of Women's and Infants' Health, says Sloboda's results are "exciting" and if replicated in humans have major implications for public health education.

Hart, who last year co-authored a paper with Sloboda on the influence of birth weight and postnatal weight gain on age at menarche, says it shows the importance of good diet among women who are pregnant, or who want to conceive.

"[It shows] for some people the damage is done when they have no control," Hart says.

"And once the damage is done it would appear to be very difficult to ameliorate the harm."

He says her research adds weight to Spanish findings that girls with increased insulin levels, which are linked to obesity, go though puberty earlier.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/artic.../17/2276176.htm

Listen up moms....if you're a rat, don't eat high-fat!

Did they feed the rats high-fat, low-carb? Betcha not.
Rachel

huh? FAT causes early puberty? I think not.

My cycles started at 10. I think my mom ate a lot of CARBS. She was big on cereals, potatoes, white bread, etc... My grandma was a lousy cook and mom did not learn a lot from her, so she embraced prepackaged food whole-heartedly.

for some reason this just cracked me up!