WASHINGTON — Consuming sugary drinks may taste good, but a new study found that guzzling down sweetened beverages may be tied to a slightly earlier age of menstruation.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School found that girls who frequently consume sugary drinks tend to start their menstrual periods earlier than girls who do not.
In the study, researchers observed more than 5,500 girls ages 9 to 14 between 1996 and 2001 who had not yet begun to have their periods and how many sugary drinks they had.
Girls who drank more than 1.5 sugary drinks a day got their first period approximately 2.7 months earlier than those who drank two or fewer sugary drinks a week. The girls who drank the most sugar-sweetened beverages started their periods at an average age of 12.8 years old — a few months earlier than other girls.
The average age of onset for menstruation among American girls has gradually declined over the last 50 years to 12 years old, compared to 14 years in 1900, Al Jazeera reports. An earlier onset of menstruation has been shown to carry significant health risks including higher lifetime risk of breast cancer.
The results held up even when the researchers took into account body mass index and ethnicity, which both also appear to affect onset of menstruation. Also, other factors such as height, total food intake and other lifestyle factors such as physical activity appeared not influence the results.
“The main concern is about childhood obesity, but our study suggests that age of first menstruation (menarche) occurred earlier, independently of body mass index, among girls with the highest consumption of drinks sweetened with added sugar,” lead researcher Karin Michels, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release.
“These findings are important in the context of earlier puberty onset among girls, which has been observed in developed countries and for which the reason is largely unknown.”
Diet sodas and fruit juices were not associated with any difference in the age at which girls started their periods, researchers found.
The girls in the study were part of the Growing up Today Study, which follows 16,875 children living in all 50 states of the U.S.
Consumption of sugary drinks, such as soft drinks, has been tied to other health issues such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.
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