New research suggests girls who start consuming sugary drinks early in life tend to get their first period earlier than those who do not.
The study was the first to look at the relation between sugar-sweetened drinks and the age at which girls start menstruating, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology reported.
To make their findings the researchers looked at 5,583 girls between the ages of 9 and 14 and found those who consumed more than 1.5 servings of sugary drinks a day tended to have their first period 2.7 months earlier than those who consumed two or fewer per week. The findings are significant because girls who start menstruating earlier have been found to have an increased risk of breast cancer later in life.
"Our study adds to increasing concern about the wide-spread consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks among children and adolescents in the USA and elsewhere. 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. 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," said Karin Michels, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), who led the research.
The team found that after adjusting for BMI (which can influence menstruation) girls who consumed sugary drinks in the highest bracket were 22 percent more likely to start their period over the next month when compared to those who consumed the least.
"Our findings provide further support for public health efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks," Michaels concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Human Reproduction.
