Early Puberty and Xenoestrogens: What It Means for Your HRT Patients

Um, and today, that question is mostly around what does it mean that girls especially are entering puberty earlier than any previous generation? And secondly, what does that actually tell us about the hormonal environment we are all living in? So I don't know if you guys have no-noticed this, especially in your own clinics, but when I first started out in hormone replacement therapy, my expectation was that I would see women probably, you know, as early as 40, 45, and then certainly much older.

I expected my patient population to really be kind of that 50 to 60-year-old female, menopause, maybe perimenopause, and things of that nature.

What I ended up finding out as years rolled on was that that population is absolutely present, but man, the population of women in their teens, in their early 20s, and even into their 30s, that is the population that, number one, I think understands the benefit and the, uh, beauty of HRT, but in particular is also the one that is being impacted more than we could possibly imagine.

And so I wanna kinda help you guys make this connection because again, I don't think it's something that's o-often connected, at, at least publicly or, uh, when it comes to studies, literature, et cetera.

So let's just get into it and see what we're talking about here.

So I, I think, again, a lot of you, if you're in my same type of position, maybe you own your own clinic or maybe you work at a clinic, uh, you have patients, and they're in their, like I said, teens, late 20s, even 30s, um, and maybe they got their first period at nine or 10 years of age, right? Some of them already started having the beginnings of breast development at, like, six or seven.

Uh, th- th- and I know that, again, it's easy for us to kind of brush that off, but what I want you to understand is that these women, they are growing up in a environment that has, again, already been dysregulated before they were even old enough to understand what hormones were.

I, I know I've talked about this in the past, right? I talk about it probably almost every episode where we talk about endocrine-disrupting chemicals and things of that nature.

Recognize that these chemicals, they don't just start becoming a part of our lives as men and women when we're in our, uh, teens, 20s, 30s, 40s.

Uh, these are already a part of our lives from the moment of conception, essentially.

Um, our mothers today are, are filled, so to speak, with chemicals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and they are absolutely affecting us as, as, as fetuses into when we're born.

So when we're seeing more cases of what a-appear to be estrogen-dominant, uh, beginnings, right, PCOS, endometriosis, PMDD, uh, just, just general reproductive, uh, dysregulation, right? May- maybe a thyroid that's just never really been adequate or worthwhile.

I think there is a very good question worth asking, and that question would be: Is there really a connection between how early these, these young ladies enter their reproductive axes and, and when that's turned on and what their hormonal picture looks like today? I think that is going to be the most profound thing we could ask.

And I think the answer is yes, and understanding why that is changes everything about how you think about treating these young women and, and why you should treat these young women.

So let, let me kind of walk you through what, what essentially is, like, the trend or the average right now.

The, the average age of puberty onset in, in young girls has dropped significantly over the last, let's say, hundred years.

The f- you know, initial men- menstruation of, of young women generally occurred, this was crazy, a hundred years ago, around the age of 16 to 17, and this is in industrialized countries.

A- and I, I wanna emphasize that, too.

Again, I understand a hundred years ago was very different.

Um, but, w- you know, a hundred years ago, we had adequate infrastructure here in the United States.

We had, you know, certainly adequate food supply for the most part in, in most of our e- especially industrialized cities and whatnot, um, in comparison to, say, i- you know, uh, small Central American countries, okay? So I understand that, you know, there, there's a lot of differences a hundred years ago to now, but again, we're focusing on industrialized countries nonetheless.

Sixteen to seventeen, that was the average age of the initiation of menstruation for young women.

By the mid-20th century, that number dropped to 13.

So again, just 50 years later, we're starting to see that number rapidly decrease.

And now, in this day and age where we're living in 2026, it is averaging closer to about 12 years of age But we're already beginning to see earlier signs of sexual development, especially things like breast development, routinely beginning at six, seven, or even eight years old.