Peer-reviewed Article

Everybody encounters puberty at different ages, but there are some factors that may contribute to when a person goes through puberty.  In an article called, “Beyond overweight: nutrition as an important lifestyle factor influencing timing of puberty,” Cheng et al. offers some contributing factors, including nutrition intake during pregnancy and in early life of the child that are influential to menarche.  One cause of early menarche is due to a child being overweight.  There seems to be correlation in girls between early puberty and weighing above the normal weight for that female’s age.  In a longitudinal study conducted with girls as their subjects, the findings show that girls with a higher level of prepubertal body mass experienced early menarche.  Contrary to this, another study was done on boys, which proclaimed that boys with a higher prepubertal BMI experienced late puberty.  For kids to get overweight, they most likely had eaten fatty foods, for kids who have consumed “Higher intakes of total fat of polyunsaturated fatty acids were related to earlier menarcheal age” (Cheng et al., 2012, p. 146).   Early puberty is also associated with high levels of animal protein consumed.  Not only is healthy nutrition important for children, but it is also important they get the right nutrients while in their mother’s stomachs.  If mothers are not eating properly, then there baby may not be getting enough nutrients, leading to a lower birth weight.  A low birth weight is associated with early menarche.  There are many factors that can cause a person to experience puberty at an early, or late stage; however, if a person experiences late puberty, they are at a slight advantage in life.  It is said that, “a delay in the timing of puberty by approximately 7-8 months that is achievable with dietary modifications may translate into a 6% reduction in breast cancer and an up to 3.4% decrease in total mortality” (Cheng et al., 2012, p. 149).  Whether a person arrives at menarche early or late, there are many possibilities to why that phenomenon could have happened.

The best audience to target for this issue on puberty is parents.  One of the causes of early or late puberty is caused by the habits of the mother carrying the baby, while other factors come from early childhood.  Parents control what their child eats when they are a baby and infant, so to try and limit odd timing of puberty, the parents need to be targeted.   One way to target them is to present this new information to them as a diffusion of innovations.  The innovations would be different for every parent, but could include: information on healthy nutrition during pregnancy, making sure the child endures physical activity daily, and offering the child a healthy diet.  These new practices or ideas would most likely be considered incremental or distinctive types of innovations, for every parent should be some what informed on this information already; therefore they would not be considered breakthroughs.  One way to diffuse these new practices could be to use mass media; perhaps there could be commercials showing different activities parents can do with their kids to keep them active in order to maintain a healthy weight.  Using an interactive communication channel would also be a very good communication tool; it allows the parents to explore the website on their own, while still getting the information of how to keep their child healthy in order to promote a normal timing of puberty (Sharma, 2012).

Referrences:

Cheng, G., Buyken, A. E., Shi, L., Karaolis-Danckert, N., Kroke, A., Wudy, S. A., Degen, G.

        H., & Remer, T.  (2012).  Beyond overweight: nutrition as an important
        lifestyle factor influencing timing of puberty.  Nutrition Reviews 70.3, 133-
        152.  Retrieved from:
        http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a280151f-4b26-4481-a1c6-

        b09148f5c9e5%40sessionmgr15&vid=4&hid=25
Sharma, M. & Romas, J. (2012). Theoretical Foundations of Health Education

        and Health Promotion (2nd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Barlett.