Lyle Hurd: It’s a pleasure to welcome Dr. Sherrill Sellman, author of Hormone Heresy and What Women Need to Know to Protect their Daughters from Breast Cancer. Dr. Sellman, reading your books, something that absolutely almost struck me dumb was the fact that there’s something called precocious puberty that has become an epidemic in our society. Would you tell us what that is?
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Precocious puberty is really the early development of puberty in little girls and actually little boys. But there was a study done in 1997 and this study actually found by looking at a large cross-section of children that 1 out of 6 8-year-olds are showing signs of puberty.
Lyle Hurd: 1 out of 6 8-year-olds?
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: 1 out of 6 8-year-olds. Actually, by the time little girls are at the age of 10, 50% of those little 10-year-olds will be menstruating. Now, this was absolutely shocking, this study. Absolutely shocking because in traditional society and in our own culture a could of generations ago, but what still exists in traditional society around the world, the average age for menstruation would be somewhere [between] 14 to 17. Now we are seeing puberty occurring in 8-year-olds, in What Women Must Know to Protect the Daughters from Breast Cancer, I interviewed a colleague of mine whose little daughter. . . had just turned 5, when her mother noticed she was developing breast buds. She took her daughter to the doctor—shocked at what she had discovered—and it was confirmed that this little 5-year-old actually was showing hormonal levels and initiating puberty—at 5. So this [is an] occurrence that is happening around the world—that statistic, 1 out of 6 8-year-olds, as I found in my research is occurring in children in Canada, the U.K., in Europe, Australia, some Asian countries—it’s happening around the world—1 out of 6 8-year-olds. Now, why is this a problem? This is a problem for a number of reasons. First of all, the earlier a woman has high estrogen levels circulating through her body, the greater she will be at risk for developing breast cancer because we know early production of estrogen—the longer we’re exposed to estrogen—is a major risk factor for breast cancer. If we have these hormonal surges in 8-year-olds, it definitely will be stimulating breast tissue earlier in her life and putting her at risk. So that’s one of the causes. The other problem with precocious puberty is that it can lead to a range of hormonal imbalances. Whatever is driving this condition, which is abnormal, is affecting the reproductive cycle [and] fertility of these young girls. We know that these children have a greater incidents of polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, ovarian cysts, endometriosis and a whole host of problems as they go into their teenage years. It will create more discomfort and more issues. This issue of precocious puberty sets up public health issues, social concerns. These children turn out to have more behavioral problems, more depressed, higher incidents of suicide; they have more learning disabilities, there’s always the problem of early pregnancies. I mean, this is a public health disaster.
Lyle Hurd: You’re talking about 1 out of 6 people in this list you just gave us. You say that young boys have the same problem, which means that there may be a lot of people having interactions that they haven’t even been talked to about or warned about. Then they end up being the kind of people, because of all this, that really aren’t going to go out and get the right kind of jobs, finish school, things that they need to do. Then you add childhood obesity to it and you’re almost saying that 15% of all the children that are growing up today are [not] going to go out and be able to be citizens that are healthy and be able to accomplish all of the things, including [funding] our health care bills. We need to talk more about this at another time, but it’s absolutely shocking.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: It is shocking and we are creating that problem that has never really existed in the history of humanity before. We have never seen children going into puberty—if you look in the school playgrounds, you will see 3rd graders that are build; have the figure, have the breast development of 13, 14-year-olds and are run by these hormones. Can you imagine children having these hormonal surges through their bodies as if they were a teenager, but have not been emotionally developed enough, intellectually developed enough, to deal with what is going on in their bodies. It is a huge problem. It is devastating to their parents and most doctors don’t even know what to do about it. We really need to get educated. In the book, I give some examples of what’s happened to people and some of the alternatives and things we can be doing to get our children healthy and help reverse this condition when possible.
Lyle Hurd: Well, I would suggest not only you practitioners need to read this book, but educators do as well. Thank you very much for this very disturbing information.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Thank you.
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