Late Menarche

[Random]

A friend of mine posted this article, Why the age you get your period matters — for the rest of your life, which was about how people are getting their periods for the first time at younger and younger ages, and various health risks associated with that. I was kinda disappointed that it didn't have much to say about the results of starting at a later age, since I'm what you might call a late bloomer in that department (average age for the US is 12, I was 16). Quick scanning with the google machine only verified what the first article said. Can anyone help me out here?

[Shrinky Dink]

I don't know if it helps, but my first period was at age 13 for me. Of all the girls in my family, my mom (30 years older than me), my oldest sister (10 years older than me), and my other older sister (2 years older than me). My mom had her first period between 16-18, oldest sister between 15-17, other sister between 13-14, and I was 13 and almost 4 months (yes, I remember the day). We were all similar body types during our teen years, and so far (now that we're between 25-60), I'm the only one who has been diagnosed with cancer (Hodgkin's Lymphoma) and my mom had heart surgery to fix a problem that she inherited from her father. My oldest sister and I have already been tested for this heart problem and we don't have it.

It's important to notice that it says "A large meta-analysis study published in 2012, which included more than 400,000 women, found that risk of breast cancer increased by 5 percent for each year younger the women reached menarche." that 5% is relative, meaning if an 18 year old woman has a 12.5% chance of breast cancer (about the average rate of breast cancer in american women), a woman who started her period at age 9 has an 19.4% chance.

I guess the benefits of starting at a later age is having a generally reduced chance of breast cancer and the other stuff listed in the article.

[Whistler]

Google scholar found this article which compared girls with early menarche with those who had late menarche (but says most of the same stuff as your article) http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/84098.

This article found late menarche to be a risk factor in fragility fractures: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 80815/full

Sort of related, girls who have fathers in their homes tend to have menarche later: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/dev/44/5/1409/

[Portia]

I hit menarche at 14.5 and don't seem to have any lasting effects one way or another (besides the already-mentioned positive ones of later sexual activity, better grades, etc., but I think a lot of those are correlation, not necessarily causation).

Some ballerina friends of mine were closer to 17/18, and possibly very underweight. That's a different story.

[NerdGirl]

I just want you to know that I read this as "Lake Menarche" and I was like, that's a terrible name for a lake.

[Cognoscente]

http://www.livescience.com/15346-texas- ... d-red.html