In recent years, there are more and more children with precocious puberty. What are the causes of precocious puberty in children? What are the dangers? What is precocious puberty?
Precocious puberty is a kind of abnormal growth and development phenomenon in which the characteristics of puberty appear early. If the second sexual characteristics of boys appear before the age of 9, such as bulging throat nodes, thick voice and developed muscles, or if girls show symptoms such as growing breasts and pubic and axillary hair before the age of 8, or if the first menstruation of girls occurs before the age of 10, it can be diagnosed as precocious puberty.
What are the causes of precocious puberty in children?
The causes of precocious puberty are many and complex. Diseases that cause precocious puberty include tumor, brain abscess, encephalitis, hydrocephalus, traumatic brain injury, intracranial surgery, intracranial radiotherapy and chemotherapy, etc. Adrenal gland diseases such as adrenal tumor and congenital adrenal cortical hyperplasia; testicular mesenchymal cell tumor and familial testicular toxicosis, ovarian tumor and ovarian cyst, etc. In addition, liver tumors, hypothyroidism and some drugs such as some antineoplastic drugs, isoniazid, ketoconazole and sex hormones can also cause precocious puberty.
In addition to the above, environmental factors also have an impact on precocious puberty. Due to the improvement of people’s material living standard, protein intake increases, and even over-nutrition and obese children appear. And excess nutrition helps sexual development, and some studies have confirmed that moderately obese children are prone to precocious puberty. Secondly, in some foods, health products and fruits, they may contain sex hormones or hormone-like substances, i.e. environmental hormones, and children are prone to precocious puberty when they often use these hormone-containing foods.
Once again, the realistic environment gives children more opportunities to witness scenes, images and books about lovemaking, which also has a facilitating effect on sexual development. There are also a small number of children who have precocious puberty due to misuse of birth control pills. This is because parents fail to keep the pill well, and young children mistakenly eat the pill as candy, which is composed of sex hormones, leading to precocious sexual maturity.
What are the dangers of precocious puberty?
Among the children with precocious puberty, about 10.8% have organic lesions, some of which are caused by tumors; some are also caused by adrenal gland diseases. If it is clear that the cause is a tumor, the tumor should be removed immediately or radiotherapy or chemotherapy should be performed. For other causes of precocious puberty, special medications should be used to treat them.
Secondly, many children with precocious puberty are short in height as adults. This is because after precocious puberty, sex hormones can promote bone growth and accelerate growth; but also promote epiphyseal closure, so that the growth is terminated early. Therefore, the growth cycle of children with precocious puberty will be significantly shortened, which will eventually make their adult height shorter than the average person.
Third, early sexual behavior. Precocious children’s psychological development and physical development are extremely mismatched, coupled with the patient’s young physiological age, shallow social experience and poor self-control, the risk of early love, early pregnancy and early marriage increases; the risk of being sexually abused also increases.
Fourth, character repression. Children with precocious puberty may carry a heavy burden of thought prematurely because they are different from their peers in body shape and appearance, resulting in low self-esteem, fear and anxiety, increased psychological burden, decreased interest in learning and academic performance, and cognitive ability lagging behind students in the same grade. It has a long-lasting negative impact on the mental health in the future.
Therefore, once a child is found to have signs of precocious puberty, parents should bring the child to the hospital as soon as possible, and should choose a hospital with endocrine specialists, because first of all, the physical examination and a series of special laboratory tests by experienced specialists should be conducted to clarify what kind of precocious puberty the child is suffering from, so that the correct treatment plan can be chosen for the cause.
Life guidance for precocious puberty in children
1.Balanced diet.
That is, a reasonable mix of meat and vegetarian dishes and a balanced intake of coarse and fine grains, especially for children who are overweight and over-nourished. However, after the child’s precocious puberty is discovered, the child’s diet should not be excessively restricted. As children are growing and developing, basic nutrients should be ensured.
Here are a few suggestions about diet:
(1) It is recommended to be able to stick to 1 cup of milk and 1 egg per day, other meat and vegetables need to be appropriately limited.
(2) It is recommended that the annual weight gain be controlled at about 2-3 kg per year!
(3) It is recommended to eat natural foods; no anti-seasonal foods.
(4) Do not drink or drink less; try to eat less honey, eel, snapper, and ripe chicken, etc.
(5) Drink 2 cups of plain water every day.
2.Adequate sleep.
As growth hormone secretion is mainly secreted during deep sleep at night, especially between 11 pm and early morning secretion do more. And children generally enter deep sleep only 1-2 hours after going to sleep; it is recommended that children should go to bed at 8:30 pm to 9:00 pm.
3, reasonable exercise
Proper aerobic exercise exercise is good for growth.
Exercise is best for.
1, medium intensity ;
2, each time the best in more than 30 minutes, preferably vertical movement, to jogging, slow jump rope, etc. is good. Play basketball, badminton, swimming, etc. can also be.
Less watching TV, computer, less playing mobile games, etc. It is recommended to watch TV, computer, play mobile games to control the overall time of 30 minutes or less every day.