A recent study found that girls who start menstruating at a younger age are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and stroke as adults.
The increased risk for girls under the age of 13 begins when they start menstruating, and increases the younger they are.
Experts believe this may be due to higher levels of estrogen, which they are exposed to for a longer period.
The researchers studied data on more than 17,300 women between the ages of 20 and 65, between 1999 and 2018.
They were categorized based on the age at which they started menstruating - 10 years or younger, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 years or older - and were tracked to see if they developed type 2 diabetes.
Researchers from Tulane University in Louisiana found that approximately 1,773 (10%) developed type 2 diabetes, and among this group of women, 205 of them also reported some type of cardiovascular disease.
The statistical analysis revealed that compared to women who started menstruating at age 13, earlier menarche was associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.
It was found that women whose menstrual cycle began at the age of 10 or younger had an increased risk of 32%, and the risk increased by 14% at the age of 11 years, and 29% at the age of 12 years.
They also found that among women with diabetes, earlier age of first menstrual period was associated with increased risk of stroke, but not cardiovascular disease overall.
For women who were 10 years old or younger when they first started menstruating, the risk of stroke was nearly three times higher among women with diabetes.
Likewise, this risk decreased the later the menstrual cycle, according to findings published in the British Medical Journal.
“Early age at menarche may be an early life predictor of the course of cardiovascular disease in women,” the researchers concluded.
Discovering a bidirectional relationship between overactive bladder and poor sleep
A recent study found that there is a bidirectional relationship between overactive bladder (OAB) and poor sleep patterns.
Zichao Lu, of Sun Yat-sen University in Shenzhen, China, and colleagues evaluated the relationship between overactive bladder and sleep patterns.
Overactive bladder, also called overactive bladder (OAB), causes a sudden, urgent urge to urinate, which can be difficult to control.
You may feel like you need to urinate several times during the day and night, and you may also experience involuntary leakage of urine, known as urge incontinence.
The study included data from 16,978 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007 to 2014).
Data was extracted through factors including demographics, nutritional and health behaviors, body measurements, and disease information. Three factors were included, which ranged from 0 to 3, so that the sleep score was expressed from 0 to 1 as a bad sleep pattern, 2 as an average sleep pattern, and 3 as a healthy sleep pattern.
The researchers found that the risk of overactive bladder in patients with moderate and poor sleep patterns increased by 26 and 38 percent, respectively.
There were significant associations observed between mild, moderate and severe overactive bladder, with the prevalence of overactive bladder significantly higher in patients with poor sleep patterns and vice versa.
“In summary, the study indicated that there is a positive association between overactive bladder and problems related to worse sleep,” the researchers said. “Our results showed that the prevalence of overactive bladder was significantly higher in patients with poor sleep patterns, and that the prevalence of worse sleep patterns was significantly higher in Patients with overactive bladder.
They continued: "These results indicate that more prospective studies should be conducted to investigate the causal relationship and pathological mechanisms between sleep and overactive bladder."
The detailed study was published online on November 13 in the journal BMC Urology.