@232 - Great! Now if only you could stop acting like you're 11. Then you'd be all set!

honey i dont know what planet your on or what speciese you are reffering to but im sure it cant be the earth which is inhabited by humans, because for thousands of years women have been starting familys at the age of twelve and thirteen and even as young as five (which is extremely rare and the last known five year old to give birth gave birth in the late 1930's to early 1940's), which im guessing means they had a menstural cycle *sarcastic shocked look*. to avoid looking ignorant and bothering people with your ignorant white noise (figure of speach of course) please do some research into what is being discussed. our food supply doesn't define when we begin mensturating, it can define if you have a disease such as polycystic ovarian syndrome though, which is an unfortunate side affect of being morbidly obease and can result in missed or even extremely light periods which can be regulated by birth control, this syndrome also causes infertility in many women. which can also usually be relieved once the person returns to a normal, healthy weight.

Actually, the decrease in the mean age is probably due to changes in diet. There have always been outliers of course, though.

i know about the nine year olds because i was also either nine or ten myself BUT i also have a very, i guess you would call it, unhealthy menstural cycle (bad genetics unfortunately), but i refuse to believe anyone that begins their period at nineteen is healthy unless they are a world class athelete. and even then i have my serious doubts since there are so many body altering drugs on the market for atheletes these days that i am quite sure will affect a womans cycle.. in one way or another.. but i believe the point of my comment was missed, which is that this should not come as a shock to her because i am sure she has seen blood many times before. i also have a comment referring to all of the technical mestural mess above as a repy to comment #239 if you would like to read it. but they were being ignorant about our food intake so it more or less applys to their ignorance about that but says alot about young women starting familys through history. (:

people are DIFFERENT. WHy would starting your period later in life mean you're unhealthy? I have a friend who, at 17, hadn't gotten hers, so she went to the doctor. The doctor said she was fine and that she would just get hers later than most people.