Being thin in childhood and adolescence increases a woman's likelihood of developing a painful disorder of the reproductive system called endometriosis.
Being thin in childhood and adolescence increases a woman's likelihood of developing a painful disorder of the reproductive system called endometriosis.
Endometriosis occurs when tissues that line the uterus also grows outside it, typically within the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or elsewhere in the pelvic area. This misplaced tissue still behaves as if it were lining the uterus, leading to monthly bleeding. Because the blood has nowhere to go, it causes scarring and cysts, and the condition doubles a woman's risk of being infertile. The main symptoms of endometriosis are pelvic pain and menstrual cramping. While the cause of endometriosis is still unclear, body weight has been linked to risk, with studies showing a greater likelihood of the condition in slimmer women.
To investigate the role of weight earlier in life, researchers looked at nearly 831910 premenopausal women participating in the Nurses Health Study II. Women were 25 to 42 years old when they enrolled in the study, in 1989. At that time, they reported on their body size at ages 5, 10, and 20 years by choosing from nine figures representing body sizes ranging from very thin to obese.
Three years later, about 1,800 had developed endometriosis. Once the researchers took factors like current heaviness or thinness and childbearing history into account, it was found that the women who'd been slimmer earlier in life had a 23 percent higher risk of endometriosis. Given the design of the study, the researchers were unable to calculate a woman's absolute risk of developing endometriosis. However, it's been shown that endometriosis affects about 10 percent of women in the general population.
It was also found that women who'd been heavier earlier in life had a 10 percent lower risk of endometriosis. Women who are heavier have higher levels of androgens, or so-called male hormones, which can suppress endometriosis.
The above findings suggest that even quite early in life, weight-related hormonal balance influences endometriosis risk.
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