A new study from the Harvard Medical School has found a potential link between the amount of sugary drinks a young girl consumes and the age at which she first gets her period. The more of these drinks the girl had, the earlier she began to menstruate.

While the link requires further investigation to be confirmed, the findings are worrisome. For the past 50 years, girls have been getting their periods at younger and younger ages. Scientists have not been able to explain why this is. However, they have proven that the younger the girl is when she first begins to menstruate, the higher her risk of getting breast cancer later in life.

The link between sugary drinks and menstruation was discovered in the analysis of results from another, larger study being conducted by the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health known as the ‘Growing Up Today’ study. The study began in 1996 and investigates over 17,000 children from across the United States.

In a side project to examine trends in the development of young women, Harvard researchers looked closely at 5,583 of the girls in the study. These girls were between the ages of nine and 14 when they joined the study and had not yet begun to menstruate. Between 1996 and 2001, the researchers asked the parents of these girls to report the number of sugary drinks the child had per day. Statistics showed that girls who had more than 1.5 servings of sugary drinks a day got their first period 2.7 months earlier than those who consumed fewer drinks.

Prior research has shown that beginning to menstruate one year earlier increases a girl’s risk of getting breast cancer by five percent.

Earlier menstruation occurred in the participants regardless of body-mass-index (BMI), calorie intake, or amount of exercise. High levels of sugar rapidly consumed increases the concentration of insulin in the body. This in turn increases the level of sex hormones released in the body. Large and frequent alterations of these levels has been linked to the start of menstruation.

The study is not making any definite claims. Researches admitted shortcomings in the study, such as not determining the age at which the mother or any older siblings first received their periods. A separate study, focusing solely on the relationship between sugary drinks and age of first menstruation, will have to be carried out in order to establish a solid link between the two.