What Happens to the Female Brain at Onset of Puberty?

What Happens to the Female Brain at Onset of Puberty? (1:09)

The female brain is complex, especially when it comes to the many phases of menstruation over the years. In this video, HealthMaker Louann Brizendine, MD describes initial signs of puberty and how PMS develops gradually thanks to hormone changes.

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The brains goes into puberty about 18 months before the body. So if you look at a little girl at age eight or nine and she is just, there is no indication that she has what we call breast buds or any of that kind of a thing. Once you get to the little breast buds, that means that the ovaries have started to make estrogen, the brain is also responding and controlling that cycle.

So the brain is being influenced even before the onset of the period at age 12, after that between ages 12 and 14 or 15, the ovaries are not ovulating every single month, there is a lot of cycles that don't have ovulation, some of them do, but lots of them don't. So you can't get PMS unless you have progesterone.

So if you're not ovulating you don't get any progesterone. So this is what happens, at the end of the cycle, starting 16, 17, 18 years old at a more regular fashion, and that's when you can get that big drop in progesterone a day or two, before onset of blood flow, which we call menstruation, that can cause irritability in the.