Puberty Discussion Thread

It is the hormones, hormones are the chemicals in your body that send signals at a slower pace than electrical signals (i.e. the nervous system). There comes a point when testosterone in males and oestrogen in females increases and, amongst other hormones, cause the changes to your body. These are what cause every biological change in your body, even when your body needs healing.

Growing is just an increase in mitosis and the cell cycle in general (so cells growing and dividing) so you have more cells and become taller and the cell cycle is governed by hormones that tell it to speed up, slow down, etc. (I think I have this right, it's been so long since I did this in biology).

We notice it because we haven't seen it during the transition period- if you cut a mm off a chalk each day then you won't really notice the difference day to day but if you looked at he pictures even after a week then you may be able to see the difference. It's the same with puberty. We are with ourselves day in, day out, we don't notice the changes until we compare ourselves to younger versions of ourselves recorded (e.g. pictures, voice recordings) because the change is so small but with all those small changes added up it will make a big change. Also, it could be because you haven't seen the people in 3 months, you haven't been in school so you are getting used to their new appearance. You only notice when you haven't seen the person in ages, so when you see them every day for the rest of the year you don't notice the changes but they will change just as much as they did in the summer.

 

Thanks, Ienzo! That answers those questions!

How about this last part?

 

My answer would be that people change at different paces at different times in their life. That summer could have just been a point where they didn't change much and that could be because he developed earlier so most of his growing was done by that point but he just had a bit more to do.

 

I probably should have mentioned that I was only using him as an example. It was generally the same case with most -- not all, but most -- of the friends I made freshman year.

Using voices, for example, the summer break between freshman year and sophomore year, their voices had deepened had a really noticeable difference when sophomore year began. However, the summer break between sophomore year and junior year, their voices did deepen a tiny bit more, but sounded relatively the same when junior year began and the summer break between junior year and senior year, their voices once again did deepen a tiny bit more, but sounded relatively the same when senior year began.

 

Well, for guys, you tend to have the one point in puberty when your voice "breaks" so goes from the childish squeaky voice to a very deep voice (like Haley Joel Osmond between KH1 and KH2)- his voice will continue to get deeper for a bit but not nearly as much. I guess all their voices had gone past that point by then. For boys this does tend to happen before 18, normally around 14-16. I remember a lot of boys voices getting really deep very quickly around that time. It's just the age when is happens to most boys.

 

Is it the same for general body appearance with guys, where they'll generally have a big growth spurt during the summer break between freshman year and sophomore year because they're at that age?

 

Yes I think so, it's the same for girls as well but I think less obvious. A big growth spurt and all the major changes tend to happen very close together but then slow down for a while but keep going. Women also tend to go through this before men.

 

The "voice in your head" isn't the same the other people hear, partially because of the effect that your voice has while reverberating in your head, and also because your muscle doesn't respond as much as your brain, It is something that you notice when you are trying to learn a new language or has had a stroke that numbed your voice through some paralisys you always sound better at speaking foregin languages at your head, that what you really sounds like that is because while your brain quickly learns a information the translation to your muscles lag behind, so even though you know how you should sound like doesn't mean that you are able to sound like you should. When you are speaking your mother tongue this effect isn't so easy to spot because you are speaking for so much time that your muscle/brain had time to catch up with each other

 

You aren't alone!!I have an annoyingly high-pitched voice and the problem is that it sounds normal in my head but when I record it it's ridiculous. And on top of that, I'm 17!

Samples

Spoiler

Talking


Singing

 

New question: Why does puberty happen when it does in terms of age?

That's an average, of course. Some don't start until 14 or something, but why does puberty happen then? Why doesn't puberty begin at age 18, for example?

 

Short answer, because of our genes and our biological clocks.

Source : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7371873