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As you get older your body goes through a number of changes, called puberty, and the speed of these changes is different for everyone.
Between the ages of 8 and 18, most people will go through a stage of development called puberty. During this time, you may experience a number of physical and emotional changes, though exactly what these are and when they happen will vary from person to person.
Puberty is when a person’s body starts to change physically and mentally from that of a child to an adult. In many ways, it is an incredible part of being human and growing up.
Changes in our bodies at puberty are preparing our bodies to be able to reproduce (create babies). Our bodies normally start to get ready many years before we actually want to have children.
There is no ‘normal’ when it comes to puberty, and everyone experiences it differently. Some people might start experiencing signs of puberty at a young age, some might start a bit later and some will feel like it stops and starts with gaps in between.
Puberty also affects people differently depending on their sex.
Sex is the word we use to talk about different types of bodies and the different role those bodies play in reproduction (having babies). We call these different bodies female and male.
Although our sex may be determined by things we cannot see like our chromosomes (that sit inside the cells in our bodies), we normally decide whether someone is female or male by the bits of their body that we can see. So when a baby is born with a vulva and a vagina they will be called female/a girl. A baby born with a penis and testicles will be called male/a boy.
Find out more about vulvas and vaginas.Find out more about penises and testicles.
Some people are intersex which means their external body parts don’t look simply male or female when they are born. Other intersex people may not experience puberty in the way that they would expect because the things we can’t see like their reproductive organs inside their body or their chromosomes don’t match with their external body parts or genitalia (penis, vulva, etc.) You can find out more about being intersex here.
People will have a different experience of puberty depending on whether they are male or female or intersex, and this is because their bodies produce different levels of hormones.
It is important to remember that not everyone’s biological sex will be the same as their gender. Some people identify with a gender that is different to their biological sex, which is known as being transgender.Find out more about gender.Find out about the difference between sex and gender.
A word that you might hear a lot in relation to puberty is ‘hormones’. Hormones are the cause of a lot of the changes that people experience during puberty.
What are hormones?
Hormones are chemicals that are produced naturally within the body and released into the bloodstream to send messages to other parts of the body. Different hormones will send different messages, which in turn will trigger different changes during puberty.
As part of puberty, sex hormones are released and begin to cause physical changes. Sex hormones are chemicals in our bodies which produce ‘male’ and ‘female’ characteristics during puberty.
Most people have at least a little bit of both hormones because there are various other places in the body that these hormones are produced in smaller amounts.
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