You're listening to Brains On, part of the Brains On universe.
I'm your host, Molly Bloom, and my co-host today is Andrea from Piscataway, New Jersey.
Andrea loves to act, writes raps about science, and loves making press-on nail sets.
Hi, Andrea.
Hello.
So, Andrea, tell me about some of the favorite roles you've had when you've been doing theater.
My... first ever musical role.
It was Spongebob the musical, and I was Karen the computer, and I loved it because I was in a shiny silver outfit and I got to beatbox.
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
Well, and that goes right with your rapping.
Yes.
Okay, so you say you rap about science.
Mm-hmm.
Tell me.
Well, it started when my older sister needed help learning the periodic table, and then she needed help learning the organelles in the cells.
And I feel like I was always the funny sibling, so this was just another way for me to help a sister out.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
Do you have any of the raps you could do for us off the top of your head?
There is a cell.
It's the building block of life.
Then you step inside and you see the cytoplasm.
It's a jelly-like substance keeping afloat all of the little organelle boats.
Oh, my gosh.
I love that.
Also, press on nails.
I know you have some amazing nails today.
Yes.
I spotted them.
Are you always changing your nails up?
I am.
I already have two other sets lined up.
I like to match them if I have an event to go to.
Like, I had this Filipino cultural event, so I matched them to my outfit.
And I also tend to wear a lot of black and dark clothing.
So this is just a way to add a pop of color while also adding art to my outfit.
Very, very cool.
Today we're sharing with you part of an episode from our new special series Brains on Universe.
Presents Puberty the podcast.
The full episode and much more are in a separate feed.
Subscribe there to hear the whole series.
This is an excerpt covering stuff that anyone of any age might be interested in.
This week, we're talking growth spurts.
During puberty, a kid's body goes through changes to look and sound more like an adult body.
Most kids will get taller.
Your arms and legs might get longer.
And you'll likely get heavier.
Bodies start growing and changing in other ways during puberty too.
Most of these changes happen to everyone, but how much they happen depends on your hormones.
Hormones are chemical messengers that travel around your body and tell different parts what to do.
There are all kinds of hormones in our bodies, all the time telling us when to sleep, controlling our blood sugar, helping us take action in stressful situations.
And telling our bodies to grow.
We'll talk a little later in the episode about the changes these different hormones cause.
First, we've gotten a lot of questions from listeners about how bodies grow in this stage of life.
Why do we have growth spurts?
What are growing pains and why do we get them?
Thanks for sending in your questions.
So, Andrea, what was this growing part of puberty like for you?
Can you remember?
Yes.
I remember that everyone started to get taller around fifth grade and get a little heavier around fifth grade.
Their body was developing more and mine was not.
At all.
Honestly, I was a late bloomer.
And so I felt like a little bit behind the bunch.
I felt like there might be something a little bit wrong.
I don't know.
I was a little stressed out about it as a kid.
But it turned out you were just a little bit slower at growing than the other kids, but it was still normal for you.
Yes.
Yeah, I was always the shortest in my class, even after I grew, like I was still the shortest.
And right before I grew, I got like...
Pretty pudgy.
Like I got a lot of extra fat around my belly and stuff because my body was getting ready to grow and change.
And I was a little self-conscious about it before I knew what was happening.
But it was normal.
Just happens to a lot of kids.
Like our expert Karin Adderson told us in the first episode, when it comes to puberty, there is no one normal.
Some kids might grow really fast and others might take more time.
All experiences are valid because there's no one normal and no one normal.
So during puberty, you can expect to grow quite a bit.
And again, all of this is thanks to our chemical messenger friends, hormones.
It's hormones.
So which of these hormones tell our bodies to grow?
The sex hormones do, like testosterone and estrogen.
And another important growth hormone that everyone has is called... Human growth hormone!
A pretty good name, if you ask me.
As you might have guessed, its biggest job is to tell your body to grow.
And it's not just important during puberty.
It starts being important from the very beginning, when you're just a baby.
Babies usually grow a lot, up to 10 inches in their first year.
That's like the length of a pineapple.
Plus, babies often grow hair on their heads for the first time.
They have teeth burst out of their gums.
They lose baby fat and get stronger muscles as they become toddlers.
It's a lot when you think about it.
But after a while, growth slows way down.
After age two or three, a kid might only grow a couple inches a year.
But even though a kid's body might not be growing as fast, they are still changing a lot.
It's just that most of that change is happening in the brain, so you can't see it.
We covered this in a Brains On episode called Why Do Our Bodies Take So Long to Grow?
If you want to listen, we've put a link on our website and in the episode description.
For most kids, physical growth starts speeding back up during puberty.
Human growth hormones start surging alongside the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.
And these surges make you get taller and gain weight.
For some kids, this happens so slowly they barely notice.
For others, it happens fast.
That's called a growth spurt.
For a long time, doctors thought some kids could physically feel their growth spurts in the form of growing pains.
These were thought to be pains in the legs that feel like cramps.
But doctors know now that growth doesn't actually cause pain.
They think the leg pains kids feel are actually related to being active during the day, since most kids feel them at night.
But whatever causes these cramps, they can be annoying.
And growing can be tough in other ways.
Hand me the scissors.
It might seem like little elves are sneaking into your closet and cutting off the bottoms of your pant legs or shirt sleeves.
Or tripping you out of nowhere.
Uh-oh, watch your step.
Or sprinkling sleeping sand onto your head during math class.
But all of this is totally normal.
Your pants aren't getting shorter.
Your legs are getting longer.
And getting used to that extra height means you might feel a little clumsy.
And as all of this is happening, some parts may be growing more than others, which again is totally normal.
Jillian from Eugene Oregon shared a bit about her own experience with getting bigger during puberty.
In sixth grade, I was like 11 years old, five foot eight inches.
Now I'm not so tall because everyone else caught up.
But in middle school, I was very tall.
And I started playing volleyball.
I was working out hard and I was eating a lot because I was so exhausted.
And so I was gaining a lot of muscle.
I was gaining a lot of weight.
And just when you hit puberty, like you're going to gain weight and you're going to gain fat.
One day I started to notice these marks on my thighs and I was like oh, my goodness, what are these?
And I came across some sort of article talking about stretch marks and I was like, oh cool, I think I have those.
But
In all the pictures, all the stretch marks were just like a really light version of your skin tone.
And mine were not.
Mine were purple.
So I was like, oh my goodness, I don't have stretch marks.
I'm dying.
And so at 11 years old, every night I went to bed and I was like, I'm not going to wake up tomorrow.
And then one day I really was like, I'm too young to die.
I'm really into volleyball right now.
Like I want to make it to our regional tournament, all this stuff.
So I went to my mom and I said, mom, I'm dying.
And I was very lucky and my mom did not laugh at me.
She said, Jillian, why do you think you're dying?
I said, look at these marks.
And I showed her my stretch marks.
And I was like, mom, like they're non-stretch marks because this isn't the color of stretch marks.
She said, Jillian, those are stretch marks.
And I said, that's great news.
I'm not dying.
And that's really the best thing I could hear.
And so now, as I've gotten older, I thought like that initial batch of stretch marks were just going to be the only ones that I ever got.
That was wrong.
I get them all over my legs mostly and a little bit up higher on my hips.
And I know a bunch of people who get them all at different places.
And so I just have stretch marks all over.
It's just part of how my body works.
My body just grows and gets stretch marks.
And mine are purple, which if you look it up on the internet, they probably will not be purple.
So you might think you're dying, but I promise.
You will survive.
Do you have stretch marks, Andrea?
I do not, but my sisters have and my mom has, of course, after being pregnant.
And at first as a kid, I was very confused on what they were.
But now I just know that it's part of your body changing shape.
I know.
I think they're kind of cool.
I don't really have them either because I guess I grew pretty slow.
But I think they look like tiger stripes.
I think they're really cool.
Yeah, it's a good reminder that people grow at different rates and come in all different shapes and sizes.
So it makes sense that people going through puberty have wonderfully different experiences too.
All that growth during puberty takes a lot of energy, which means you might need more sleep than before.
And like Jillian said, you will also need more fuel.
During puberty, it's normal to feel like you could eat all the food in the fridge.
Your body needs that stuff to build more body.
Exactly.
And we do a lot of growing while we sleep.
That's another reason many teens need more snooze time than before.
Speaking of which, it's time for the...
Today's word of the day is circadian rhythm.
The circadian rhythm is your internal clock that helps control your body's sleep-wake cycle.
It's not an actual clock.
Your cells aren't wearing tiny wristwatches.
They don't even have wrists.
Instead, it's more like a pattern of when you feel awake and when you get sleepy.
It's controlled by exposure to sunlight and, as always, hormones.
Always with the hormones.
Is there anything they don't affect?
Yes, yes, hormones do a lot.
So it makes sense that there's a natural shift in the circadian rhythm of teenagers.
First of all, teens need more sleep than before to help with all that growing.
They also tend to take longer to feel sleepy.
That's why lots of teens stay up late in the evening.
And they have more trouble waking up and getting going in the morning.
They're not being lazy.
It's thanks to changes in their circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm.
Coming up, why voices go low as we grow.
Stick around.
Do you have more questions about puberty?
Send them to us, because we're going to do a bonus episode of this series to answer your most burning questions.
Is there a topic you want to know more about?
Advice for body stuff or friend stuff?
Get in touch.
Send your questions to brainson.org contact and you might hear an expert answer them.
That's brainson.org contact.
Thanks.
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This is Brains On Presents Puberty, the podcast.
I'm Andrea.
And I'm Molly.
Before the break, we talked about a special chemical in the body called human growth hormone.
This hormone causes growth to speed up for many kids during puberty.
It's hormones.
Now we're going to talk about another set of hormones sex hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
We talked about these back in the first episode of the series with Dr. Cara Natterson.
And the hormones that are most involved with puberty are the sex hormones, namely estrogen and progesterone and testosterone.
And every single person has all of these sex hormones.
During puberty, your body produces a lot of these hormones, which kickstarts the changes that make your body look less like a kid's and more like an adult's.
One change you won't see, but will probably hear, is in your voice.
During puberty, our voices get deeper, more like an adult voice.
All kids' voices change during puberty, usually between the ages of 10 and 16.
This change happens because your larynx, also known as your voice box, is growing.
The larynx is a small, hollow tube in your throat that controls the sound of your voice.
Stretched across your larynx are your vocal cords.
They're like two elastic bands.
And as your larynx grows, your vocal cords also grow, getting longer and thicker.
Think of a guitar.
The thinner strings sound like this.
And the thicker strings sound like this.
Hear how the thicker strings sound much deeper?
It's the same with your voice.
As your voice is changing, you might notice that it's sometimes difficult to control.
It might squeak.
Sometimes people describe it as cracking or breaking.
It can be annoying or awkward.
But this is totally normal, and it's just your body getting used to the change.
Right.
Imagine that same guitar getting tuned.
Eventually, it'll even out.
Louie and Gavin shared a bit about their own experiences with voice changes.
I totally remember when my voice first changed.
I used to be a super, super big singer in middle school.
I had a falsetto like no man's business.
And then one day I just started like slowly realizing that like my voice could like not go as high, or it started to like crack, and I was like wait, what's going on?
Like, this makes no sense.
I didn't know it was going to affect like my singing voice.
And then my falsetto went into a bass and I was singing much much, much lower, which was a little startling to realize at first.
But I knew that it allowed me to broaden my horizons and try something completely new, which is really awesome.
And I love to sing lower and did it all throughout high school.
My voice started to change a little around sixth grade.
And it was really funny.
For a while, my mom just thought I was sick and I had a hoarse voice.
So she kept saying like, oh, do you need like tea or like something warm?
Because your voice sounds kind of hoarse.
And I was like, oh, I guess maybe I do.
But then it kind of settled into stay.
And I do remember a few times having voice cracks.
Still does happen now.
And I remember, yeah, kind of being embarrassed.
But honestly, it's just a part of life life and I feel pretty happy with how my voice sounds actually.
Remember, puberty is a period of intense growth, but it's not the only change your body has been through or will go through.
It will keep changing your whole life.
It's a journey.
This is just part of it.
During puberty, your body goes through changes to look and sound more like an adult's.
Most kids will get taller and heavier and their voices will change.
These changes take place because of hormones.
That's it for this episode. friendship changes, crushes, periods, reproduction, and more.
Again, just search for Brains on Universe Presents Puberty, the podcast.
Now it's time for the Brains Honor Roll.
These are the incredible kids who keep this show going with their questions ideas, mystery sounds, drawings and high fives.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Danadu from Hillsboro, Oregon.
Ezra from Singapore.
Leo from Ascot, UK.
Sasha from Abu Dhabi.
Elliot from Apex, North Carolina.
Finley from Portland, Oregon.
Aidan and Rowan from Kent, Washington.
Phoenix from Davis, California.
Annie Vey from Redondo Beach, California.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Stella from Alsea Oregon, Jack from Scarsdale, New York and Livingston and Elman from Durham, North Carolina.
We'll be back next week with an episode featuring everyone's favorite monster, Gungador.
Thanks for listening!
