It was very late at night when I wrote reply #28, so I kept it as short as possible.
As I went to sleep, I thought of an important practical lesson that we humans should learn from the bees on the topic of nutition in our early stages of development.
About 100 years ago, young girls usually had their menarche (first period) when about 16 yrs old. As we learned more about nutrition and put these proper eating principles into practice, the age of menarche become younger and younger, going down to about 12, and perhaps even younger. Better nutrition lead to earlier and healthier development.
Young girls who are anorexic, (for whatever reason they may have) are causing themselves potentially irreparable physiological damage as they mature. This damage can have severe consequences in later years, causing all sorts of reproductive problems, among them, difficulties in becoming pregnant when they want to, maintainig a pregnancy to term and in giving birth. We know that, with bees, once the critical stages of development have passed, there is no way to repair the situation---there is no second chance to become a queen.
Although the issues are more complex in humans, there is good reason to believe that at least some of the damage anorexic girls cause themselves is residual and posssibly irreparable.
Please note that above statements are not based on specific research studies that I know of. What little research I did on the internet as I posted the above remarks shows a lot of variable and not always consistant conclusions. I have used the terms such as "may have", "can have" and "possibly", to emphasize this point. However, all agree that anorexia is highly damaging and health effecting.
