Genseng -- a kind of tonic

    BEIJING, Aug. 15 -- An 8-year-old boy with a shaggy beard, an abnormally curvy primary school girl, a long queue of "weird" kids wait everyday outside the precocious puberty clinic of the Chongqing Children Hospital.

    "Sexual precocity has become a common problem," doctor Lei Peiyun told the Chongqing Evening News. He said 30 percent of the 100 some patients received everyday during the summer vacation turned out to be premature, and 60 percent of the diagnosed are girls.

    There's been a rapid increase in recent years of the number of sexually precocious children, Lei introduced. Back in 1990, when the clinic was started, patient numbers were about 20 to 30 per year. The figure grew to 300 in 1998, and to 1000 in 2004. This year, however, it's expected to reach 2000.

    Sexual development before eight years old for girls and ten years old for boys can be considered sexually premature. This early ripening hinders children from growing a normal figure, and causes psychological problems such as fear and shyness.

    Why do our children grow too soon?

    One major answer is in our food, according to doctor Lei.

    These kids have been fed bred animal meat, such as chicken and eel, tonics, such as royal jelly and bovine colostrum, as well as ripened vegetables.

    Excessive ingestion of hormones, antibiotics and additives in food and tonics are the direct cause of the disease. In addition, increasing media exposure of sex can be seen as an accessory factor.

    The doctor suggests that green foods plus zero tonics, unless under the doctors' advice, may help fix the problem in future.

    (Source: CRIENGLISH.com)