Question:
Hey,
If I had my growth spurt last year when did I start puberty? Many websites are saying that the growth spurt starts 3 years after the start of puberty while some websites say 2 years after the start of puberty.
Answer:
The problem is that people use different definitions for when puberty occurs. The medical definition of puberty is when sex-specific hormones rise in your bloodstream. For boys, these hormones are all androgens and testosterone is the best-known of the androgens. It is the rise of your androgens that signal the start of a long series of changes throughout your body. However, you won’t see any external changes for about a year after your androgens start rising.
Since it isn’t practical or cost-effective to constantly test your blood hormone levels, most people (including doctors) use the point in time when you first see external changes in the body. This is counted as the official start of Stage 2 in development. For most boys, these changes are subtle and are easily overlooked. The typical first external change is a swelling of the scrotum. So while changes are taking place, most boys don’t notice them until something more dramatic happens, such as hair growing at the base of the penis or having spontaneous erections. These more noticeable signs come about a year after Stage 2 officially starts.
Some people call puberty the point in time a boy has his first ejaculation. The problem is that first ejaculations vary greatly. It can happen anywhere from the middle of stage 2 to the middle of stage 4. Because of the variance, it is not a good marker.
A boy’s growth spurt happens during stage 3 of development. Stage 3 typically starts about two years after Stage 2 officially starts (or about a year after pubic hair starts to show up). The actual growth spurt will start during the first year of Stage 3. Some boys get very dramatic growth spurts that last several months to half a year. Other boys grow only a bit faster but the growth spurt lasts for two years or more. Most boys fall between these two extremes. Technically, a growth spurt is when you grow faster than your childhood growth, which is typically 1 to 2 inches per year.
Thus, your growth spurt typically starts about 3-4 years after your blood hormones rise, 2-3 years after the first external sign of change appears, and 1-2 years after obvious signs of change appear (such as pubic hair).