What signals the body to start puberty? Is it just a pattern of chemical reactions that starts changing the body around the same time? is there something that signals the body to start changing at a particular point?
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In terms of the single thing that starts off puberty, no one knows for sure.
We know that the hypothalamus is important for some hormones that are released, but this is really what drives puberty. In the car analogy, we don’t know for sure what actually starts the motor.
One of the leading theories is that you counterintuitively become *more resistant* to sex hormones. Normally, you have a small amount of them, and those are measured by a protein called “kisspeptin.” When it loses sensitivity, it goes from thinking that there is the perfect amount of sex hormone to almost none. It starts yelling at other cells (including the hypothalamus) to try to correct that problem. Ultimately, this makes the body go from perfectly happy with a small amount of sex hormone to needing a lot of it.
For further reading (ELIcollege), see: https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/kisspeptin-switching-on-puberty/
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