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Is There A Safe Way To Change My Height?

We get a number of questions about people who would like to be taller then they currently are.

A typical question might be:

Hi. I am 22 years old and I was wondering if there is anything that I can do to grow a little taller. There are a lot of websites out there that say that you can but i am skeptical, what do you say?

It is all in the 'genes'. Good nutrition and habits (sleep, etc) can certainly help, but in terms of height your genetic make-up will determine most of it. For persons with a documented absence of growth hormone, administration of this hormone can help them to acheive 'normal' stature, but this is indicated only for persons clearly way below normal growth curves and a documented (by lab tests) deficiency. Growth hormone given after bones have stopped growing (for example at 22) would be more likely to induce acromegaly. This is a disease seen in persons that secrete too much growth hormone. The symptoms are significant corsening of facial features, hyperplasia of joints and severe arthritis.

Body growth, hence final height, is determined largely by the growth in length of the long bones. At birth, the ends of most long bones still consist of cartilage. Gradually, these begin to ossify, but a plate of growing cartilage remains at the bone ends. This is called the epiphysial, or growth, plate, and continues to produce new cartilage, which increases the length of the bone, before this too ossifies. At the end of the growing period, division of cartilage cells within the plate ceases, and the plate itself ossifies, and normal bone growth stops.

The rate and duration of growth is determined by many factors - genetic, nutritional, and hormonal, and it should come as no surprise that there is a growth spurt around puberty, when many of the responsible hormones are very active. Growth then tails off dramatically after puberty, and ceases around the late teens to early twenties.

Over the last ten years or so, artificial stretching of long bones has been increasingly used where one or both limbs are abnormally short. This involves breaking the bone and attaching the fragments to special steel rods which can be lengthened bit by bit. I would imagine that this is a painful and difficult process, but has a good success rate.

You can make the most of your genetic tendency by eating a good diet, get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly and avoid risky behaviors or poor health habits such as smoking, and maintaining a good posture. None of these require gadgets or external hormones or other medication.

Also, keep in mind that height is an attribute that you have little control of. Spend your time on personal attributes that you can control. It will be a far more productive use of your time and energy.

If you do need medical attention, or have specific questions on medical issues, please get it from your doctor rather than a web site.

Information about age and height is presented at:

A postscript from the editors of ShortSupport.org:

One of my readers wrote to us about this site. I was interested in reading all of the questions you have received about growing taller as I answer several of those same questions every day. I am the editor of Short Persons Support (www.shortsupport.org). Besides providing information on all aspects of short stature, we are working hard to debunk those fraudulent companies that sell height increase formulas. Many students have written to us about the money they lost buying these products - some costing hundreds of dollars a month. More information is available here:

http://www.shortsupport.org/Health/Increase/index.html

I hope you will include in your FAQ on Height Increase a strong warning that students should stay away from all these companies. Otherwise they are throwing away their money.

Last updated 27 July 2004