Limb Lengthening Forum
Community Hangout => Off Topic => Topic started by: .. on November 12, 2017, 06:02:47 AM
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If he lives in a pretty developed country, but severely depressed, extremely sleep deprived (0-2hours a night) and eat tons of carbs without vitamins and proteins since 5th grade?
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0-3cm
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0-3cm
How did you come up with this arbitrary number? 3cm would make a great difference to me, not a totally different world, but a GREAT difference.
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More than you think honestly.
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Did you know if you had symptoms of malnutrition? Also, are you sure that your average sleeping time were 2 hours? Those are factors that could stunt you growth rate by a good amount of cm, but you have to know if you are not exaggerating. Severe malnutrition is what I am asking for.
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Malnutrition stunts your growth. But it depends if you are actually malnourished or not.
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How did you come up with this arbitrary number? 3cm would make a great difference to me, not a totally different world, but a GREAT difference.
Genetics.
Height is 80% genetic but not in the sense that 80% of your height is genetic, but that 80% of the deviation from what your prospective height was supposed to be is due to genetics.
Let's say that according to the formula your height was supposed to be 180cm. That means that 80% of the 12cm difference between your 168cm and 180cm is due to genetics while 20% is due to lifesyle and such... So 0.2X12=2.4 which means that 2.4cm out of the 12cm is due to lifestyle.
In genetic linkeage studies using SNPs scientists were able to pinpoint participants height accurately (by a margine error of 0-3cm of difference from what they expected).
You can believe in science or you can believe mrhandsome
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Did you know if you had symptoms of malnutrition? Also, are you sure that your average sleeping time were 2 hours? Those are factors that could stunt you growth rate by a good amount of cm, but you have to know if you are not exaggerating. Severe malnutrition is what I am asking for.
I'm positive of the sleep thing.
I didn't malnutrition, but I used to eat mostly a lot of rice and little chicken or egg because I thought it was cheap. and my mother used to teach the habit of not eating the chickens/fish too many because other family members also wanted to eat.
That's why it became a habit that I preferred to eat rice more eventhough my family was far from being financially challenged. I didn't realize I was fking myself up. So didn't I when I decided to sleep 2 hours a night. Sometimes I didn't sleep at all and went to school directly.
I had sleeping problem, I was under too much pressure during my school time which made me prefer to be awake at night so because my subsconcious knew that if I slept right away, I'd be facing the morning directly.
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Genetics.
Height is 80% genetic but not in the sense that 80% of your height is genetic, but that 80% of the deviation from what your prospective height was supposed to be is due to genetics.
Let's say that according to the formula your height was supposed to be 180cm. That means that 80% of the 12cm difference between your 168cm and 180cm is due to genetics while 20% is due to lifesyle and such... So 0.2X12=2.4 which means that 2.4cm out of the 12cm is due to lifestyle.
In genetic linkeage studies using SNPs scientists were able to pinpoint participants height accurately (by a margine error of 0-3cm of difference from what they expected).
You can believe in science or you can believe mrhandsome
Okay, how do you explain my 5'11" friend, with a 5'6.5" father and a 4'11" mother.
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Genetics.
Height is 80% genetic but not in the sense that 80% of your height is genetic, but that 80% of the deviation from what your prospective height was supposed to be is due to genetics.
Let's say that according to the formula your height was supposed to be 180cm. That means that 80% of the 12cm difference between your 168cm and 180cm is due to genetics while 20% is due to lifesyle and such... So 0.2X12=2.4 which means that 2.4cm out of the 12cm is due to lifestyle.
In genetic linkeage studies using SNPs scientists were able to pinpoint participants height accurately (by a margine error of 0-3cm of difference from what they expected).
You can believe in science or you can believe mrhandsome
We are in agreement. 3cm is a huge difference just fking lol. This highly invasive surgery yields a 5-10cm gain.
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Okay, how do you explain my 5'11" friend, with a 5'6.5" father and a 4'11" mother.
A rare exception.
And also, 3cm does not make any real difference to any mentally stable person.
Even if you were 3cm taller you would still be considered short and would have problem with your height.
Only if you were 5.9 and above (6-7cm more than you are) you could say you would see a real difference. 3cm are just a joke.
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Okay, how do you explain my 5'11" friend, with a 5'6.5" father and a 4'11" mother.
I already explained it.. Genetics.
He was supposed to be 165cm but became 180? 3cm of those 15cm difference are due to enviroment and the other 12cm are due to genetics. What I said doesn't contradicts it
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A rare exception.
And also, 3cm does not make any real difference to any mentally stable person.
Even if you were 3cm taller you would still be considered short and would have problem with your height.
Only if you were 5.9 and above (6-7cm more than you are) you could say you would see a real difference. 3cm are just a joke.
This kind of mentality is fked up and can go forever. Every inch counts. It makes a good difference, another 3cm and my height starts with 17... cm whereas now it starts with 16... With lifts, I'd be 5'9" if I was 5'7".
If I was 3cm shorter, then I'd be much more fked. I'd be officially below average than the average white female of 5'5".
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3 cm makes a difference. I would go from 173cm to 176cm which is in the average range. So yes 3cm most certainly makes a difference, no doubt about it.
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Too much cope in this thread.
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I already explained it.. Genetics.
He was supposed to be 165cm but became 180? 3cm of those 15cm difference are due to enviroment and the other 12cm are due to genetics. What I said doesn't contradicts it
So this dude got 15cm difference from 169cm father and 150 moher. Damn, I will never understand how this works.
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A rare exception.
And also, 3cm does not make any real difference to any mentally stable person.
Even if you were 3cm taller you would still be considered short and would have problem with your height.
Only if you were 5.9 and above (6-7cm more than you are) you could say you would see a real difference. 3cm are just a joke.
So 3 cm are just a joke, but spending 100k and getting semi-crippled to gain 5cm is not. You're SO mentally stable, Body Builder.
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3cm is a huge difference but who cares honestly.
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3cm is a huge difference but who cares honestly.
Idk, maybe to taller people it might be but for me when I wear shoes that give 3cm or more i don't notice a drastic difference.
I'm 5,5"-5'6" btw
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So 3 cm are just a joke, but spending 100k and getting semi-crippled to gain 5cm is not. You're SO mentally stable, Body Builder.
With 5 cm you are not more crippled than 3 cm.
And guess what, who is the dumbest, the one who spends 100k to gain 3 cm or the one who gain almost 100% more (5-6 cm) with the same risks and money?
So your argument is just a bs. And I think most of people here could understand who is the unstable one between you and me.
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Lengthening 3cm is not a good idea. 5-6cm is the safest.
But having a 3cm increase in growth as a child or adolescent makes a huge difference. I hope that people can understand what I mean.
In this context, we are referring to growth as a teenager or child. It is safe to assume that a 3cm increase due to a growth spurt is a significant difference
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Extreme stress can severely stunt one's growth, temporarily, until said person is removed from the stressing environment. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial_short_stature
As for nutrition and lifestyle, I agree with everyone else. It's a small difference, at most - at least between these two last, well fed generations.
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Extreme stress can severely stunt one's growth, temporarily, until said person is removed from the stressing environment. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial_short_stature
As for nutrition and lifestyle, I agree with everyone else. It's a small difference, at most - at least between these two last, well fed generations.
Well, I wasn't removed from the stressing environment until my growth plates were officially closed.
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Genes have 80% to do with fully grown adult height so do the math. As humans, we'll never really know cause we can't live two lives of the exact same DNA and try one out with a great diet from birth and one out with a ty diet from birth.
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Well, I wasn't removed from the stressing environment until my growth plates were officially closed.
Dude PSS is a condition observed in Feral children, who literally grow up with wolves and monkeys outside any human civilization. Or in the cases of wartime / captivity.
No human grows up in a perfect environment with zero stress. 99.999% chance is that you lived up to your genetic potential and just weren’t meant to be taller. A lot of boys grow up to be shorter than their father.
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Several inches. But you can make up for those lost inches if you are a late bloomer. I had the tiest diet my whole life up until i turned 18. I was 5'5, weak and skinny as all hell. I started eating alot, injecting high doses of HGH and taking Letrozole on a daily basis. Keeping your estrogen levels very low is essential in making up for lost growth. I went from 5'5 to 5'9 and im almost 21. Still growing. My growth plates have realistically frozen on x rays and my doctor still asks me if i will stop growing after he saw how i managed to grow alot after 18. This goes to show that it all depends on when you started puberty, if your bone age is younger than your actual age and etc. If you started puberty young then you should be done growing by 18 if you were exposed to normal levels of estrogen. The human body has an amazing capability to catch up on growth and delay growth plate fusion, but since estrogen fuses growth plates, it will all depend on if you manage to keep the estrogen levels in your body very low or not.
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Several inches. But you can make up for those lost inches if you are a late bloomer. I had the craptiest diet my whole life up until i turned 18. I was 5'5, weak and skinny as all hell. I started eating alot, injecting high doses of HGH and taking Letrozole on a daily basis. Keeping your estrogen levels very low is essential in making up for lost growth. I went from 5'5 to 5'9 and im almost 21. Still growing. My growth plates have realistically frozen on x rays and my doctor still asks me if i will stop growing after he saw how i managed to grow alot after 18. This goes to show that it all depends on when you started puberty, if your bone age is younger than your actual age and etc. If you started puberty young then you should be done growing by 18 if you were exposed to normal levels of estrogen. The human body has an amazing capability to catch up on growth and delay growth plate fusion, but since estrogen fuses growth plates, it will all depend on if you manage to keep the estrogen levels in your body very low or not.
This might have been true for you but most men don't grow anything substantial after 18 even with HGH treatment.
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Dude PSS is a condition observed in Feral children, who literally grow up with wolves and monkeys outside any human civilization. Or in the cases of wartime / captivity.
No human grows up in a perfect environment with zero stress. 99.999% chance is that you lived up to your genetic potential and just weren’t meant to be taller. A lot of boys grow up to be shorter than their father.
I grew up with animals, figuratively. What I can assure you that the amount of stress I had was much higher than the average kids and teens have.
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I grew up with animals, figuratively. What I can assure you that the amount of stress I had was much higher than the average kids and teens have.
It's very likely that you would have turned out, 6 foot 3, broad shouldered and with a pretty large penis and blue eyes, given the proper nutrition, no stress and lots of sleep, during your most crucial development period.
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It's very likely that you would have turned out, 6 foot 3, broad shouldered and with a pretty large penis and blue eyes, given the proper nutrition, no stress and lots of sleep, during your most crucial development period.
I am pretty broad shouldered for my height and anyone can do shoulder excercises.
I don't need blue eyes.
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I'd honestly suggest you just leave this forum, Bruce. Posting on here will just keep making you feel bad. You already said you can't do LL because of martial arts, so I don't think you have anything to gain by staying here and being constantly reminded of height topics. Look into therapy to help you accept yourself as you are. Once you do manage that, it'll be just a matter of time until other people who do, too, enter your life.
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I'd honestly suggest you just leave this forum, Bruce. Posting on here will just keep making you feel bad. You already said you can't do LL because of martial arts, so I don't think you have anything to gain by staying here and being constantly reminded of height topics. Look into therapy to help you accept yourself as you are. Once you do manage that, it'll be just a matter of time until other people who do, too, enter your life.
Posting here does no harm to me, we need to express our thoughts once in a while somewhere. Leaving this forum won't change the facts that my heavily flawed upbringing most likely harmed my height and that my current height will continue to break me inevitably like it always has.
First time I became aware of this was in 2009. I was 16.5 years old. The older I get, the clearer it gets how significant height is in my life and how it will hurt me in the long term.
No amount of therapy will be able to help me more than I could to myself. It mostly will just waste my time paying someone to tell me how to live my life. I already made lists of people who are shorter than their fathers, shorter guys who beat up bigger guys also people like Tom Cruise. It's as much help as I'm gonna get.
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Actually, it's the opposite. The older you get, the less height matters. Not only for you, but for those around you.
I think if you just try to forget this topic a bit and just focus on improving yourself as a person, your life will get better. Or maybe you don't need to forget the topic, but be realistic about it and don't be so harsh on yourself. Everyone has their limits in life. Life is not fair. Some people are just born richer, better looking (eventually), more intelligent and have better, more caring parents than the rest of the population. Likewise, there's nothing that stops someone from being born to shxtty parents, looking terrible, having all sorts of chronic or otherwise terrible health conditions as well as a low IQ, and still having a terrible time at school, etc. At least LL is a thing in our current age. There's absolutely nothing people with low IQs can do to make their IQ significantly higher. There's nothing people who were born blind can do to make themselves see (as of yet). There's nothing people who were born with chronic, inherited genetic diseases can do to cure themselves. Put things into perspective. Try to see the positives you have going for you and other people will too. I'm sure you have them. Don't dwell on your shortcomings. Everyone has some. Some less than others.
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It's best to let him post and not respond. He is stuck in his head to keep posting the same thing over and over and only a psychiatrist can help him. Which none in the forum are.
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Actually, it's the opposite. The older you get, the less height matters. Not only for you, but for those around you.
I think if you just try to forget this topic a bit and just focus on improving yourself as a person, your life will get better. Or maybe you don't need to forget the topic, but be realistic about it and don't be so harsh on yourself. Everyone has their limits in life. Life is not fair. Some people are just born richer, better looking (eventually), more intelligent and have better, more caring parents than the rest of the population. Likewise, there's nothing that stops someone from being born to shxtty parents, looking terrible, having all sorts of chronic or otherwise terrible health conditions as well as a low IQ, and still having a terrible time at school, etc. At least LL is a thing in our current age. There's absolutely nothing people with low IQs can do to make their IQ significantly higher. There's nothing people who were born blind can do to make themselves see (as of yet). There's nothing people who were born with chronic, inherited genetic diseases can do to cure themselves. Put things into perspective. Try to see the positives you have going for you and other people will too. I'm sure you have them. Don't dwell on your shortcomings. Everyone has some. Some less than others.
But the point stays man.
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But the point stays man.
Man, my story is really similar to yours (as far as I know). I know how you feel.
Still, again... put things into perspective. What if you discovered you have cancer and only about 5 years left to live? Would you be spending them lamenting how much you could have been if you were taller......... and richer... and more diligent... and had better parents... and so forth?
Conquer your life. You still have plenty of time. You can be the best person you can be, even if you can't be someone else.
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Man, my story is really similar to yours (as far as I know). I know how you feel.
Still, again... put things into perspective. What if you discovered you have cancer and only about 5 years left to live? Would you be spending them lamenting how much you could have been if you were taller......... and richer... and more diligent... and had better parents... and so forth?
Conquer your life. You still have plenty of time. You can be the best person you can be, even if you can't be someone else.
You can work on your financial status and character but you could not work on your height.
I really appreciate your help but no one can change the situation.
Just because I'm lamenting over it doesn't mean I am not doing anything in my life, but the regret and guilt over my height will most likely stay with me for the rest of my life.
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Would you not be happy living your physical potential to the fullest now while also saving money for LL later in life?
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Would you not be happy living your physical potential to the fullest now while also saving money for LL later in life?
If I am still typing on this forum, it means I'm still living. But I probably will never do LL due to my passion for martial arts. Also if I ever do it, it would be in my 30s at best, I've lost more than 10 years.
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If I am still typing on this forum, it means I'm still living. But I probably will never do LL due to my passion for martial arts. Also if I ever do it, it would be in my 30s at best, I've lost more than 10 years.
THEN GET OFF THE FKCING FORUM AND GO PRACTICE MARTIAL ARTS. honestly why are you still here. We all get it, you ruined your height because of your childhood. boo hoo poor you, you poor thing.
You are losing even more than 10 years every second you are in this forum.
Stop playing the victim, either solve your problems or get over it. Be a man and grow some balls, you sound like a teenage girl
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In my opinion you should get the surgery.
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Get the surgery man, you can practice martial arts at a low level but you can. Analize if you can reach a top level in martial arts un two or three years, if you cant, just get the surgery.
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Exactly that's what I would recommend as well.
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I was reading some articles today and found this tidbit. I don't think anyone should extrapolate it out of an excerpt, but of course I felt like sharing it here:
A special feature of the human pattern is that between birth and puberty the legs grow relatively faster than other post-cranial body segments. For groups of children and youth, short stature due to relatively short legs (i.e., a high sitting height ratio) is generally a marker of an adverse environment.
From the perspective of developmental plasticity, leg length, both in terms of absolute size and relative to total stature, is an indicator of the quality of the environment for growth during infancy, childhood and the juvenile years of development.
The reason for this is the general principle that those body parts growing the fastest will be most affected by a shortage of nutrients, infection, parasites, physical or emotional trauma, and other adverse conditions. The cephalo-caudal principle of growth as applied to the human species means that the legs, especially the tibia, are growing faster relative to other body segments from birth to age 7 years. Relatively short LL in adolescents and adults, therefore, is likely to be due to adversity during infancy and childhood leading to competition between body segments, such as trunk versus limbs and between organs and limbs. In the simplest case, such competition may be for the limited nutrients available during growth [31,56,61]. More complex explanations for competition relate to aspects of the thrifty phenotype hypothesis [75,76], the intergenerational influences hypothesis [77,78], the fetal programming hypothesis [79], and the predictive adaptive response hypothesis [80,81]. Discussion of these hypotheses is beyond the scope of this review [see reference 31, and other articles in the same issue, for such discussion], but in essence each of these hypotheses predicts that the vital organs of the head, thorax, and abdomen of the body will be protected from adversity at the expense of the less vital tissues of the limbs.
Source. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872302/)
(Mind you this seems to be about children and adolescents only, but it has ambiguous reading in some parts: "Relatively short LL in adolescents and adults".)
Also a few extra interesting excerpts for people interested in height, leg length, proportions and sitting height.
Height:
Discrete populations of living humans, however, present a diversity of body sizes and shapes. Mean stature for populations of adults varies from minimum values for the Efe Pygmies of Africa at 144.9 cm for men and 136.1 cm for women [43] to the maximum values for the Dutch of Europe at 184.0 cm for men and 170.6 cm for women [44].
Sitting Height and leg length:
The sitting height ratio (SHR) is a commonly used measure of body proportion. Measured stature minus sitting height may also be used to estimate leg length but this measure does not standardize for total height making it difficult to compare individuals with different statures. Mean SHR for populations of adults varies from minimum values, i.e., relatively longest legs, for Australian Aborigines (SHR = 47.3 for men and 48.1 for women) to the maximum SHR values, i.e., relatively shortest legs, for Guatemala Maya men and Peruvian women ( SHR = 54.6 and 55.8 ).
Proportions:
Although white and black adults in the United States have the same average stature, when education, income and other variables are controlled, the body proportions of the two groups are different. Krogman [58] found that for the same height, blacks living in Philadelphia, USA had shorter trunks and longer extremities than whites, especially the lower leg and forearm. Hamill et al. [59] found that this was also true for a national sample of black and white youths 12 to 17 years old, and it is the case for adults 20−49 years old measured for the NHANES III survey, 1988–1994 [9]. A genomic contribution to the body proportion differences between blacks and whites seems likely, as the blacks tend to have more sub-Sahara African genomic origins than the whites.
Few if any specific genes for human body proportions are known. In a statistical pedigree analysis of two human samples, Liv s et al. [60] estimate that between 40% and 75% of inter-individual variation in the body proportions they studied (adjusted for age and sxx) are attributable to “genetic effects”. These may be better described as familial effects because the authors analyzed families and also because they found significant common environmental effects for siblings as well as significant sxx by age interactions. The range of the sources of variation in the analysis makes it difficult to compute simple genetic variance.
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I was reading some articles today and found this tidbit. I don't think anyone should extrapolate it out of an excerpt, but of course I felt like sharing it here:
Source. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872302/)
(Mind you this seems to be about children and adolescents only, but it has ambiguous reading in some parts: "Relatively short LL in adolescents and adults".)
Also a few extra interesting excerpts for people interested in height, leg length, proportions and sitting height.
Height:
Sitting Height and leg length:
Proportions:
Interesting. So it's like an official confirmation of what we've been worrying.
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Interesting. So it's like an official confirmation of what we've been worrying.
I hardly see a confirmation that growth can be massively stunted by normal upbringing in these text bits, tbh.
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I hardly see a confirmation that growth can be massively stunted by normal upbringing in these text bits, tbh.
A confirmation that poor quality of environment such as shortage of nutrients, infection, parasites, physical or emotional trauma, and other adverse conditions can stunt one's growth which can be judged from the short leg lengths.
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I hardly see a confirmation that growth can be massively stunted by normal upbringing in these text bits, tbh.
I looked up better papers and I'll go through them all during the next few days, but it wouldn't surprise me at all that growth is stunted by a bad childhood. A bad youth, specially a bad childhood, affects everything in your life, from future health and psychological conditions to the very shape (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/13/childhood-abuse-growth-brain-emotions) and wiring of your brain. I agree it can't massively stunt one's growth to the level of Psychosocial Short Stature, but it probably does affect it a little bit (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/unhappy-childhood-can-stunt-growth-277354.html), specially if stress levels remain elevated until 18.
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How this topic is still debatable baffles me. Just take into account the story of 13 children held captive in California and you pretty much got your answer.
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I looked up better papers and I'll go through them all during the next few days, but it wouldn't surprise me at all that growth is stunted by a bad childhood. A bad youth, specially a bad childhood, affects everything in your life, from future health and psychological conditions to the very shape (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/13/childhood-abuse-growth-brain-emotions) and wiring of your brain. I agree it can't massively stunt one's growth to the level of Psychosocial Short Stature, but it probably does affect it a little bit (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/unhappy-childhood-can-stunt-growth-277354.html), specially if stress levels remain elevated until 18.
What do you mean by "a little bit"?
Thank you for this article. Now I am more convinced that my upbringing has caused my short stature.
I think it's fking tragic that I am short due to the stress and lack of sleep caused by school and problems associated with it. I mean there is no reason for this. It's not like I grew up in a war situation or my parents were poor in which I didn't have any choice. By in fact, I DID have choice. But I chose to struggle and suffer.
How this topic is still debatable baffles me. Just take into account the story of 13 children held captive in California and you pretty much got your answer.
I'm not sure how it's relevant. The children are still growing by this time.
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I'm not sure how it's relevant. The children are still growing by this time.
Wrong. Just so you know, 1 of them was 29 and was mistaken with/for a teenager. When the police got there they thought they were all under 18.
Also:
The seven adult children were being cared for at Corona Regional Medical Center, said CEO Mark Uffer. He described them as small and clearly malnourished. "It's hard to think of them as adults when you first see them because they're small."
I could go on with more quotations...
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Wrong. Just so you know, 1 of them was 29 and was mistaken with/for a teenager. When the police got there they thought they were all under 18.
Also:
The seven adult children were being cared for at Corona Regional Medical Center, said CEO Mark Uffer. He described them as small and clearly malnourished. "It's hard to think of them as adults when you first see them because they're small."
I could go on with more quotations...
Ok you have my attention now.
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How this topic is still debatable baffles me. Just take into account the story of 13 children held captive in California and you pretty much got your answer.
Most here were debating how nutrition and lifestyle can affect your own height when you were born into a relatively well-off family in the modern world. I don't think nutrition was a factor for anyone in this forum. Whereas for life, I'll continue in my reply to Bruce.
That a situation like that of the children in California will cause a much smaller height is certainly not debatable. They were kept captive, malnourished and routinely abused - many until adulthood.
What do you mean by "a little bit"?
I'm still examining the science, but I don't think anyone who didn't undergo massive trauma and stress until adulthood could have had a severely stunted growth. However, unlike people here were saying, it seems that yes, higher than average stress levels until adulthood could have influenced someone's height. A little bit. So it seems that is possible that people may have had lost height due to how their lives went, but it depends on a lot of factors. The higher than average stress levels would need to have continued from childhood into adulthood. Like with PSS, if a child is removed from the stressing environment, the child's growth will go back to normal, and this is also mentioned in the article I linked there.
In your case, I don't believe nutrition was a factor at all. I've seen that you mentioned your father as being 175cm/5'9 and your mother as being around 158cm/5'2, so I don't think your upbringing could have had severely stunted your growth. If your father was 6 feet/183cm and your mother was 5'9/175cm, then yes, I'd believe that a height of 167cm/5'6 could be described as severely stunted growth due to stress. Otherwise, I'd think the stress levels could only have affected it a bit.
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I looked up better papers and I'll go through them all during the next few days, but it wouldn't surprise me at all that growth is stunted by a bad childhood. A bad youth, specially a bad childhood, affects everything in your life, from future health and psychological conditions to the very shape (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/13/childhood-abuse-growth-brain-emotions) and wiring of your brain. I agree it can't massively stunt one's growth to the level of Psychosocial Short Stature, but it probably does affect it a little bit (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/unhappy-childhood-can-stunt-growth-277354.html), specially if stress levels remain elevated until 18.
Yes, I agree. What I meant is that the papers don't confirm what some paranoid posters here have claimed, for example that one's growth can be stunted by 4 inches because they didn't eat breakfast or only slept 6 hours on some days during the week while being a teenager. That stuff they don't prove.
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Those kids in California are a rare exception. As myloginacct said, their lives were far from average. Even children in war zones are treated better.
Too much dwelling on the past, Bruce. What are we going to do, sue our parents and whoever made us upset as a child? We don't have a time machine either, it's too late for all of us no matter what the science says. Spend less time thinking negative thoughts, and instead think about the future, like your martial arts training.
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some people here are chronical complainers about things they can't do anything about
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Yes, I agree. What I meant is that the papers don't confirm what some paranoid posters here have claimed, for example that one's growth can be stunted by 4 inches because they didn't eat breakfast or only slept 6 hours on some days during the week while being a teenager. That stuff they don't prove.
6 hours?
I wish I could sleep that much once a week. I slept 0-2hours on average from the age of 10.
I remember one occasion where I felt so grateful because I managed to get 4 hours a sleep the previous night.
Those kids in California are a rare exception. As myloginacct said, their lives were far from average. Even children in war zones are treated better.
Too much dwelling on the past, Bruce. What are we going to do, sue our parents and whoever made us upset as a child? We don't have a time machine either, it's too late for all of us no matter what the science says. Spend less time thinking negative thoughts, and instead think about the future, like your martial arts training.
So was mine.
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I wish I could sleep that much once a week. I slept 0-2hours on average from the age of 10.
I remember one occasion where I felt so grateful because I managed to get 4 hours a sleep the previous night.
What a bull lmao
You wouldnt even function properly u dummy
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What a bull lmao
You wouldnt even function properly u dummy
Who said I did?
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What a bull lmao
You wouldnt even function properly u dummy
don't forget he is Batman
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Yes, I agree. What I meant is that the papers don't confirm what some paranoid posters here have claimed, for example that one's growth can be stunted by 4 inches because they didn't eat breakfast or only slept 6 hours on some days during the week while being a teenager. That stuff they don't prove.
6 hours per night is absolutely normal. 8h is the ideal, but 6h is enough for many people.
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Who said I did?
I didn't mean being slightly sleepy lol
don't forget he is Batman
Idk if his stories and theories are more pathetic or entertaining
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I didn't mean being slightly sleepy lol
Idk if his stories and theories are more pathetic or entertaining
Which of my theories is either pathetic or entertaining?
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Me and my best friend both 5’3 at 13
- He starts smoking weed every day
- He starts drinking every weekend
- Single mom so he mostly eats McDonalds
- Doesn’t eat lunch at school or play any sports
- High stress lifestyle, gets put on probation and nearly goes to juvie for smokingweed
Guess what, he still grew to 5’11 and I only grew to 5’4. Despite doing the exact opposite of everything.
Guess why.
His mom is 5’7 and mine is 5’. My maternal grandfather is probably like 5'2 and his is 6'.
I also have a friend who's maybe 5'1 even though his dad is 5'8. Guess why? His mom is probably 4'9 at most.
I don't think it's that uncommon to inherit height completely from your mother. I see a lot of guys 4 inches or so taller than their mom and that's it.
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Me and my best friend both 5’3 at 13
- He starts smoking weed every day
- He starts drinking every weekend
- Single mom so he mostly eats McDonalds
- Doesn’t eat lunch at school or play any sports
- High stress lifestyle, gets put on probation and nearly goes to juvie for smokingweed
Guess what, he still grew to 5’11 and I only grew to 5’4. Despite doing the exact opposite of everything.
Guess why.
His mom is 5’7 and mine is 5’. My maternal grandfather is probably like 5'2 and his is 6'.
I also have a friend who's maybe 5'1 even though his dad is 5'8. Guess why? His mom is probably 4'9 at most.
I don't think it's that uncommon to inherit height completely from your mother. I see a lot of guys 4 inches or so taller than their mom and that's it.
It's a polygenic trait so it's hard to gauge anything accurately, but yeah, check the thread where members listed their parents and their heights. The final height was almost a mean between the father and the mother for a lot of people. However, I also have the impression you get more height from your mother. Taller mothers with a father of the same height generally had taller sons than themselves. Whereas even people with tall fathers turned out fairly shorter than their own if their mother was short, even when the difference was about the same. 170cm father + mother = taller sons than 180cm father and 160cm mother.
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Me and my best friend both 5’3 at 13
- He starts smoking weed every day
- He starts drinking every weekend
- Single mom so he mostly eats McDonalds
- Doesn’t eat lunch at school or play any sports
- High stress lifestyle, gets put on probation and nearly goes to juvie for smokingweed
Guess what, he still grew to 5’11 and I only grew to 5’4. Despite doing the exact opposite of everything.
Guess why.
His mom is 5’7 and mine is 5’. My maternal grandfather is probably like 5'2 and his is 6'.
I also have a friend who's maybe 5'1 even though his dad is 5'8. Guess why? His mom is probably 4'9 at most.
I don't think it's that uncommon to inherit height completely from your mother. I see a lot of guys 4 inches or so taller than their mom and that's it.
Do you know how tall his father is? Is he shorter or taller than his father?
He may have honestly lost height due to his high stress lifestyle. I'm not arguing a lot, but a bit. Like even people who may have some naturally healthier functioning organs (compared to the general populace) will still have them be affected by stress. I don't exactly like comparing "taller" to "healthier", but it was the analogy I could think of.
I do think this subject deserves more scrutiny from science, even if I agree with Android that there's no point lamenting or ruminating about it after you've already grown.
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Do you know how tall his father is? Is he shorter or taller than his father?
He may have honestly lost height due to his high stress lifestyle. I'm not arguing a lot, but a bit. Like even people who may have some naturally healthier functioning organs (compared to the general populace) will still have them be affected by stress. I don't exactly like comparing "taller" to "healthier", but it was the analogy I could think of.
I do think this subject deserves more scrutiny from science, even if I agree with Android that there's no point lamenting or ruminating about it after you've already grown.
His dad is shorter than his mom, probably 5'6
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Yes, nutrition and upbringing do influence height significantly. I'm really surprised nobody has mentioned the indisputable height difference between two nations sharing the same genetic pool, but vastly different lifestyles - South Korea and North Korea. Here's what research (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17774210) shows:
North Korean men are, on average, between 3 - 8cm (1.2 - 3.1in) shorter than their South Korean counterparts
The height gap is approximately 4cm (1.6in) among pre-school boys and 3cm (1.2in) among pre-school girls
Martin Bloem is head of nutrition at the World Food Programme, which has been providing food aid to North Korea since 1995. He says poor diet in the early years of life leads to stunted growth.
"Food and what happens in the first two years of life is actually critical for people's height later"
In the 1990s North Korea suffered a terrible famine. Today, according to the World Food Programme, "one in every three children remains chronically malnourished or 'stunted', meaning they are too short for their age".
Also, thanks to better nutrition, each generation tends to be taller then the previous one. From from SciAm (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-we-getting-taller/):
modern humans are taller than those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In fact, over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations has increased approximately 10 centimeters (about four inches).
[...] conditions of poor nutrition are well correlated to smaller stature. For example, the heights of all classes of people, from factory workers to the rich, increased as food quality, production and distribution became more reliable [...] the heights of vagrant London boys declined from 1780 to1800 and then rose three inches in just 30 years--an increase that paralleled improving conditions for the poor.
Quoting from another study (https://elifesciences.org/articles/13410) (which was brought up on this forum before, BTW) that followed height trends worldwide over the past 100 years:
Although height is one of the most heritable human traits (Fisher, 1919; Lettre, 2011), cross-population differences are believed to be related to non-genetic, environmental factors. Of these, foetal growth (itself related to maternal size, nutrition and environmental exposures), and nutrition and infections during childhood and adolescence are particularly important determinants of height during adulthood (Cole, 2000; Silventoinen et al., 2000; Dubois et al., 2012; Haeffner et al., 2002; Sørensen et al., 1999; Victora et al., 2008; Eveleth and Tanner, 1990; Tanner, 1962; Tanner, 1992; Bogin, 2013).
Anecdotally, my cousins are taller than me by about 1", and they're both female. Their mother is 5'3", 2" taller than mine, and their father is 5'7", just as tall as mine. Keep in mind that Caucasian women are on the average 4-5" shorter than men, and that statistic is found in my country too. So yes, my mom was 2" shorter than their mom, but my female cousins aren't 2-3" shorter than me; they're 1" taller. However, my cousins were *very* well-fed as children while I was not (see the end of my post).
There's nothing people who were born blind can do to make themselves see (as of yet).
Yes there is - brain-computer interfaces coupled with HD cameras can already give sight to the blind (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4242456/Star-Trek-like-glasses-allow-blind-people-see.html).
There's nothing people who were born with chronic, inherited genetic diseases can do to cure themselves.
Gene therapy can already cure certain genetic diseases (http://annualmeeting.asgct.org/about_gene_therapy/diseases.php). CRISPR technology (https://www.wired.com/2017/06/crispr-may-cure-genetic-disease-one-day/) is rapidly advancing towards more therapeutic applications and my friend and Ligandal CEO Andrew Watson has just announced this week a breakthrough method of delivering genetic therapies (https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/02/08/1335754/0/en/Ligandal-CEO-Unveils-Nanotech-Delivery-for-Genetic-Therapies-What-Good-Would-Amazon-Be-Without-the-Shipping.html) enabled by CRIPSR, TALEN, mRNA, siRNA, DNA using nanoparticles.
We live in extraordinary times. By the way, those who haven't looked into CRISPR yet, watch this:
Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY)
I don't think nutrition was a factor for anyone in this forum.
I grew up in a country with food rationing and my family forced me to fast (no protein) for about half of the year until I was over 20 and my growth plates had fused. My mother is 5'1" and my father is 5'7" - while the parents of my two female cousins are 5'3" (their mom, my sister's dad) and 5'7" (their dad, same height as my father). Despite women being on the average 4-5" shorter than men in my country, my cousins are 1" taller than me. My cousing were very well fed though (they were born after food rationing ceased, and their parents weren't religiously indoctrinated). How much of that particular case is genetic and how much is malnutrition we'll never know, but on a large population scale, it's clear that early age nutrition and environmental factors do impact height.
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Yes, nutrition and upbringing do influence height significantly. I'm really surprised nobody has mentioned the indisputable height difference between two nations sharing the same genetic pool, but vastly different lifestyles - South Korea and North Korea. Here's what research (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17774210) shows:
North Korean men are, on average, between 3 - 8cm (1.2 - 3.1in) shorter than their South Korean counterparts
The height gap is approximately 4cm (1.6in) among pre-school boys and 3cm (1.2in) among pre-school girls
Martin Bloem is head of nutrition at the World Food Programme, which has been providing food aid to North Korea since 1995. He says poor diet in the early years of life leads to stunted growth.
"Food and what happens in the first two years of life is actually critical for people's height later"
In the 1990s North Korea suffered a terrible famine. Today, according to the World Food Programme, "one in every three children remains chronically malnourished or 'stunted', meaning they are too short for their age".
Also, thanks to better nutrition, each generation tends to be taller then the previous one. From from SciAm (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-we-getting-taller/):
modern humans are taller than those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In fact, over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations has increased approximately 10 centimeters (about four inches).
[...] conditions of poor nutrition are well correlated to smaller stature. For example, the heights of all classes of people, from factory workers to the rich, increased as food quality, production and distribution became more reliable [...] the heights of vagrant London boys declined from 1780 to1800 and then rose three inches in just 30 years--an increase that paralleled improving conditions for the poor.
Quoting from another study (https://elifesciences.org/articles/13410) (which was brought up on this forum before, BTW) that followed height trends worldwide over the past 100 years:
Although height is one of the most heritable human traits (Fisher, 1919; Lettre, 2011), cross-population differences are believed to be related to non-genetic, environmental factors. Of these, foetal growth (itself related to maternal size, nutrition and environmental exposures), and nutrition and infections during childhood and adolescence are particularly important determinants of height during adulthood (Cole, 2000; Silventoinen et al., 2000; Dubois et al., 2012; Haeffner et al., 2002; Sørensen et al., 1999; Victora et al., 2008; Eveleth and Tanner, 1990; Tanner, 1962; Tanner, 1992; Bogin, 2013).
Anecdotally, my cousins are taller than me by about 1", and they're both female. Their mother is 5'3", 2" taller than mine, and their father is 5'7", just as tall as mine. Keep in mind that Caucasian women are on the average 4-5" shorter than men, and that statistic is found in my country too. So yes, my mom was 2" shorter than their mom, but my female cousins aren't 2-3" shorter than me; they're 1" taller. However, my cousins were *very* well-fed as children while I was not (see the end of my post).
Yes there is - brain-computer interfaces coupled with HD cameras can already give sight to the blind (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4242456/Star-Trek-like-glasses-allow-blind-people-see.html).
Gene therapy can already cure certain genetic diseases (http://annualmeeting.asgct.org/about_gene_therapy/diseases.php). CRISPR technology (https://www.wired.com/2017/06/crispr-may-cure-genetic-disease-one-day/) is rapidly advancing towards more therapeutic applications and my friend and Ligandal CEO Andrew Watson has just announced this week a breakthrough method of delivering genetic therapies (https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/02/08/1335754/0/en/Ligandal-CEO-Unveils-Nanotech-Delivery-for-Genetic-Therapies-What-Good-Would-Amazon-Be-Without-the-Shipping.html) enabled by CRIPSR, TALEN, mRNA, siRNA, DNA using nanoparticles.
We live in extraordinary times. By the way, those who haven't looked into CRISPR yet, watch this:
Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY)
I grew up in a country with food rationing and my family forced me to fast (no protein) for about half of the year until I was over 20 and my growth plates had fused. My mother is 5'1" and my father is 5'7" - while the parents of my two female cousins are 5'3" (their mom, my sister's dad) and 5'7" (their dad, same height as my father). Despite women being on the average 4-5" shorter than men in my country, my cousins are 1" taller than me. My cousing were very well fed though (they were born after food rationing ceased, and their parents weren't religiously indoctrinated). How much of that particular case is genetic and how much is malnutrition we'll never know, but on a large population scale, it's clear that early age nutrition and environmental factors do impact height.
Thanks for the links. We do live in exciting times.
Good thing is that the height increase due to nutrition seems to have plateaued in most developed nations, so we don't need to worry about falling off too much.
I'll go over other stuff in your post later.
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So literally starving, living under dictator, high stress lifestyle and fearing execution of your entire family up to 2 relatives removed can at maximum stunt height by 1.5 inches? Lol.
This is also ignoring the fact that in more modern societies women are the keepers of marriage and children, and become choosier causing reproductive rates to go down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 0.5 inch of that height difference could be attributed to independent South Korean women choosing to marry taller men than they would’ve been able to bargain for without their own financial freedom. In North Korea, women must marry whoever they can just to be provided for and survive.
I mean take note of the fact that women now openly want to only date and fk 6ft+ men. That obviously has some influence on the gene pool. Also couple the fact with how likely suicide is for short men, especially men under 5’5.
I don’t think human height is done increasing, and I genuinely believe it’s greatly influenced by sxxual selection.
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So literally starving, living under dictator, high stress lifestyle and fearing execution of your entire family up to 2 relatives removed can at maximum stunt height by 1.5 inches? Lol.
This is also ignoring the fact that in more modern societies women are the keepers of marriage and children, and become choosier causing reproductive rates to go down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 0.5 inch of that height difference could be attributed to independent South Korean women choosing to marry taller men than they would’ve been able to bargain for without their own financial freedom.
I mean take note of the fact that women now openly want to only date and fk 6ft+ men. That obviously has some influence on the gene pool. Also couple the fact with how likely suicide is for short men, especially men under 5’5.
I don’t think human height is done increasing, and I genuinely believe it’s greatly influenced by sxxual selection.
You're right too, but let's call it "significantly increasing in a couple of generations".
It'll probably keep increasing in societies like the Netherlands where people have selected, and still select for height, for ages.
Still, it's weird to think that in the distant enough future, men could average over 2 meters tall in certain societies. I wonder how our biology would handle that. Tall men already live less than shorter men.
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Also, on the topic of starvation and nutrition stunting growth, one of the poorest nations in Europe, Montenegro, actually has some of the tallest men in Europe, averaging 6ft for males. They grow to this height with a 22% unemployment rate and a GDP per capita of like $7,000 lol. But genetically the people from that Balkan-mountain area are just very tall.
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The height difference in cases like North Korea vs. South Korea doesn't come to exist within only one stunted generation, with epigenetics, height can decrease over several generations in a timespan where famine and bad living conditions take place. So if there is a 4 inch difference between those two countries, it doesn't translate to one individual person being stunted of 4 inches of potential growth (as far as I understood it).
This is also ignoring the fact that in more modern societies women are the keepers of marriage and children, and become choosier causing reproductive rates to go down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 0.5 inch of that height difference could be attributed to independent South Korean women choosing to marry taller men than they would’ve been able to bargain for without their own financial freedom. In North Korea, women must marry whoever they can just to be provided for and survive.
It's true that women are not forced to marry or mate with any guy simply for provider qualities. But is that really what a guy would want, being chosen only because of his potential to provide money and resources? This principle also goes both ways, since men are not forced to have a wife and children, they can equally choose to keep or not keep up a marriage, so ugly or unattractive women should also have it harder to find a satisfied relationship. Western men can also go to a poor country like Thailand and get a pretty young woman to commit to them, which, to my knowledge, was not as easy 200-300 years ago.
In reality, I'm not sure it becomes harder for short(er) men in modern countries. Since it's no longer necessary to marry and get children at a young age, people are free to experiment what they really want and find their niche, and a place where they are accepted for what they are by a partner. That's my theory at least.
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Be suspicious about official average height. Because officially south korean average is 173-4 cm while North Korean average is about 166 (but I'm not sure it's official, North Korean authorities have no interest to put this official so it could be american studies).
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Yes, I'd rather see a comparison between heights of Western vs Eastern Germans and Civil-War Finns vs Post-WW2 Finns.
SK vs NK isn't very reliable.
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Or you can make a comparison between Romania / Moldova / Transnistria, but there is some ethnic groups like Gagauz
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Answer to title: Less than 3cm. If you eat normal, you gain or lose no life changing heights.
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The height difference in cases like North Korea vs. South Korea doesn't come to exist within only one stunted generation, with epigenetics, height can decrease over several generations in a timespan where famine and bad living conditions take place. So if there is a 4 inch difference between those two countries, it doesn't translate to one individual person being stunted of 4 inches of potential growth (as far as I understood it).
It's true that women are not forced to marry or mate with any guy simply for provider qualities. But is that really what a guy would want, being chosen only because of his potential to provide money and resources? This principle also goes both ways, since men are not forced to have a wife and children, they can equally choose to keep or not keep up a marriage, so ugly or unattractive women should also have it harder to find a satisfied relationship. Western men can also go to a poor country like Thailand and get a pretty young woman to commit to them, which, to my knowledge, was not as easy 200-300 years ago.
In reality, I'm not sure it becomes harder for short(er) men in modern countries. Since it's no longer necessary to marry and get children at a young age, people are free to experiment what they really want and find their niche, and a place where they are accepted for what they are by a partner. That's my theory at least.
It is definitely harder for shorter men in modern countries. Why? It's simple, back in the olden days where women were relegated to the house for the most part and didn't/couldn't work, they placed a higher emphasis on picking a mate who can provide for them resource wise because they couldn't do it themselves. Nowadays in these countries where women work and no longer rely on men for resources, they can afford to pick the mates with better genes (heightwise) to pass onto their offspring.
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It is definitely harder for shorter men in modern countries. Why? It's simple, back in the olden days where women were relegated to the house for the most part and didn't/couldn't work, they placed a higher emphasis on picking a mate who can provide for them resource wise because they couldn't do it themselves. Nowadays in these countries where women work and no longer rely on men for resources, they can afford to pick the mates with better genes (heightwise) to pass onto their offspring.
Yep, I’m guessing a lot of the younger members here had more rural, maybe religious, parents who married young. If my parents would’ve went to college and my mother turned into a uppity sorority chick I can almost 100% guarantee that she wouldn’t have given my father the time of day.
When my parents got divorced my 5’5 father had absolutely 0 luck dating while my mom had no problems. In a bittersweet way he got lucky that they married young.
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It is definitely harder for shorter men in modern countries. Why? It's simple, back in the olden days where women were relegated to the house for the most part and didn't/couldn't work, they placed a higher emphasis on picking a mate who can provide for them resource wise because they couldn't do it themselves. Nowadays in these countries where women work and no longer rely on men for resources, they can afford to pick the mates with better genes (heightwise) to pass onto their offspring.
It's like you didn't read my post at all, or didn't understand any of it.
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If height genes are epigenetical in addition to being polygenic, then that's going to suck. I was hoping if I ever decided to have children I could rely on taller genes passed through the Y-DNA in my family, but I guess my height genes would pass information differently due to the epigenetic effect (i.e. I'm shorter so the same inherited genes from my father will perform shorter on my children).
Oh well, none of this will matter in 50 years.
And I also have to agree with IWannaBeTaller that it is probably easier for first-world males today if all they want is to get married and have children. There are millions of women all around the world willing to marry anyone from Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand or North America just for the citizenship and living standards, and the internet made it a streamlined process. Hypergamy and all. I'm not saying I agree with either party in this "transaction", but it is the reality.
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What's the point of all these useless statistics, geographics, analysis, even mentioned hypergamy, unemployment rate when in the end we're simply fked because we're short.
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...says the guy who opened this very thread. LMAO.
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Saying that our times are better than before because some women from third world countries who don't have money even for food would marry anyone (inclidung short men) just to survive is the most pathetic thing I read here.
If someone is ok to marry a woman who is with him only because otherwise she may starve and see him as a wallet, then this man should be ashamed of himself.
People stop being so pathetic and stop puting women so high only because we are not tall. No woman deserves to have everything paid and don't give you anything back (love, feelings etc) only because we are not tall and she is with us.
And after all, LL is here and all of us can chase the life they deserve without a permanent drawback like the lack of height.
So stop thinking so pathetically and do whatever you believe it will make you feel better with yourself and don't let anything put you down.
I always thought like that and I'll always do whatever it takes to feel completely ok with myself no matter how hard it may be (like another one LL)
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...says the guy who opened this very thread. LMAO.
Yeah, but this statistics and analysis have gone to far.
And we don't even get an answer yet, except the guy who just said 3 cm recently.
Btw I just read the previous comments, did you seriously think that it's ok for short men in modern countries just because they can offer survival to women and not because they feel sexually worthy?
Answer to title: Less than 3cm. If you eat normal, you gain or lose no life changing heights.
Interesting. How did you come up with this seemingly arbitrary number (of less than 3 cm)?
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Btw I just read the previous comments, did you seriously think that it's ok for short men in modern countries just because they can offer survival to women and not because they feel sxxually worthy?
Someone said that women can be choosier in modern Western countries because of their financial freedom, implying it's harder for short(er) men to find a mate under these conditions. I argued that the option to marry someone who wants you for your provider qualities is still there, just like in the "old times" when women didn't have the freedom to work and make money. Just by choosing a woman from a poorer country. It's one option for men, among many others.
Actually, an old friend of my mom married a woman from Africa who now lives with him in a richer country. From what I hear, they seem pretty happy together, so I surely won't be the one to judge them. Whatever works, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Interesting. How did you come up with this seemingly arbitrary number (of less than 3 cm)?
I read it somewhere. But before that I made the logical conclusion myself.
Just look around. If food was such a denominator for height and growth you wouldn't see so many skinny unhealthy guys walking around, while having top nurished midgets.
You find so many big guys who don't take of their bodies at all.
Food doesn't determine the final height of a person. Puberty is just a random booster. It comes down to genetics. In my case I was already shorter than almost all kinds in kindergarten. I ate damn well all the time. Even a decade before puberty you can already see the who will be super short.
What does genetics do?
It controls your hormones. And hormones either make you tall, short, or gay in the womb (Yes, that is where you become already gay or not, but through your mother's hormones though). That is why you can grow taller with hormonal therapy, even though genetics decide which height you end up with, if it wasn't for external influenes on a hormonal level.
(External) hormones > genetics (controlls hormones) > puberty (again, genetics and hormones) > food. That is the order.
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Someone said that women can be choosier in modern Western countries because of their financial freedom, implying it's harder for short(er) men to find a mate under these conditions. I argued that the option to marry someone who wants you for your provider qualities is still there, just like in the "old times" when women didn't have the freedom to work and make money. Just by choosing a woman from a poorer country. It's one option for men, among many others.
Actually, an old friend of my mom married a woman from Africa who now lives with him in a richer country. From what I hear, they seem pretty happy together, so I surely won't be the one to judge them. Whatever works, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's just about the most pathetic thing one can possibly hear in this universe.
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I read it somewhere. But before that I made the logical conclusion myself.
Just look around. If food was such a denominator for height and growth you wouldn't see so many skinny unhealthy guys walking around, while having top nurished midgets.
You find so many big guys who don't take of their bodies at all.
Food doesn't determine the final height of a person. Puberty is just a random booster. It comes down to genetics. In my case I was already shorter than almost all kinds in kindergarten. I ate damn well all the time. Even a decade before puberty you can already see the who will be super short.
What does genetics do?
It controls your hormones. And hormones either make you tall, short, or gay in the womb (Yes, that is where you become already gay or not, but through your mother's hormones though). That is why you can grow taller with hormonal therapy, even though genetics decide which height you end up with, if it wasn't for external influenes on a hormonal level.
(External) hormones > genetics (controlls hormones) > puberty (again, genetics and hormones) > food. That is the order.
If you got this "under 3cm" based on the stuffs you mentioned, then I have some bad news because I see no correlation whatsoever how they yield this "under 3cm"
Foods may not be significant if you don't starve. But depression and extreme sleep deprivation might.
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That's just about the most pathetic thing one can possibly hear in this universe.
Who are you to judge anyone? You know nothing about these people's lives, do you? It seems that some people in this world seem happy with their lives, and you do not. Now this mail order bride thing would not be for me. But I would rather be happy and have someone call me pathetic than be unhappy and have no-one call me pathetic.
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http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/calcium-help-you-grow-taller/#gref
what are your opinion about that ? according to that people that drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of meat will be taller while studies proved that vegetarian kids are not shorter than others.
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I would like to know what do you mean by "stress". I guess it's depression, but how to know if you have been depressive.
From what I know I have always been happy, but in the same time many people considered me as "unhappy" because not much talkative, excessively shy and low self-confidence but I don't consider it as stress
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http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/calcium-help-you-grow-taller/#gref
what are your opinion about that ? according to that people that drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of meat will be taller while studies proved that vegetarian kids are not shorter than others.
I don't have any professional opinion. Hell I haven't even come up with a clear answer to my question in this thread.
I did basically everything that might harm growth, but sleep deprivation is what I am worried about the most.
If I could go back the time, I'd definitely drink good high-calcium milk properly because I never know how much it affects height, it's better to play safe.
I would like to know what do you mean by "stress". I guess it's depression, but how to know if you have been depressive.
From what I know I have always been happy, but in the same time many people considered me as "unhappy" because not much talkative, excessively shy and low self-confidence but I don't consider it as stress
I know because I was under pressure for years.
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I'm bound to struggle for the rest of my life. But again, many people just happen to have their biggest regret in life, don't they?
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Maybe in 20 years you'll be able to get taller without distraction osteogenesis.
So you can focus on your career for now.
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Maybe in 20 years you'll be able to get taller without distraction osteogenesis.
So you can focus on your career for now.
Maybe, but even then, I'll be washed up by that time.
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I'm bound to struggle for the rest of my life. But again, many people just happen to have their biggest regret in life, don't they?
No, you're not. At some point, your neuroses could become a lot less obstructive to your life. Trust me, I've experienced it. About 4 years ago, I wanted to kill myself because of my height and the thought of having "stunted" it. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up and I was depressed for hours and hours and hours, unceasingly. Today, I still think about height but it's a lot less obtrusive. I still have bad times but it's a night and day difference, I'm doing pretty fine a lot of times.
Just imagine where you could be in 4 years. Continue going out there, following your goals. You can still do LL at any time in the future.
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I'm bound to struggle for the rest of my life. But again, many people just happen to have their biggest regret in life, don't they?
We still don't get to pick the cards we wanna play life with. We were born just short of seeing it happening. Even then, we will never be able to pick our parents.
Life also always kicks you further after you're down. There's no magical sky being who keeps watch and says "okay, that's enough - this person has had enough cruelty/happiness going on for them; let's limit it."
The only choice is to move on.
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No, you're not. At some point, your neuroses could become a lot less obstructive to your life. Trust me, I've experienced it. About 4 years ago, I wanted to kill myself because of my height and the thought of having "stunted" it. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up and I was depressed for hours and hours and hours, unceasingly. Today, I still think about height but it's a lot less obtrusive. I still have bad times but it's a night and day difference, I'm doing pretty fine a lot of times.
Just imagine where you could be in 4 years. Continue going out there, following your goals. You can still do LL at any time in the future.
I highly doubt it, I've been depressed over my height for 10 years and it has getting stronger ever since. At first, I was still hoping that I was gonna hit my growth spurt that never happened in the end. Now there's no more hope.
I mean, I'll still do everything that I am supposed to do. But the scar will be never fully healed and I know that I will have to struggle and my height will beat the out of me.
Perhaps by competing in MMA openweight and beat the guy 8" taller will spare myself pain because at least the pain caused my height would be the price that I'd pay for the motivation.
We still don't get to pick the cards we wanna play life with. We were born just short of seeing it happening. Even then, we will never be able to pick our parents.
Life also always kicks you further after you're down. There's no magical sky being who keeps watch and says "okay, that's enough - this person has had enough cruelty/happiness going on for them; let's limit it."
The only choice is to move on.
I couldn't pick my parents. But if I knew how important height was gonna be, if I knew that my unnecessary depression and sleep deprivation caused by school was affecting my height, I could have made a decision of quitting school or at least homeschooling and avoided the whole disaster. But I didn't.
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remember your depression won't help you. Go ahead, do LL (if you feel you need it) and be happy (about that point)
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No, you're not. At some point, your neuroses could become a lot less obstructive to your life. Trust me, I've experienced it. About 4 years ago, I wanted to kill myself because of my height and the thought of having "stunted" it. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up and I was depressed for hours and hours and hours, unceasingly. Today, I still think about height but it's a lot less obtrusive. I still have bad times but it's a night and day difference, I'm doing pretty fine a lot of times.
Just imagine where you could be in 4 years. Continue going out there, following your goals. You can still do LL at any time in the future.
How are you doing now, 4 years later?
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If he lives in a pretty developed country, but severely depressed, extremely sleep deprived (0-2hours a night) and eat tons of carbs without vitamins and proteins since 5th grade?
Based on my observation extreme situations like this can stunt the growth badly, even by 10-11 inches.
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By the way, more anecdotal evidence for the thread:
Chester Bennington was molested as a kid and bullied in school. Still grew to his father's height (5'10). Extremely frail looks, though.
(https://130513-375933-1-raikfcquaxqncofqfm.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Chester-Bennington-with-his-father.jpg)
Jonathan Davis, another singer who was allegedly molested and also bullied. Grew to 6'2. Probably taller than his father.
(http://www2.pictures.fp.zimbio.com/Jonathan+Davis+Jonathan+Davis+Strolling+Beach+1ZoBhKYSIXLl.jpg)
These singers could just have made stuff up about their lives, but maybe it's that only nutrition can really significantly affect final height.
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Quick update. I was reading about Slavic people and found interesting things.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont%C3%A9n%C3%A9grins#Caract%C3%A9ristique_physique
According to a 1960 study height average in the world were : 178 for Montenegro, 175 for Scandinavia, 173 for England, 170 for France, 168 for Germany, 166 for Spain) All datas are on the Wikipedia page.
And yes, there is something very surprising. German average was very low, according to actual studies german average is about 180 cm, then they won 12 cm in 50 years ? Very surprising. Especially when we know that French average is about 174,5/175. They won only 5 cm. English average is about 175 too, only 2-3cm.
And now, look at studies in 1996 :
http://sciencepost.fr/2016/07/pays-monde-sommes-plus-grands/
According to these maps, tallest women are in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia. Another thing very surprising, female average from Montenegro is not especially tall when we see that the male average is quite tall (estimated at 183 cm but it seems quite tall, much taller than other balkan countries). I visited Czech Republic. In Slovakia it's the contrary according to the map, women are very tall while men are a bit over european average. Female macedonian average is low in comparison with others balkanic countries. Latvian women are much taller than estonian and lituanian women and also latvian men, very surprising too.
You can also notice that there is a very big difference between european countries and all others countries.
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Quick update. I was reading about Slavic people and found interesting things.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont%C3%A9n%C3%A9grins#Caract%C3%A9ristique_physique
According to a 1960 study height average in the world were : 178 for Montenegro, 175 for Scandinavia, 173 for England, 170 for France, 168 for Germany, 166 for Spain) All datas are on the Wikipedia page.
And yes, there is something very surprising. German average was very low, according to actual studies german average is about 180 cm, then they won 12 cm in 50 years ? Very surprising. Especially when we know that French average is about 174,5/175. They won only 5 cm. English average is about 175 too, only 2-3cm.
And now, look at studies in 1996 :
http://sciencepost.fr/2016/07/pays-monde-sommes-plus-grands/
According to these maps, tallest women are in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia. Another thing very surprising, female average from Montenegro is not especially tall when we see that the male average is quite tall (estimated at 183 cm but it seems quite tall, much taller than other balkan countries). I visited Czech Republic. In Slovakia it's the contrary according to the map, women are very tall while men are a bit over european average. Female macedonian average is low in comparison with others balkanic countries. Latvian women are much taller than estonian and lituanian women and also latvian men, very surprising too.
You can also notice that there is a very big difference between european countries and all others countries.
That seems way too low for Germany. There's no way that can be right...
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Quick update. I was reading about Slavic people and found interesting things.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont%C3%A9n%C3%A9grins#Caract%C3%A9ristique_physique
According to a 1960 study height average in the world were : 178 for Montenegro, 175 for Scandinavia, 173 for England, 170 for France, 168 for Germany, 166 for Spain) All datas are on the Wikipedia page.
And yes, there is something very surprising. German average was very low, according to actual studies german average is about 180 cm, then they won 12 cm in 50 years ? Very surprising. Especially when we know that French average is about 174,5/175. They won only 5 cm. English average is about 175 too, only 2-3cm.
And now, look at studies in 1996 :
http://sciencepost.fr/2016/07/pays-monde-sommes-plus-grands/
According to these maps, tallest women are in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia. Another thing very surprising, female average from Montenegro is not especially tall when we see that the male average is quite tall (estimated at 183 cm but it seems quite tall, much taller than other balkan countries). I visited Czech Republic. In Slovakia it's the contrary according to the map, women are very tall while men are a bit over european average. Female macedonian average is low in comparison with others balkanic countries. Latvian women are much taller than estonian and lituanian women and also latvian men, very surprising too.
You can also notice that there is a very big difference between european countries and all others countries.
Was health in Europe really so bad during the early-mid 1900s that people could stunt their growth that much?
Or is sxxual selection on height really that aggressive?
Which hypothesis is it, A or B? It really bothers me that we do not have an answer for this.
I can't imagine the people living then were significantly less healthy than people now, they ate less junk food and were far more fit on average.
Do these averages include females? Lol? Or maybe Germany really suffered so much famine due to the wars that they seriously stunted their population that much? And with an average nearly what, 10cm+ higher today, can it be said that nutrition can impact height by 10 whole cm?
I've looked at hundreds of photos of twins separated at birth, some born in China, some born in America... Never have I seen such height difference, maximum ½ inch if that even.
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I've been watching this forum for a while and decided to register to share a few personal anecdotal observations. By the way, English is not my fist language so please excuse me for not being word-perfect.
I've been skinny most of my childhood. Despite eating ok in elementary school I was just slightly taller than few kids which were really short which meant that 85% of my class were either slightly taller or quite taller than me. Neither of them had a better diet. Some of them were as tall if not even taller than their their parents by 8th grade. All of them ate crappy food while I was eating decently. My diet was consisting of milk and other diary products, beans, potatoes, meat, some fruits and vegetables. I ate almost no refined sugary crap, besides white rice but I combined it with a lot of cheese to make it more palatable. By, the way, did I mentioned that I consumed a lot of diary products? I was eating cheese with every meal and drank milk instead of water most of the time. By 8th grade my height was no more than 170 cm at most and quite likely a little lower than that.
Let me give you another example. My mother's friend kids - a boy and a girl. Our families used to had many trips together and they looked malnourished. They just ate things like biscuits, candy, some bread and pasta. They were pretty poor and the mother neglected them most of the time. When we decided to go to a restaurant one time, the boy had just a small plate with french fries and he puked them shortly after he ate. He just couldn't handle the food! After that his mother was so embarrassed we never went on a trip until 7 years later. They were 14-15 that time, still quite skinny but man, they were quite taller than last time. The girl was shorter than me but not more than 7-8 cm. The boy was like 5 cm taller and I was 18 years old back then. There was a little improvement in nutrition by that time but they still had pretty crappy diet and it was quite obvious that they weren't eating enough. I haven't seen the girl but the boys which is in university now is probably around 188-190 cm when I saw him recently. Still skinny as a rake. I don't try to claim that nutrition is not important in regards to height but it can only help in reaching the predetermined height by birth. By the way - his father is also tall, the mother is taller than average for female in my country. It's not a big surprise they are tall as well.
Another personal anecdote is from my family. My two female cousins were raised in quite turbulent environment. They had the same crappy diet - bread, cheap canned food, a lot of sugary crap. They were both neglected in their early years. During a particular period of time their parents left them and went to a different country to work so my grandfather was forced to take care of them while they were working abroad. Even my mother and father bought them food to get by. The bigger one was even hit by a car and spend some time in a hospital. I learned years later that they were abused by their mother and they saw their mother abusing their father as well. Truly terrible conditions. When they were 12-13 and 7-8 years old respectively their parents took them in Italy where they managed to rent a small apartment. They were still struggling there. When they decided to visit us few years later the older one was a head taller than I last remembered her. Initially, I even thought she was my height. When I asked her how tall she was she told me 174 cm. This is almost 10 cm above the average in Bulgaria. Her sister was just 160 cm which is 4-5 below average. Their parents are: father 174 cm; mother 160 cm. As you can see the bigger sister was 14 cm taller than her mother and the same height as her father and the little one the same height as her mother.
Again, despite awful upbringing, one of them turned out taller than expected and the other one pretty much as expected.
Now two different examples:
A client of mine who is ~179 cm with father 185-186 cm. His mother is not short - 164 cm. Perfectly normal height but his predicted one is at least 181. He was raised in wealthy family, well fed, played sports, got good education. Contrary, his tall father was raised in poverty, smoked from young age and yet, reached quite decent height.
My brother's friend is around 170 cm, his father is pretty much the same height if not a little taller, mother, a little on the sorter side but close to average. The same guy was eating like a king every day. Never stressed, quite happy and funny guy. Yet, never surpassed his father despite raised in excellent conditions. He is quite successful despite his relatively short stature. He wasn't interested in chasing girls anyway and invested his time in studying and enjoying life. He now works as a manager for a pretty big company.
What all this goes to show? Most likely not much since these are just personal observations. However my explanation is simple. Stressing on such things is not worth the time. You can't tell how things will turn out if you did things differently. Most likely everything will be pretty much the same or an inch at most but no one can tell for sure. Some people will grow tall no matter what and others will be short or average despite living under perfect conditions.
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I've been watching this forum for a while and decided to register to share a few personal anecdotal observations. By the way, English is not my fist language so please excuse me for not being word-perfect.
I've been skinny most of my childhood. Despite eating ok in elementary school I was just slightly taller than few kids which were really short which meant that 85% of my class were either slightly taller or quite taller than me. Neither of them had a better diet. Some of them were as tall if not even taller than their their parents by 8th grade. All of them ate crappy food while I was eating decently. My diet was consisting of milk and other diary products, beans, potatoes, meat, some fruits and vegetables. I ate almost no refined sugary crap, besides white rice but I combined it with a lot of cheese to make it more palatable. By, the way, did I mentioned that I consumed a lot of diary products? I was eating cheese with every meal and drank milk instead of water most of the time. By 8th grade my height was no more than 170 cm at most and quite likely a little lower than that.
Let me give you another example. My mother's friend kids - a boy and a girl. Our families used to had many trips together and they looked malnourished. They just ate things like biscuits, candy, some bread and pasta. They were pretty poor and the mother neglected them most of the time. When we decided to go to a restaurant one time, the boy had just a small plate with french fries and he puked them shortly after he ate. He just couldn't handle the food! After that his mother was so embarrassed we never went on a trip until 7 years later. They were 14-15 that time, still quite skinny but man, they were quite taller than last time. The girl was shorter than me but not more than 7-8 cm. The boy was like 5 cm taller and I was 18 years old back then. There was a little improvement in nutrition by that time but they still had pretty crappy diet and it was quite obvious that they weren't eating enough. I haven't seen the girl but the boys which is in university now is probably around 188-190 cm when I saw him recently. Still skinny as a rake. I don't try to claim that nutrition is not important in regards to height but it can only help in reaching the predetermined height by birth. By the way - his father is also tall, the mother is taller than average for female in my country. It's not a big surprise they are tall as well.
Another personal anecdote is from my family. My two female cousins were raised in quite turbulent environment. They had the same crappy diet - bread, cheap canned food, a lot of sugary crap. They were both neglected in their early years. During a particular period of time their parents left them and went to a different country to work so my grandfather was forced to take care of them while they were working abroad. Even my mother and father bought them food to get by. The bigger one was even hit by a car and spend some time in a hospital. I learned years later that they were abused by their mother and they saw their mother abusing their father as well. Truly terrible conditions. When they were 12-13 and 7-8 years old respectively their parents took them in Italy where they managed to rent a small apartment. They were still struggling there. When they decided to visit us few years later the older one was a head taller than I last remembered her. Initially, I even thought she was my height. When I asked her how tall she was she told me 174 cm. This is almost 10 cm above the average in Bulgaria. Her sister was just 160 cm which is 4-5 below average. Their parents are: father 174 cm; mother 160 cm. As you can see the bigger sister was 14 cm taller than her mother and the same height as her father and the little one the same height as her mother.
Again, despite awful upbringing, one of them turned out taller than expected and the other one pretty much as expected.
Now two different examples:
A client of mine who is ~179 cm with father 185-186 cm. His mother is not short - 164 cm. Perfectly normal height but his predicted one is at least 181. He was raised in wealthy family, well fed, played sports, got good education. Contrary, his tall father was raised in poverty, smoked from young age and yet, reached quite decent height.
My brother's friend is around 170 cm, his father is pretty much the same height if not a little taller, mother, a little on the sorter side but close to average. The same guy was eating like a king every day. Never stressed, quite happy and funny guy. Yet, never surpassed his father despite raised in excellent conditions. He is quite successful despite his relatively short stature. He wasn't interested in chasing girls anyway and invested his time in studying and enjoying life. He now works as a manager for a pretty big company.
What all this goes to show? Most likely not much since these are just personal observations. However my explanation is simple. Stressing on such things is not worth the time. You can't tell how things will turn out if you did things differently. Most likely everything will be pretty much the same or an inch at most but no one can tell for sure. Some people will grow tall no matter what and others will be short or average despite living under perfect conditions.
Okay, now explain how mainland Europe gained on average 3 inches of height in a century, if not for nutrition.
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Why are you asking me this question? I'm just sharing personal observations, I'm not disproving any data shown.
If you just asking for my thoughts on this matter - it's not that hard to tell. Nutrition is very important indeed. There are also other important factors you are missing such as improvements in medicine, lower infant mortality as well as improvements in sanitary infrastructure.
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That seems way too low for Germany. There's no way that can be right...
except Germany it seems quite legit for the others countries in the list
and Montenegrins always have been the tallest, in 60's they were living under a communist state too (Yugoslavia)
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Okay, now explain how mainland Europe gained on average 3 inches of height in a century, if not for nutrition.
Epigenetics.
BTW, does anyone else sometimes wish they'd live in the 1960s or something like that, simply because they'd have been taller in comparison to the average height of that time?
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Epigenetics.
BTW, does anyone else sometimes wish they'd live in the 1960s or something like that, simply because they'd have been taller in comparison to the average height of that time?
actual average is ok for me, the only thing that could make me insecure are tall girls
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https://elifesciences.org/articles/13410
But I don't think that alimentation was a problem for anybody here (from Europe)
People from different countries grow to different heights. This may be partly due to genetics, but most differences in height between countries have other causes. For example, children and adolescents who are malnourished, or who suffer from serious diseases, will generally be shorter as adults. This is important because taller people generally live longer, are less likely to suffer from heart disease and stroke, and taller women and their children are less likely to have complications during and after birth. Taller people may also earn more and be more successful at school. However, they are also more likely to develop some cancers.
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https://elifesciences.org/articles/13410
But I don't think that alimentation was a problem for anybody here (from Europe)
So much bs in that quote. "Most difference in height between countries have other causes." Lol
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So much bs in that quote. "Most difference in height between countries have other causes." Lol
Height is subject to many theories. Recently I've talked to transgender, some told me that they loose 1-2 inches with oestrogens therapy. It's curious, because oestrogens can't change your bones but can affect your muscle and ligaments plus pelvic tilt. But 2 inches is enormous
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BTW, does anyone else sometimes wish they'd live in the 1960s or something like that, simply because they'd have been taller in comparison to the average height of that time?
I'll take the amazing access to people and information that the Internet provides, over anything in the '60s :)
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https://elifesciences.org/articles/13410
But I don't think that alimentation was a problem for anybody here (from Europe)
Seriously. Still so much bs in that quote. And that's the kind of shxt that gets promoted as gospel in places like the US and Sweden. No wonder the influx of 5'10~5'11 losers wanting to be 6 feet+ here.
This may be partly due to genetics, but most differences in height between countries have other causes. For example, children and adolescents who are malnourished, or who suffer from serious diseases, will generally be shorter as adults.
It's mostly genetics, and it's still a lottery. How the fxck else do these people explain brothers with a 10cm difference among themselves?
This is important because taller people generally live longer
Patently false bs. The shorter you are, the more likely you are to live longer. The longest living peoples in the world are short, not the tall Scandinavians, despite their super high living standards.
Taller people may also earn more and be more successful at school.
Most Nobel prize winners weren't tall for their own ethnic groups. Einstein was 5'7, ffs. Citations, please?
However, they are also more likely to develop some cancers.
The one thing they got right in that entire quote.
Hard to believe a site called elifesciences with a .org domain could help propagate so much misinformation. The study itself is nice but that e-life digest is ridiculous.
Yes, I am mad.
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I've been watching this forum for a while and decided to register to share a few personal anecdotal observations. By the way, English is not my fist language so please excuse me for not being word-perfect.
I've been skinny most of my childhood. Despite eating ok in elementary school I was just slightly taller than few kids which were really short which meant that 85% of my class were either slightly taller or quite taller than me. Neither of them had a better diet. Some of them were as tall if not even taller than their their parents by 8th grade. All of them ate crappy food while I was eating decently. My diet was consisting of milk and other diary products, beans, potatoes, meat, some fruits and vegetables. I ate almost no refined sugary crap, besides white rice but I combined it with a lot of cheese to make it more palatable. By, the way, did I mentioned that I consumed a lot of diary products? I was eating cheese with every meal and drank milk instead of water most of the time. By 8th grade my height was no more than 170 cm at most and quite likely a little lower than that.
Let me give you another example. My mother's friend kids - a boy and a girl. Our families used to had many trips together and they looked malnourished. They just ate things like biscuits, candy, some bread and pasta. They were pretty poor and the mother neglected them most of the time. When we decided to go to a restaurant one time, the boy had just a small plate with french fries and he puked them shortly after he ate. He just couldn't handle the food! After that his mother was so embarrassed we never went on a trip until 7 years later. They were 14-15 that time, still quite skinny but man, they were quite taller than last time. The girl was shorter than me but not more than 7-8 cm. The boy was like 5 cm taller and I was 18 years old back then. There was a little improvement in nutrition by that time but they still had pretty crappy diet and it was quite obvious that they weren't eating enough. I haven't seen the girl but the boys which is in university now is probably around 188-190 cm when I saw him recently. Still skinny as a rake. I don't try to claim that nutrition is not important in regards to height but it can only help in reaching the predetermined height by birth. By the way - his father is also tall, the mother is taller than average for female in my country. It's not a big surprise they are tall as well.
Another personal anecdote is from my family. My two female cousins were raised in quite turbulent environment. They had the same crappy diet - bread, cheap canned food, a lot of sugary crap. They were both neglected in their early years. During a particular period of time their parents left them and went to a different country to work so my grandfather was forced to take care of them while they were working abroad. Even my mother and father bought them food to get by. The bigger one was even hit by a car and spend some time in a hospital. I learned years later that they were abused by their mother and they saw their mother abusing their father as well. Truly terrible conditions. When they were 12-13 and 7-8 years old respectively their parents took them in Italy where they managed to rent a small apartment. They were still struggling there. When they decided to visit us few years later the older one was a head taller than I last remembered her. Initially, I even thought she was my height. When I asked her how tall she was she told me 174 cm. This is almost 10 cm above the average in Bulgaria. Her sister was just 160 cm which is 4-5 below average. Their parents are: father 174 cm; mother 160 cm. As you can see the bigger sister was 14 cm taller than her mother and the same height as her father and the little one the same height as her mother.
Again, despite awful upbringing, one of them turned out taller than expected and the other one pretty much as expected.
Now two different examples:
A client of mine who is ~179 cm with father 185-186 cm. His mother is not short - 164 cm. Perfectly normal height but his predicted one is at least 181. He was raised in wealthy family, well fed, played sports, got good education. Contrary, his tall father was raised in poverty, smoked from young age and yet, reached quite decent height.
My brother's friend is around 170 cm, his father is pretty much the same height if not a little taller, mother, a little on the sorter side but close to average. The same guy was eating like a king every day. Never stressed, quite happy and funny guy. Yet, never surpassed his father despite raised in excellent conditions. He is quite successful despite his relatively short stature. He wasn't interested in chasing girls anyway and invested his time in studying and enjoying life. He now works as a manager for a pretty big company.
What all this goes to show? Most likely not much since these are just personal observations. However my explanation is simple. Stressing on such things is not worth the time. You can't tell how things will turn out if you did things differently. Most likely everything will be pretty much the same or an inch at most but no one can tell for sure. Some people will grow tall no matter what and others will be short or average despite living under perfect conditions.
Thank you for sharing your stories. They were interesting to read.
Okay, now explain how mainland Europe gained on average 3 inches of height in a century, if not for nutrition.
I've read half of the study posted, and it has a lot of interesting data. I think I'll finish reading it later and then make posts on it.
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Dad's height: 180cm
Mom's height: 160cm
Sister's height: 164cm
My final height: 165,5cm
Grandfather from father side: 176cm
Grandfather from mother side: around 163cm
Height at 9 years 3 months: 129cm / 35kg
Height at 11 years 4 months: 138cm / 44kg
Height at 14 years: 152cm /64kg
Height at 18 years: 165cm / 87kg
Very unhealthy food, bad sleeper, stress, and high obesity
TL;DR; 3cm more would mind a lot in this case :)
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Dad's height: 180cm
Mom's height: 160cm
Sister's height: 164cm
My final height: 165,5cm
Grandfather from father side: 176cm
Grandfather from mother side: around 163cm
Height at 9 years 3 months: 129cm / 35kg
Height at 11 years 4 months: 138cm / 44kg
Height at 14 years: 152cm /64kg
Height at 18 years: 165cm / 87kg
Very unhealthy food, bad sleeper, stress, and high obesity
TL;DR; 3cm more would mind a lot in this case :)
Actually, you probably didn't stunt your height at all. Looks like you just inherited your mother and her father's height genetics.
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Dad's height: 180cm
Mom's height: 160cm
Sister's height: 164cm
My final height: 165,5cm
Grandfather from father side: 176cm
Grandfather from mother side: around 163cm
Height at 9 years 3 months: 129cm / 35kg
Height at 11 years 4 months: 138cm / 44kg
Height at 14 years: 152cm /64kg
Height at 18 years: 165cm / 87kg
Very unhealthy food, bad sleeper, stress, and high obesity
TL;DR; 3cm more would mind a lot in this case :)
Poor sleep is definitely a factor in stunted height. Deep sleep is when HGH peaks.
Insulin can blunt HGH as well so when you get up in the morning if you eat high sugar or carb breakfasts that can reduce your HGH as well as you start the day.
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Poor sleep is definitely a factor in stunted height. Deep sleep is when HGH peaks.
It is highly unlikely. Human Growth Hormone is released during the slow-wave sleep, which is concentrated in the early hours of the sleep. The last part of the night is important for REM sleep, which affects mood, learning and creativity. So getting less sleep than your body craves is more likely to stunt your mental growth than your physical growth.
Insulin can blunt HGH as well so when you get up in the morning if you eat high sugar or carb breakfasts that can reduce your HGH as well as you start the day.
While it's true that insulin and growth hormone indeed play antagonist roles against one another starting the day with carbs is perfectly fine since you have a good boost of energy to start the day.
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Okay, now explain how mainland Europe gained on average 3 inches of height in a century, if not for nutrition.
This is a tough nut to crack. For one, height isn't related to just one gene.
Secondly, there's a big association in early childhood health and final height. So it was not only nutrition over the generations, but the fact most kids were being disease and parasite-free.
Bear in mind the study linked here also said height plateaued in countries like Japan, after a big period of growth.
Change in height around the world over 100 years
(https://iiif.elifesciences.org/lax:13410/elife-13410-fig3-v2.tif/full/,1500/0/default.jpg)
On Japan:
The pace of growth in height has not been uniform over the past century. The impressive rise in height in Japan stopped in people born after the early 1960s (Figure 6). In South Korea, the flattening began in the cohorts born in the 1980s for men and it may have just begun in women. As a result, South Korean men and women are now taller than their Japanese counterparts. The rise is continuing in other East and Southeast Asian countries like China and Thailand, with Chinese men and women having surpassed the Japanese (but not yet as tall as South Koreans). The rise in adult height also seems to have plateaued in South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India at much lower levels than in East Asia, e.g., 5–10 cm shorter than it did in Japan and South Korea.
So it seems different peoples (genes, for all intents and purposes) have different peak levels.
Considering the tallest people in the world a century ago are also the tallest people in the world nowadays (the Dutch, Montenegrin, Scandinavians), this is clearly the work of nutrition in association with genetics and better early childhood health.
So, again, the claim that height differences among countries is mostly explained by factors other than genetics is bs.
There's a German member of this forum with a 170cm (5'7) dad and a mother around 160cm who grew to 182cm (~6 feet). This would most likely never happen in a couple of Portuguese, Japanese or Peruvian origin. This seems obviously the result of German genetics, the same genetics that allowed them to get such a big height increase over a century.
What can happen now is that if height starts being heavily sxxually selected for in countries where the height has already plateaued, like Japan, then their average height will probably start increasing little by little, as they'll be selecting for the genes with taller height potential.
Now, this is also all my theory based on all that I've read and observed so far. If an actual researcher on this subject is reading my post and wants to call bs on anything that I said, please do. It'd be highly appreciated and enlighten us all.
tl;dr I think different genes have different peak height potentials. Nutrition, genetics, and early childhood health over the generations are the main factors defining height increase and final height.
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Starting the day off with carbs is not a good way to start the day. Breakfast cereals and other similar foods typically give people a dramatic rise in energy followed by a slump in energy that then makes the body tired and causes cravings for more carb foods. People who eat high carb foods first thing in the morning are generally fat.
Regardless of which stage it is released poor sleep will definitely blunt HGH production and potentially stunt a persons growth during the growth years.
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I beg to differ regarding your carb statement. If you eat an oatmeal or similar complex carb this won't create such an issue. Fruit is also ok since it has fiber. And fat people are generally fat because they eat too much fat and simple carbs like pure sugar.
What do you mean by poor sleep? Only total lack of sleep have the potential to literally stunt someone's growth. I unlike you have read enough papers to claim this. If you have any scientific information to back up your claim, I'll be happy to read it.
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I'm sorry to say but I think I know now for certain that being often sick in your youth and having a low-protein diet will stunt your growth.
This, of course, doesn't mean everyone was actually going to be 6 feet, and just didn't get to that height due to their youth and nutrition. We have had plenty of anecdotal cases here of people with good health during their childhood and high protein diets who still did not become tall. They'd just have been possibly much shorter had everything gone wrong.
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If a person is sick all year round maybe. Infections such as diarrhea and helminthiasis are more correlated with stunted growth though. Many people get sick when there is a flu season.
I agree with the diet statement. However, if a person is well fed, even with not necessary high protein diet as long as he isn't starving and have good amount of minerals and vitamins that may no affect growth (at least significantly). When we give examples with poor countries with low protein consumption we have to keep in mind that these people are not nourished, left alone protein fueled.
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If a person is sick all year round maybe. Infections such as diarrhea and helminthiasis are more correlated with stunted growth though. Many people get sick when there is a flu season.
I agree with the diet statement. However, if a person is well fed, even with not necessary high protein diet as long as he isn't starving and have good amount of minerals and vitamins that may no affect growth (at least significantly). When we give examples with poor countries with low protein consumption we have to keep in mind that these people are not nourished, left alone protein fueled.
The nutrition aspect is something I'd be willing to pay money to know for sure, but I don't think most nutritionists and endocrinologists really know the finer details between diet and height. Sure, nutrition affects height. We know that much.
However, let's imagine monozygotic twins living in developed nations. One is fed a vegan, high-carb, low-protein diet all his life, and the other is fed a high-protein, average Western diet until his growth plates are closed. What difference could we expect in their heights?
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However, let's imagine monozygotic twins living in developed nations. One is fed a vegan, high-carb, low-protein diet all his life, and the other is fed a high-protein, average Western diet until his growth plates are closed. What difference could we expect in their heights?
It's hard to conduct such study due to the fact that vegan parents would not feed only one of their kids vegan. However, there are many people nowadays that decide to rise their children vegan. If they are living in a developed nation with access to quality food I think we still may see the effect.
I happen to know such people and their kids are really well fed and quite healthy since their parents are mindful regarding important drawbacks of the diet such as vitamin b12 deficiency and other nutrients. At least for now their height velocity is similar to other well-fed kids.
This is far from well conducted study and it's not for vegans but vegetarians but it shows that well fed children will still reach their peers and may even outgrow them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1855500
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It's hard to conduct such study due to the fact that vegan parents would not feed only one of their kids vegan. However, there are many people nowadays that decide to rise their children vegan. If they are living in a developed nation with source to quality food I think we still may see the effect.
I happen to know such people and their kids are really well fed and quite healthy since their parents are mindful regarding important drawbacks of the diet such as vitamin b12 deficiency and other nutrients. At least for now their height velocity is similar to other well-fed kids.
This is far from well conducted study and it's not for vegans but vegetarians but it shows that well fed children will still reach their peers and may even outgrow them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1855500
I saw that one before. It had gave me some ease of mind.
I decided to google some more and found these very interesting studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736755/ - This one is a must read for anyone on this forum interested in this subject. Still dissecting it myself.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3275599/ - This one is less related, but still linking it.
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I'll check these, thanks.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5732171/
Other than this bs quote repeated ad nauseam as gospel truth in these studies, the other parts of the study seem alright: "Taller people live longer." No... They absolutely don't. I don't know why this is repeated so often. The longest living Europeans, and indeed the world, are the short Sardinians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_people#Age_expectancy_and_Longevity), not the tall Dutch... The close contenders are also all much smaller in stature (e.g. Okinawans, Ryukyuans, Nicoyan Costa Ricans).
Study authors: Josep Peñuelas, Ivan A. Janssens, Philippe Ciais, Michael Obersteiner, Tamás Krisztin, Shilong Piao, Jordi Sardans.
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(http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/historical-median-male-height.png)
Graph by Dr. Randal Olson.
It's interesting to note how the height increase did not seem to be affected in Germany, despite, you know, the two world wars, which they both lost and brought economic turmoil. The US, France and Italy all had some drops in median height throughout this time period, though (1820-2013)...
Would also like to see data on Russia.
The last drop in the US is also far less important, as the country got vast amounts of immigrants from shorter ethnic groups.
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Original page: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/23/why-the-dutch-are-so-tall/
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I would say up to 5cm because I have a twin brother who is 4-5cm shorter than me that avoided gym class with a sugar & carb based diet.
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I would say up to 5cm because I have a twin brother who is 4-5cm shorter than me that avoided gym class with a sugar & carb based diet.
What you described is not enough to stunt height that much, in my current opinion. I'm assuming you are dizygotic twins. Not monozygotic twins.
If you guys are indeed monozygotic, then, well, pardon my tone, and I'll be eating some socks.
Because height is influenced by nutrition, particular scrutiny for confounding by cumulative nutrition is important. Diet is influenced by genetic factors, and monozygotic twins repeatedly have been shown to be similar in nutritional status (15, 16). These height-dant twins, in the view of their mothers, had similar diets as children. According to the young adult twins themselves, the most sensitive observers of between-twin differences, their food preferences, habits, and levels of obesity were nearly identical at the time of contact and are unlikely to have changed since childhood (15, 25). Thus, the available evidence suggests that the relative frequency of infections may be independently associated with adult height.
If causal, several possible mechanisms could explain the association. Infections during early childhood result in periods of catabolism, diverting calories away from growth (14).
[...]
We report that childhood infection is significantly associated with height differences in monozygotic twins, independent of genetics, socioeconomic status, parental behavior, and available indicators of nutrition. Although the relationship between childhood infections and growth has been studied extensively in developing countries, our results also suggest a relationship between childhood infections and adult height in a generally healthy, economically developed population.
Study Authors: Amie E. Hwang, Thomas M. Mack, Ann S. Hamilton, W. James Gauderman, Leslie Bernstein, Myles G. ckburn, John Zadnick, Kristin A. Rand, John L. Hopper, and Wendy Cozen.
Shorter height at 6, 10, 13, and 18 years of age was more strongly associated with shorter adult height than was weight at each age. Shorter height at age 6 years was most strongly predictive of shorter adult height (odds ratio = 27.4; ratio of exposure-dant twin pairs = 89/3); 41% of the taller and 40% of the shorter twins reported that the disparity in height had appeared before age 6; 58% and 56%, respectively, indicated that it had appeared before the age of 12 years.
The twin with more maternally reported episodes of childhood infection was approximately twice as likely to be the shorter twin (Table 2). This was evident for each measure of illness frequency and persisted after adjustment for birth weight and birth length (Table 2; Web Figure 2). There were no statistically significant differences in the odds ratios among the 5 age categories (χ2 test of heterogeneity not shown).
In a stepwise model, the within-pair difference in febrile illness frequency during the toddler years was the strongest and most significant predictor of adult height difference (data not shown).
The association between more toddler infections and shorter stature was stronger among the subset of pairs differing by more than 1 inch compared with the subset differing by just 1 inch [...]
Because most questions to mothers were related to infections, (e.g., frequency of antibiotic use and febrile illness), and since those with chronic disease had been excluded, infections probably accounted for the majority of reported illnesses. The association was strongest for infections during the toddler years, when the difference in height usually appeared, and was independent of birth length and weight. In this study of monozygotic twins, the association between illness in the early years and adult height was independent of heritable factors, childhood social class, and parental behavior.
This is from a study linked earlier in the thread.
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If you guys are indeed identical (i.e. monozygotic) twins, then that'd be awesome to know.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1720514/pdf/v090p00807.pdf#page=5&zoom=auto,-12,500
Eveleth and Tanner reported that differences in body proportions are genetically controlled and different for European, African, and Oriental populations (Caucasians
have tall stature with long legs, in contrast to Orientals). With better environmental circumstances, relatively longer legs appear in all ethnic groups. In fact, monitoring leg length might even be a better tool for reflection of environmental improvements than height. Abused children, who have relatively short legs, showed a significant recovery of leg length after social interventions.
Authors: A M Fredriks, S van Buuren, W J M van Heel, R H M Dijkman-Neerincx, S P Verloove-Vanhorick, J M Wit
This quote seems to also state and expand on what I've had previously seen stated in this other study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872302/
The reason for this is the general principle that those body parts growing the fastest will be most affected by a shortage of nutrients, infection, parasites, physical or emotional trauma, and other adverse conditions. The cephalo-caudal principle of growth as applied to the human species means that the legs, especially the tibia, are growing faster relative to other body segments from birth to age 7 years. Relatively short LL in adolescents and adults, therefore, is likely to be due to adversity during infancy and childhood leading to competition between body segments, such as trunk versus limbs and between organs and limbs.
Authors: Barry Bogin and Maria Inês Varela-Silva
Mind you, the article I'm quoting now (first link) specifically refers to Dutch people. So their definition of "relatively short legs" and its associated numbers and ratios will follow the standard for modern-era Dutch people.