Maybe this is a question for the master, or maybe he already answered it, but I couldn’t find it. My brother told me that as you age, your nose and ears never stop growing, and that is why elderly people have huge noses and ears (no offense). I thought this was bogus, but then I saw several elderly people with extremely large noses and ears, and began to wonder. I also heard that the prostate is the same way. Does anyone know of this phenomenon?
No. I tackled this on here already…can’t find it.
THE GIST: Nose and ears are cartlidge, and they (they cartlidge) can become elongated and droopy over time.
They don’t grow past your growing up. They get droopy.
End of story.
I don’t know . . . I saw a guy in lnie at the grocery store the other day who was really old, probably in his eighties, and his ears were HUGE. I don’t think that droopiness is the issue. The didn’t look droopy at all, just really, really large.
You can’t conclude that his ears grew that way as he aged, because you don’t know what size his ears were when he was young. Some people are born with ears that look like a taxi going around a corner with both doors open.
Well, I am pressed for time, so I’ll tell you this research bit:
Plastic surgeons seem to have some good info on their sites, and all push the same consensus about cartlidge: it droops…noses lengthen…ears lengthen…from drooping. But no new tissue is being added…they are not ‘growing’.
google ears or nose growing (seperately because together you get earn nose and throat doc sites)
Look for plastic surgeons.
I know nuthinboutnuthin but… if taking a wild guess counts…
As we age
muscles all over the body, including the face, shrink/atrophy, teeth/gums recede etc, making our bodies smaller.
Cartlidge doesn’t grow, so combined with surrounding shrunken faces it would only APPEAR as though the nose/ears were huge in proportion to the face when in fact they probably matched the face of the person fairly well when they were young.
You dont usually see obese people with big huge noses and ears, if anything, the noses and ears seem to shrink in proportion to the weight gain
There is a condition in which the ears, nose, chin, feet, and hands continue to grow throughout all a person’s life.
It’s called “acromegaly”. It is a terminal disease, in which the body keeps producing a particular kind of growth hormone. Eventually, you begin to look VERY peculiar. Actor Rondo Hatton suffered from this disease, and finished his career playing monsters (and was described as “The Man Who Needed No Makeup.”
Fortunately, it’s curable these days. Another actor whose name I can’t remember had it, and was cured… but is known by most of us for his lantern jaw and prominent nose. Can’t remember the actor’s name, but he’s British – played the neighbor on “The Jeffersons” and the Judge in the first Addams Family movie…