When I graduated high school I was 5’ 4.75" measured by a drs office. In 2003, at age 35, I was again measured by a drs office and I was 5’ 5.25". I just got back from a new doctor this morning and I was measured at 5’ 5.75"! I made them do it twice 'cause I was so surprised.
Can you grow in height as an adult? I’ve tried to research this online and found a bunch of flakey site selling snake oil to shorties. But some sites do mention that an increase in disc thickness can lead to a taller stature. I took up rowing about 9 or 10 years ago and I’ve read rowers tend to have thicker spines. Could this cause me to gain height?
I did the same thing. I don’t remember the specifics, but I grew about an inch between highschool and my late twenties, and then another inch between then and my mid-thirties.
Last I checked, I haven’t grown any more in the ~10 years since.
Your height varies depending on the time of day. You are generally ~0.5-1" taller in the morning than you are at night. Standing around squeezes the water out of your joints and compresses your vertibrae and makes you shorter. They ‘decompress’ at night making you a bit taller in the morning.
To answer your question about growing as an adult though, no, you cannot. Generally by age 25 (somewhat earlier in men and sometimes a bit later in women) your growth plates have fused and even taking massive amounts of growth hormones will not have an effect on your height.
Yeah. You would most likely get cancer from the massive amounts of growth hormones. Plus, he only made it to the ripe old age of 22. I’m pretty sure he would have had other problems had he actually lived a while.
Excess growth hormone after fusion of the epiphyseal plates will make you uglier but not taller. Mr Wadlow’s height was due to production of hormone before his bones stopped growing. The same disorder which causes gigantism as a youngster causes acromegaly as an adult.
Well, yeah, rowing is really good for the back muscles and I constantly strive to sit up. Plus I daily do some shoulder exercises from physical therapy to prevent thoracic that help me hold my shoulders back. But, every time I get my height measured I always make sure to stand up very straight; I’ve alway been bitter then I’m not a 5’10" glamazon.
I know you can get bone growth as an adult even after the growth plates are fused. I’ve had bone growth in my lower jaw due to tongue thrust and wound up having to get braces again. So I was thinking maybe the increased load on my spine due to the rowing might have stimulated some sort of increased growth.
Hmmm, regardless of the real reason, I"m totally gonna claim 5’ 5.75" as my official height now.
I learned this a loooooooong time ago so maybe my memory is distorted but i heard several situations of high physical stress can make you grow minute yet somewhat noticable reults. Probably nothing like teh OP experiences on a regular basis, but for example i hear leaving and then reentering the earth’s atmosphere nets you a small portion of an inch.
Doesn’t seem too probable. As far as I can tell, once the epiphyseal plates fuse, your stuck. Laying on additional bone material over existing bone material will make your bone larger, but that is not what is really required here. The epiphyseal plates are actual living tissue that is required for bones to elongate. By age 17-25, your epiphyseal plates have all been slowly replaced by bone, making any further elongation impossible. The original bone material must be broken or seperated in order to really see a result.
UNLESS…
You go through a fun surgical procedure called ‘Distraction Osteogenesis.’ In this they basically put the part of your body in traction and cut you bone in half. Then they slowly increase the gap between the cut and allow new bone and tissue to fill it in. The process is generally only used on people with deformations, such as having one leg be shorter than the other. It is incredibly slow, and I cannot imagine it being fun.
It’s also the sort of thing that can cripple you if done wrong. This is a problem in China, I’ve heard, where leg lengthening for purely cosmetic purposes has produced lots of quacks who do it for profit, and screw it up.
Both my wife and one of her friend reported an increase in their height of ~ 1" after therapy (my wife) and surgery (the friend) for back problems. Could essentially be improved posture, tho.
By any chance, were you pregnant in the intervening time? An aunt of mine grew an inch while she was carrying her firstborn. Apparently, there was enough HGH to go around.
If the only measurements you have to go on are one at age 17-18 and the next at age 35, it’s most probable that you grew a half inch right after high school. I grew another inch when I was 16 or 17 and my middle sister grew 6" between ages 14-19. Some girls continue growing later than the average (most are done right around puberty).
The extra half inch at the most current measurement could be due to many factors… time of day, athletic and posture improvements. I highly doubt you have ‘grown’ skeletally.
If it was in shoes, I’d be 5’ 9.75" 