Teenagers are very conscious about their height now-a-days because it is something which makes your personality. Girls can wear high heels but they too, are worried about it. Teens do everything to have a good height. They even take medicines which contains steroids. It’s important to have normal height but these kind of medicines are dangerous for the body although they’ll make your height grow.
We should know which is short, normal and tall heights are. Then, we should consult a doctor and take medicines or do other things. So, I have collected some information regarding it.
What decides your height?
The height a person reaches as an adult depends on the genes they inherit from their parents as well as general health and nutrition during their years of growth. The child of short parents is more likely to be short themselves than the child of tall parents. There is a lot of variation. Brothers and sisters with the same parents will not all end up the same height and parents can, by chance, have a child who is unexpectedly tall or short in relation to the rest of the family. Illnesses or poor nutrition during childhood or being small or premature at birth may mean children do not reach their full potential adult height.
Normal Growth
The fastest period of growth is before birth, with the baby growing from almost zero to a length of about 50cm in nine months. This speed falls after birth with an average growth of 5.5cm per year at eight years old. During puberty, growth speeds up again. This is called the pubertal growth spurt. Before puberty, boys and girls, grow at similar speed, but during boys grow more than girls. The average height of an adult man is 14cm taller than the average height of an adult woman.
Bones increase in length because of growth plates in the bones called epiphyses. As puberty progresses, the growth plates mature, and at the end of puberty, they fuse and stop growing. The whole of the skeleton does not stop growing at the same time; hands and feet stops first, then arms and legs, with the last area of growth being the spine. Growth slows down and stops when a child has gone all the way through puberty and has reached an adult stage of development. This means that growth does not stop at a particular age, but children who are ‘early developers’ will stop growing before ‘late developers’. After the growth plates fuse, there is no more increase in height and we all shrink gradually as we grow older.
What is too short or too tall?
Normal height ranges can vary between continents, races or ethnic groups of people, so the height of a person who is medically or socially ‘short’ or ‘tall’ can be different depending on where they live or their ethnic background. There are also variations in the height of each individual.
Causes of a Child Growing too Slowly
Causes of a child growing too slowly include:
- Deficiency of thyroid hormones or growth hormones.
- Conditions where the hormone controlling growth are normal but the skeleton does not respond normally.
- An illness that can affect growth.
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