Factors that Influence Height Growth – All you Need to Know

Growing tall is not the most important thing in the world, but it sure does help a lot with confidence and aesthetics. We’re not saying that people who are under the average height level are missing out on something in life, but according to the popular opinions of today’s society, it’s just “easier” if you’re in the normal range.

Every child wants to grow tall as their parents, and in all honestly, it’s one of the most fun things that you experience during your teenage years when your body goes through all the physical changes. Seeing your relatives after a long time just to hear them say “oh how you’ve grown” is a cool compliment to get.

Anyways, in today’s article, we’re going to talk about some of the important factors that influence height growth, and how you can contribute to increasing your height in case you want to be taller. Most of the things we’re going to say are confirmed and backed-up by science, so it’s pretty safe to say that we’ve prepared some very constructive and informative content. You’re probably as excited as we are, so let’s end the introduction right here and jump into the goodness.

Genetic factor

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It is important to understand that one of the most influential factors when it comes to your height growth is the genetics that you inherit from your parents. They will play the most important role that’s going to determine how tall you’re going to be.

We know that there are some cases where the child grows a lot taller or a lot shorter than the parents, but these cases are rare and we cannot consider them to be a reliable way to measure. However, you shouldn’t feel discouraged if your parents are not the ideal height, because there are some things that you can do to spice up your growth by a bit more than average. Let’s take a look.

The gender

We know that on average, males are taller than females, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any exceptions. Statistics point out that the average height difference between males and females is about fifteen centimeters, with the males being the taller one by that amount, once again, on average.

Other statistics say that the average male is 173cm tall, and the average female is 160cm. Like we said earlier, there are exceptions in both genders, so you shouldn’t think that just because you’re a female you won’t grow enough in your puberty years. Besides, everyone hits puberty at a different time, so there’s this phenomenon called “a late bloomer” which is the case when a person hits puberty much later. This might be you, so don’t lose any hopes yet.

Height-increasing exercises

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If you happen to be someone who didn’t follow all the things we mentioned above in the article, and you want to increase your height now, we’re happy to say that it is quite possible. Now, we don’t guarantee that this will work for every person, but doing some of these exercises can help you achieve results that can be pretty noticeable. Here are some of them.

• Hanging from a monkey bar couple of minutes per day
• Doing the famous yoga stretches daily
• Doing vertical jumps such as the ones you do when playing basketball
• Stretching your spine in various ways every morning
• Avoiding activities that compress your spine, such as carrying heavy things on your back

The Age

According to Jason Yoon MD, growing is heavily dependent on your age, which also connects to what we said above about the puberty period in your teenage years. On average, males keep growing up until the age of 23, but as we said, this can vary from person to person. Females tend to stop growing a bit earlier, somewhere around 19 and 20.

Hormonal factor

Out of all the other things that are happening in your body, hormones are the ones responsible for the maximal growth you’re going to get. In males, we know that testosterone is the most important hormone, but estrogen is also important. In females, estrogen is a lot higher than testosterone, and in both genders, it’s very important to have perfect hormonal levels if you want to achieve optimal development of the body.

Some rare conditions influence the number of hormones in the body, and some of them can negatively impact growth. An example of this is something called congenital growth hormone deficiency.

Physical activity

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As we all know already, physical activity is something that keeps all of the hormones in check and helps the body to grow properly and symmetrically. When a person is physically active, especially in the puberty period, their body can grow without any obstacles, and the chance for any unwanted conditions of the spine is greatly reduced.

One of the best activities that a teenager can do to ensure optimal height growth is playing basketball, but other options are viable as well. The thing with basketball is the constant practice of vertical jumps, which is a movement that straightens the spine and builds the right muscles.

Not just for vertical growth, but physical activity is very important to keep all the hormone levels in check. It’s already proven that in males, strength training or playing competitive sports is something that increases the testosterone level, which is a crucial thing for a healthy and balanced life.

Proper diet

According to Medical News Today, without a healthy and balanced diet, your body will not be able to produce the hormones it needs to grow taller. Some studies point out that people who eat a lot of processed and unhealthy food, and drinking sodas and other empty-calorie beverages, have reduced testosterone levels and the rest of their hormones are messed up as well.

This is pretty logical because every person has a certain amount of macronutrients that need to be met every day, and if we are not obeying that rule, our system will start to use other methods to correct our mistakes, and this can usually lead to imbalanced hormone levels.