People who are overly too tall from time to time browse on the possibility on how to get shorter. As you are going through your childhood and adolescence age, the bones in your body continues to grow till you become an adult in your young adult age probably between your late adolescence age and early twenties.
Then your body’s height starts to shrink especially in your middle age and when you are getting older, this is because of the compression your spine gets over the years. While others are tall, others are short and this is largely because of your genes. Tall people are normal human beings likewise short people. In fact, our differences in height are what makes us unique.
Due to self-esteem, bullying or any other reasons, some people who are tall might wish to become shorter. This mostly happens when their posture is affected or their height interrupts with their daily activities.
Factors That Affect Growth
There are so many factors that determine if a child will be tall or short, the are:
Genetics: Your gene is the most important factor that determines your height. Having parents with dominant tall gene may show off in the children. In fact, about 80% of our height is determined by genetics.
Sleep: The gland responsible for releasing growth hormones in the body is the pituitary gland and this hormones are released while you are sleeping. These growth hormones are in charge of stimulating the protein synthesis that are important for your muscles, connective tissues and body growth. How well you sleep and how long you sleep plays a major role in how your bones develop.
Gender: Men tends to be more taller than women. According to the CDC’s 2018 National Health Statistics Report, the average height of men in the United States over the age of 20 is 5-foot, 9-inches. A woman’s average height is about 5-foot, 3.6- inches.
Health Status: There are some health conditions that will affect a child can influence their height even when they become adults. Conditions like delayed puberty, Down syndrome, hypopituitarism, achondroplasia (dwarfism), Russell-Silver syndrome and others.
Nutrition: Lack of calcium, vitamin D, protein and other nutrients in the body can result to stunted growth. These nutrients are responsible for supplying “food” to the bones and helping them to grow.
Anorexia and other eating disorders cause stunted growth, this is because they deny their body of nutrients. If these disorders are left for a long time, they will result to permanent growth stunting.
Is it Possible to Get Shorter
This may not be possible as the bones in the body are not something you can remove anytime you want without much hassle. The long bones you have most times maintain the same height all through your lifetime although they might compress as you are getting older.
In people that experience spinal discs compressions, their height fluctuates from day to day. They may experience compression of their spines causing them to become shorter by an inch when they wake up in the morning.
You may suggest surgeries but most bone shortening surgeries are not specifically meant to make you shorter but to counter balance leg length differences.
How to Get Shorter
There are many ways you can change the way you look without going for those impossible ways. You can create an illusion of yourself being shorter. This is partly based on your daily habits.
Your dressing: There are certain ways you dress that will make you look shorter.
Try wearing flat shoes or sandals as heels will make you add to your height.
- Avoid wearing pointed shoes, they make your legs look longer.
- Wearing skirts below the knee can give the illusion that you have shorter legs. Shirt skirts will always show off your long legs.
- Wear longer tops and jackets and avoid tight clothes.
- Long hairs tends to make you look shorter. Wear your hair long.
- Wearing tops and skirts or trousers that have distinctively different colors can segment your body.
Exercises: This might be a myth that carrying heavy objects in you childhood will lead to you having stunted growth. There may not be any evidence to back this up but it is believed that these heavy loads can damage your growth plates. Your growth plates are the soft parts of your long bones from which they grow.
Food: Some foods you eat affects your body features like growth. So, if you want to be shorter, you may try eating them. Foods like ice cream and sugar, soda, junk food, rice, soy. These foods contain nutrients like phosphorus and substances that affect bone growth especially in children.
CONCLUSION
Your life’s happiness should not be dependent on your height, your height is just a part of your features. There are no possible ways to make the bones in your body become shorter, you may just stop them from growing. But if you really want to look shorter, you can use any of the points we highlighted above.