How is height determined in child

How to increase height: Factors that influence growth

The main factor that influences a person’s height is their genetic makeup, or DNA. However, many other factors can influence height during development, including nutrition, hormones, and medical conditions.

Scientists believe that DNA is responsible for about 80% of a person’s height. This means, for instance, that tall people tend to have children who also grow up to be tall.

People usually grow until they reach 18 years of age. Before then, a range of environmental factors can affect how tall they become.

This article discusses the factors that influence a person’s height, some ways individuals can increase their height during development, and whether or not adults can increase their height.

A note about sex and gender

Sex and gender exist on spectrums. This article will use the terms “male,” “female,” or both to refer to sex assigned at birth. Click here to learn more.

People cannot control most of the factors that influence their height. This is because DNA determines these factors, and they cannot change.

However, there are some factors that can increase or reduce growth during childhood and puberty. Growing children and teenagers can take some steps to maximize their adult height.

These factors include:

Ensuring good nutrition

Nutrition plays a very important role in growth. Children without good nutrition may not be as tall as children with adequate nutrition.

Nutritionists recommend that children and young people eat a varied, balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables. This will ensure that they get all the vitamins and minerals they need to thrive.

Protein and calcium are particularly important for bone health and growth. Some protein-rich foods include:

meat
poultry
seafood
eggs
legumes
nuts and seeds
vegetables high in protein, such as spinach, asparagus, and collard greens

Some calcium-rich foods include:

yogurt
milk
cheese
broccoli
kale
soybeans
oranges
sardines
salmon

Ensuring good nutrition during pregnancy is also important for the bone health and growth of the fetus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that people who are pregnant consume a variety of foods, such as:

orange and green vegetables
fruit
pasteurized dairy products
beans
nuts
meat
fish

Getting enough sleep

Sleep promotes growth and development in children and teenagers. During deep sleep, the body releases the hormones it needs to grow. Getting enough sleep may therefore allow optimal growth.

Not getting enough sleep over a long period of time may interfere with healthy growth, cause other health problems, and impair the ability of the child to focus, learn, and participate in life.

Getting regular exercise

Regular exercise is important for proper physical development, as it supports the health of bones and muscle tissues.

For instance, playing outside or playing sports can make bones healthier, denser, and stronger. Exercise is therefore beneficial for everyone, including growing children and people who are pregnant.

Babies and children grow continuously. This is due to changes in the growth plates in the long bones of their arms and legs. As the growth plates make new bone, the long bones get longer, and the child gets taller.

In the first year of their lives, babies typically grow by 50%. Between the ages of 2 and 5, children usually grow by 2.5–3.5 inches (in), or 6.3–8.9 centimeters (cm), annually.

By age 10, children will usually grow by 2.5 in, or 6.3 cm, every year. During adolescence, which lasts from roughly age 11 to age 21, teenagers will reach the final 15–20% of their adult height.

After this, the growth plates stop making new bone, and a person will stop growing. Due to typical aging processes, people begin to lose height gradually as they get older.

The following factors can affect how tall a person will become:

DNA

DNA is the main factor determining a person’s height. Scientists have identified more than 700 different gene variants that determine height. Some of these genes affect the growth plates, and others affect the production of growth hormones.

Normal height ranges are different for people from different ethnic backgrounds, with DNA being the main determinant.

Some genetic conditions, including Down syndrome and Marfan syndrome, can also affect a person’s adult height.

Hormones

The body produces hormones that instruct the growth plates to make new bone. These hormones include:

Growth hormones: These are made in the pituitary gland and are the most important hormone for growth. Some health conditions can restrict the amount of growth hormones the body makes, and this can impact height. For instance, children with a rare genetic condition called congenital growth hormone deficiency will grow at a much slower rate than other children.
Thyroid hormones: The thyroid gland makes hormones that influence growth.
Sex hormones: Testosterone and estrogen are very important for growth during puberty.

Average height based on sex and age

Males tend to be taller than females. Adolescent males will typically have a major growth spurt at the onset of puberty, about 2 years after their female counterparts, but they may continue to grow for longer than females.

Females will typically experience a growth spurt that will subside after the start of their menstrual cycle, which on average occurs at the age of around 12.5 years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the United States, the average adult male is 5.7 feet (ft), or 175.2 cm, tall, and the average female is 5.3 ft, or 161.2 cm, tall.

The following chart shows the median height for males and females from childhood to adulthood:

Age in years	Male height (50th percentile)	Female height (50th percentile)
2	2.8 ft (86.5 cm)	2.8 ft (84.9 cm)
5	3. 6 ft (109.2 cm)	3.5 ft (107.9 cm)
10	4.5 ft (138.8 cm)	4.5 ft (138.2 cm)
15	5.6 ft (170.1 cm)	5.3 ft (161.9 cm)
20	5.8 ft (176.8 cm)	5.3 ft (163.3 cm)

Read about what age girls and boys stop growing.

Once a person has been through puberty, the growth plates stop making new bone. They fuse together, and the person stops growing. This means that when an individual reaches adulthood, they are not able to increase their height.

Assuming proper posture and keeping the back and core muscles strong and engaged can allow a person to stand straighter and appear taller.

Learn more about factors that affect height as an adult here.

When children reach adolescence, they experience an increase in the production of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone. This jump-starts puberty.

In addition to the development of the sex organs, puberty also causes a general growth spurt that ends with an increase in height. If an adolescent experiences late puberty, they may not grow properly according to their age.

There are many causes for growth delays. This includes hypogonadism, which is chronically low testosterone. This condition can delay both puberty and its associated growth spurt.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently only approves supplementing testosterone for adolescent males who have a diagnosed medical condition that causes low testosterone, such as hypogonadism, or a delayed puberty for other reasons.

The two approved formulations for this purpose are testosterone enanthate and testosterone pellets.

DNA determines a person’s height. However, environmental factors, such as nutrition and exercise, can affect growth during development.

As children get older, they need good nutrition and plenty of exercise to help their bodies make the hormones they need to grow. Teenagers will experience a growth spurt during puberty. After that, their bones will stop growing, and they will not get any taller.

There are growth hormones that a person can take to increase their height. However, the FDA has approved this only for people with specific medical conditions.

A person should contact a doctor for an evaluation and treatment determination if they are concerned that their stature is too low.

Is Height Genetic? Why and Why Not?

Humans come in a variety of heights — and genetics play a key role in determining whether you will be short or tall.

There’s much more than just heredity to consider before assuming a person will automatically be the same height as their parents. Medical conditions, hormonal deficiencies, and more can all contribute to how tall you are.

Read on to learn about all of the components that contribute to a person’s natural height.

Genetics are among the prominent factors that contribute to how tall you’ll be.

As a general rule of thumb, your height can be predicted based on how tall your parents are. If they are tall or short, then your own height is said to end up somewhere based on the average heights between your two parents.

Genes aren’t the sole predictor of a person’s height. In some instances, a child might be much taller than their parents and other relatives. Or, perhaps, they may be much shorter.

Such key differences may be explained by other factors outside of your genes that contribute to height.

Aside from genetics, there are other factors to consider that can determine a person’s height, especially during childhood and adolescence.

Nutrition

While eating more vegetables won’t automatically make you taller, getting adequate nutrition during your growing years is critical in human development, including your height.

A diet based on whole, nutritious foods can ensure you will grow up to the height your genes might dictate. On the flip side, a poor diet could lead to a shorter stature compared to your parents.

Access to healthy foods

Eating healthy isn’t so simple for all families. Children of a poor socioeconomic status may be at risk of a lack of access to nutrition, along with poor access to adequate health care. This, in turn, can contribute to a shorter height.

Gender

You may notice that boys grow slower than girls at first, due to differences in puberty milestones. Overall though, adult males tend to be an average of 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) taller compared to adult females.

Hormonal considerations

During puberty, hormones are essential for regulating body growth. These include thyroid hormones, human growth hormones, and sex hormones such as testosterone and estrogen.

Any abnormalities in these hormones could alter growth as well as your overall height. Children who develop hypothyroidism (low thyroid) or pituitary gland disorders may experience shorter than average height compared to their parents.

Rarely, hormonal disorders can contribute to being taller than normal. For example, gigantism is caused by too many human growth hormones produced by pituitary gland tumors.

Congenital disorders

Some conditions present at birth may dictate a person’s height. For example, achondroplasia (dwarfism) is a rare bone growth disorder that runs in families.

Another congenital disorder that can cause short stature is known as Turner syndrome. This rare condition causes delays in puberty. Unlike achondroplasia, Turner syndrome doesn’t run in families.

Other congenital disorders lead to a taller than normal stature. These include Marfan and Klinefelter syndromes.

Marfan syndrome is caused by connective tissue enlargements, while Klinefelter syndrome occurs when males are born with an additional copy of the X chromosome.

Overall, there’s no way you can increase your height. Each person is born with genes that will help dictate how tall they become, but other factors such as inadequate nutrition or medical conditions may alter this outlook.

Hormonal conditions may be the few exceptions. If a lack of thyroid or human growth hormones is detected during childhood, then taking medications may help reverse the effects on height.

However, once you reach adulthood, taking hormonal replacements won’t make you taller. At this point, your full height has already been achieved, and taking any medications or supplements won’t make a difference.

It’s important to focus on good nutrition during childhood, but sticking with these habits will also contribute to your overall health into adulthood and beyond — regardless of your height.

Poor posture and lack of exercise can also contribute to poor stature, so correcting these items may help increase your height (or the appearance of it).

It’s widely regarded that your genes will dictate how tall you become. However, there are other exceptions to this rule, including your gender, access to nutrition, and any underlying medical or congenital conditions you may have.

See a doctor if you have any concerns about your height, or if you have a child who isn’t reaching their growth milestones. They can discuss nutritional issues with you, and they may help rule out the possibility of any hormonal issues.

Norms of height and weight of children and adolescents

The physical development of a child as a combination of various indicators (length, weight, shape, strength, etc.) characterizing his growth and development is due to a complex of hereditary and social factors. To study the physical development of children and adolescents, a unified method for measuring the human body and its parts has been developed. All anthropometric indicators can be divided into two groups: basic (body length, body weight, chest and head circumference) and additional (other anthropometric indicators, for example, leg length, head height, etc.). Analysis of the main anthropometric indicators at the time of the examination makes it possible to assess the physical condition of the child, in dynamics - the pace of physical development. At the same time, the features of the physique, the state of the musculoskeletal system, the degree of puberty, etc. are taken into account. Physical development is analyzed by comparing individual or group indicators with average data (standards) characteristic of the corresponding age and gender of the child. nine0003

The value of indicators of a child's physical development can be explained by a number of arguments. For many chronic diseases of childhood, there are no specific symptoms related to the early stage of the development of the disease, therefore, a violation of physical development is one of the first signs of trouble and serves as an indication for an in-depth examination of the child. Violations of the physical development of children and adolescents may be the result of malnutrition, lack of necessary care, improper or harsh treatment of the child, etc. Violations of physical development can cause constitutional features, congenital or hereditary pathology of the developmental apparatus. Such children have imperfect mechanisms of adaptation and anti-infective protection, for example, a lack of body weight in a child may be accompanied by a higher frequency of minor developmental anomalies. Any deviations of anthropometric parameters from the norm at the birth of a child can become one of the reasons for the decrease in immunological resistance, increasing the likelihood of a disease in the first year of life by half, and the probability of death by 4 times. All factors characterizing the growth and development of the child's body can be divided into genetic and environmental factors. The influence of heredity affects the growth of the child after 2 years of life. nine0003

Hereditary factors mainly determine the rate and possible limit of a child's growth under optimal environmental conditions.

The influence of environmental factors on the growth rate of the child's body can be traced very clearly. Among these factors, nutrition and vitamin sufficiency, motor mode and emotional stress, acute and chronic diseases, the influence of climatic and geographical conditions, etc. are distinguished. At the same time, environmental factors can slow down or accelerate growth processes, but in general the growth trend is quite stable, it obeys the conservation law growth. A variety of adverse influences that disrupt the individual growth rate of a child can subsequently be neutralized by the phenomenon of "catch-up or compensatory growth. " What happens to the physical development of your baby from the moment of birth to its full maturity? We observe the growth and development of a child in the first year of life: How can we understand if he is healthy, is everything okay with him? Remember: the health of a child is judged primarily by its weight, height and head circumference. On average, a newborn's body weight is 3.0-3.5 kg, body length 50 cm, head circumference 35 cm. But do not expect your baby to necessarily meet this standard. Children are considered normal if their indicators are within the following limits: body weight 2.5-4.5 kg, length 45-55 cm, head circumference 33-37 cm. Immediately after birth, babies lose some weight, and then regain it and start adding. Further weight gain as well as height and head circumference are important indicators of your child's condition. By the end of the 1st year of life, body length increases by 47% in relation to body length at birth. nine0003

Weight gain of a child in the first year of life: by 4-5 months, body weight doubles, by the 1st year it increases 3 times. The head circumference of a child in the first 6 months of life increases by approximately 1 cm per month, but if the father of the child is large and the mother is small, the growth rate of the head circumference may be above the norm, and in the opposite ratio - below the norm. The circumference of the chest of newborns is less than the circumference of the head, these dimensions are equalized only by the age of one. In the first month of life, the child must be weighed daily. Thus, you monitor the development of lactation and fix the daily weight gain. Body weight is the most sensitive indicator of a child's health: whether he fell ill, whether his appetite worsened, whether his sleep was disturbed, whether you made any errors in care - all this will immediately be reflected in grams. A sign of nutritional adequacy is normotrophy - the correspondence of body weight due to a given body length of a child. If the weight of the baby has decreased by more than 10%, this is already a sign of malnutrition (malnutrition). Equally alarming is excess weight - parotrophy (excess nutrition). But the increase in the growth of the child is a more stable indicator, and its violations often indicate the presence of the disease. nine0003

Assess the rate of development of your child in the first year of life, prescribe additional examinations in case of violations of the rate of weight gain, body length, head and chest circumference, correct nutrition, if necessary, a pediatrician will be able to, therefore the cooperation of parents is so important with a doctor from the very first year of a baby's life.

It must be remembered that during the first month the pediatrician examines the child weekly, then, if the development of the baby corresponds to normal indicators, monthly. Assessment of the physical development of a child from one to 10 years. After your baby is one year old, he begins to grow by leaps and bounds. In the second year of life, he adds about 2.5-4.0 kg, and growth increases by 10-15 cm. At the age of 3 to 5 years, the baby adds 2 kg and 3 kg per year. nine0003

The head circumference of a child from 51 cm at the age of 5 increases to 53-54 cm at the age of 12. At 5-8 years old, the first traction occurs. But not all children grow in the same way - depending on a variety of factors, such as genetic ones. Children of undersized parents are usually smaller than their peers, but their puberty processes still occur on time. Faster growth than that of peers, with normal body proportions, is characteristic of children of tall parents. In some babies, the growth rate slows down from the second year of life, but after 2-3 years it accelerates again to normal. They have both growth and the onset of puberty delayed by a period during which growth was retarded, but final growth is in line with genetic potential. You must understand: the growth rate of the child should not correspond to any exact parameters, the criteria for “normality” are not at all rigid, but nevertheless, deviations in the growth rate of the child can also be pathological: for example, grossly out of proportion to age or accompanied by a violation of proportions body. Such cases require expert advice. It is also necessary to control body weight. As mentioned above, the lack and excess of body weight requires close monitoring of pediatricians, endocrinologists. In children with reduced body weight, there is a decrease in the immunological reactivity of the body, which leads to frequent colds. And excess everything is a risk factor for acquiring obesity in the future and all the serious diseases associated with it: atherosclerosis, heart disease, colon cancer, etc. nine0003

Increase in the recommended amount of food;
Quenching a child's thirst with milk, sugary drinks or formula;
Excessive (more than 50-100 ml per day) consumption of sweet fruit juices and nectars;
Use of excess high-calorie foods - fat, sweets, baked cottage cheese;
Calming the child with food;
Familial overeating that distorts the child's development of a real sense of need for food; nine0020
Force-feeding, inculcating the habit of eating everything on the plate.

Your pediatrician and endocrinologist will be able to establish the correct diet, give recommendations on the daily diet. Please remember that in the second year of life, the pediatrician examines the child once a quarter, from the third year of life once every six months, in the fourth year and then once a year. Your child is between 10 and 15 years old. A uniform increase in the growth of preschoolers is replaced by its sharp acceleration in adolescence. At 10-13 years old (for girls) and at 12-15 years old (for boys) there is a second traction and at the same time an increase in body weight. The maximum growth rate in girls usually occurs at 12 years of age. The increase in height at this age is approximately 8 cm per year. The maximum increase in body weight in girls usually occurs later at 13 years of age. In boys, the maximum growth rate usually occurs at 14-15 years of age and is approximately 10 cm per year. The maximum increase in the body of a boy usually occurs with a maximum increase in height. The probable final height depends on the height of the parents. It can be calculated using the following formula: Boy's height = 1/2 x (father's height + mother's height) + 6.5 cm Girl's height = 1/2 x (father's height + mother's height) - 6.5 cm. Possible error must be taken into account - the final height can be 8.5 cm more or less. nine0003

Boys themselves and their parents are often concerned about the delay in growth acceleration, while girls, on the contrary, are worried about excessively rapid growth. However, you need to worry only if the child's growth parameters differ significantly from the parameters indicated in special tables and graphs. In such a situation, it is necessary to contact an endocrinologist.

Remember - there are methods that can influence these processes. One of the most important features of the physical development of children and adolescents is the uneven change in growth rate. In children, the distal segments of the body grow at a faster rate and in a shorter time than the upper and proximal segments. So, for example, during the period of postnatal stretching, the child's foot increases more significantly than the lower leg, and the lower leg - more than the thigh. Against this background, the increase in neck length or head height will be minimal. In certain periods, this feature of the child's growth leads to a certain disproportion, some clumsiness in movements and gait. And only during puberty, the growth rate of the trunk will be much greater than the rate of stretching of the lower limbs. Thus, the physical development of children and adolescents should be constantly in the field of view of pediatricians and healthcare organizers. Physical development subtly reflects the health of the generation, the well-being of the environment, and makes it possible to predict the longevity and resilience of the population. nine0003