Im uh.. doing some research on factors that affect human growth. Do you guys know anything besides genetics that affects how tall you get to be? This would really help my… research.

mooo1 - 17 August 2005 11:56 PM

Do you guys know anything besides genetics that affects how tall you get to be?

Gravity.

* - And “No” that’s not a joke. You asked for a determining factor in how tall someone is, whether you meant how tall an individual is or how tall we are as a species, one factor that figures into determining that is “gravity.”

kind of off-topic, but apparently you are taller in the morning than in the afternoon (that is, if you sleep at night). It’s something to do with the way that you sleep, the discs in your back spread out or something so you are a couple inches taller when you wake up.

http://encarta.msn.com/column_questiontaller/Why_are_people_taller_in_the_morning.html

Diet has a big affect.  Nutritionally starved people don’t grow as tall as someone who gets the proper amount of nutrition during their growing years.

And you have to use your legs…...every step you take causes a stress on the bones that makes them have to constantly rebuild….

Look for a link between Direct genetics and Regional variation, i.e where you live/where your family originate. Loads of short men in Wales for example.

(Yes this is technically genetics, but in a non-biological sense)

hey stephen, if the tissue in the legs regrow each time you put pressure on it, does that mean if you have one leg shorter than the other you should hop on the shorter leg for ages?

(this is a joke, to be sure)

Mort - 23 August 2005 02:14 PM

Look for a link between Direct genetics and Regional variation, i.e where you live/where your family originate. Loads of short men in Wales for example.

(Yes this is technically genetics, but in a non-biological sense)

Would this sort of be like Chernobyl affecting ones height.

i have heard eunuchs never stop growing.

http://www.radix.net/~dalila/singers/castrato-age.html

The procedure of castration was usually performed at the age of seven to eight years. The boy went then through puberty without the physiologic growth of the larynx that is stimulated by the gonads. Most of the castrati became very tall, some with fat breasts and buttocks.

Charybdis - 18 August 2005 01:02 PM

Diet has a big affect. Nutritionally starved people don’t grow as tall as someone who gets the proper amount of nutrition during their growing years.

I think hormones may also have an effect—it seems to me that asia born in asia are more likely to abe short and fat than asia born in america who hang around white people.  I think it would be similar to the mechanism that causes women to menstruate at the same time.  Just my theory.