Sondern
Don't DM me "How do I start" ima ignore you
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I mean you did your research, so I respect the post and all butttt. HORRIBLE Hypothesis, youd be better off doing HIIT and getting more gh with that. Not to mention even if you were right a 5,9 ripped guy mogged tf out of a 5,10 weak beta who has no legs. The best way to grow when your young is taking pharma gh or somthing like pharma gh.The Determining Factor for Height
Introduction
It seems that if there’s anything you don’t like about yourself, you can work on it or get it fixed. If you’re fat, you can diet and exercise. If you have a uni-brow, you can pluck it. If you’re short, though… sorry, not even surgery can help you there. Teens often wonder if weightlifting will stunt their growth, as if humans are supposed to be tall and anything less is suboptimal. I believe a man that is 5’5” is neither unhealthy nor malnourished. In today’s society, however, being short is a huge disadvantage for men. Studies have shown that height is strongly correlated with income—tall men are simply granted more money and status in society. Tall men often develop a sense of superiority from the ability to literally look down on other people. And, of course, a tall man has a greater selection of women to date since most women will only date a man taller than herself. Life seems very unfair for the short man. But what if I told you height is not 100% genetic and can be nurtured? Well, it’s probably too late for you anyway.
Hypothesis
Fact: one’s height is the sum of the lengths of their leg, torso, neck, and head. Today’s scientists say that height is determined by growth plates, which are located at both ends of a bone, and that nothing can be done to alter their growth rate. I believe these scientists have overlooked the fact that muscles surround the bones. I hypothesize that height can be manipulated through development of the leg and torso muscles. (I left out the lengths of the head and neck because they are insignificant compared to the leg and torso.) Muscles have what’s known as a contractile force. As the muscle becomes bigger/more developed, the contractile force increases. If there is no muscle then there is no contractile force:
As you can see, this muscle’s contractile force goes the opposite direction of the growth plate force. Thus, leg and torso muscle hypertrophy should impede vertical growth. It is possible to stretch and massage a muscle into a more relaxed state and thus weakening the contractile force. To maximize height, I believe one must eliminate all the contractile forces that contribute to height. These are all the muscles with fibers that run vertically: the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, abdominals, erector spinae, and quadratus lumborum. Any muscle development of these muscles will retard vertical growth, as my hypothesis goes.
How exactly would one maximize height? During the developmental years, one should avoid all high-intensity (i.e. muscle-building) exercises of the aforementioned muscles. This means never doing sit-ups, squats, etc. If physical activity must be done then it should be done with low-intensity (and high repetition). This means light jogging instead of sprinting, jumping rope rather than high jumping, hopscotch rather than long jump, or even carrying groceries into the house in three trips rather than one. In other words, energy should be expended with cardiovascular activities rather than in short bursts. This lifestyle will minimize muscle hypertrophy and thus maximize height. It’s hard to avoid all physical activity, however, so the second part of the equation is to frequently stretch and massage the leg and spine muscles to a relaxed state. The bridge stretch is a good example. Even sitting cross-legged for some time will stretch the leg and lower back muscles. To minimize height, one should engage in high-intensity leg and torso activities, and neglect stretching these muscles.
Lugging a heavy backpack around school every day is the worst thing a teen can do for his/her height—not because of gravity, though. The act of stabilizing all the weight shifting around will strengthen the erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscles.
Existing Hypotheses
Many people believe height is genetically predetermined. I definitely agree that genes are a factor. But, as with many conditions, I see the role of genes as defining an individual’s default/expected value and the possible range of deviation. I often visualize the effect of genes as a probability distribution, or a box-and-whisker plot:
I believe genes define how tall one is expected to grow. Basically, a daughter is expected to be the same height as her mother and a son is to be the same height as his father. I believe genes also define the minimum and maximum degree of deviation allowed. How far a person deviates from the projected value—how far one travels along the whiskers of the box plot—is up to nurture, I hypothesize.
So it’s genes + nurture. Most people today believe this means genes + diet, because people attribute just about every unexplained human phenomenon to diet. This is idiotic. Yes, I do believe malnutrition can stunt growth, but I believe extreme starvation is required for this to occur. I’m sure you’ve encountered short people who eat too much food, too little food, only healthy food, etc. and tall people who eat too much food, too little food, only healthy food, etc. In other words, no one has observed a correlation between height and diet. Why, then, do so many people believe diet determines height? People are simplistic. People believe that the only thing we have a choice on, in life, is what we eat. They fail to realize that there’s also “calories out”—our behavior.
Every four years, people notice that Olympic gymnasts are short and then wonder: did gymnastics make them short, or are they the best at gymnastics because they’re short? The chicken or the egg dilemma; is selection bias at play? Scientists say the growth plates cannot be affected, except from injury, therefore gymnastics cannot make a person short. I say it can. Unlike long-distance runners, gymnasts use the legs with high-intensity as they leap around in tumbling, vault, and balance beam. This induces muscle hypertrophy of the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, abdominals, erector spinae, and quadratus lumborum, among other muscles. Thus, a large contractile force is working against growth plate expansion of the limbs involved in height.
Supporting Evidence: Comparing Urban to Rural
I believe growing up in an urban environment causes teens to live more sedentary lives than their rural counterparts. Urbanization replaces fields and nature with high-rise buildings and computers. There is simply no space to run around and play in a city. I hypothesize that this sedentary lifestyle produces undeveloped leg and torso muscles, which results in a taller height. Kids in rural environments run around and play outside more often, which leads to well-developed leg and torso muscles, which leads to shorter overall height. Is this backed by any evidence? In 2013, CJ Paciorek published a study which found that urban children are taller than their rural counterparts in almost all of the 141 (low-income and middle-income) countries they researched:
The study’s interpretation of these findings is that the rural areas have less access to stable and affordable food supply and health care. This study is far from alone. There are countless studies that find a correlation between urbanization and height, and they all believe the same thing: better access to food and health care leads to taller humans. The truth of the matter is that there are many variables in play as humans go from a rural environment to an urban one, so using just this data will not suffice for my hypothesis. We must narrow it down to the “sedentary lifestyle” component of the urban environment as the determining factor of height.
Many studies have found that a sedentary lifestyle is strongly correlated with myopia, a.k.a. nearsightedness. The more hours you spend doing deskwork, the worse your vision will be. In fact, 80-90% of children completing high school are now myopic in urban cities in Asia. Why am I talking about myopia? Because it has a strong correlation to deskwork. Thus I am going to substitute “myopia” with “sedentary lifestyle.” In 2002, Saw SM, et al. published “Height and Its Relationship to Refraction and Biometry Parameters in Singapore Chinese Children” after finding a correlation between height and myopia. That is, Saw SM, et al. found that the taller the child was, the worse his/her vision was. Using my substitution: the taller the child, the more sedentary his/her lifestyle.
The following is not concrete evidence but rather a few things I’ve noticed over the years. One, it seems like children have been getting taller and taller. That is, a 10-year-old today seems taller than a 10-year-old from 10 years ago. Most people simply chalk this up to “better diet and nutrition” but I beg to differ. Food has been plentiful for many, many decades. Two, I’ve observed that the teenagers who are tall also seem to lack muscle development at the legs. That is, if you were to outline their legs, there would be no curves whatsoever at the calf and knee area—it’d just be straight lines from hip to foot, like a bad drawing. Shorter teenagers, on the other hand, tend to exhibit distinct calves and knees—or as I see it: muscle development.
Ideal Supporting Evidence: Teens That Did High-Intensity Legwork
One way to gather data for my hypothesis would be to conduct a survey on full-grown adults (i.e. ages 22-40). First, I would ask them what their height is. Second, I would ask them if they participated in karate, gymnastics, weightlifting of the legs, etc. as a developing child/teenager. Third, I would ask them how many months/years they were active in these sports. I expect the data to show a strong negative relationship between years spent doing high-intensity leg activities and (final) height. Karate and gymnastics qualify as high-intensity leg workouts because they involve a lot of kicking and jumping.
Another survey possibility would be to ask how much outdoor playtime someone experienced during their developmental years. The survey would poll developing teens and full-grown adults, rural and urban. The teens would be able to give the most accurate numbers as to how long they played. I predict the rural population to have more outdoor play, and thus be shorter, than their urban counterparts. I’d say that for the majority of countries, for at least one generation now, people in rural areas have had access to the same kind of diet/calories as people in urban areas. I also predict that in mountainous regions to have more muscularly-developed legs, and thus be shorter, than people in flat plains.
The best evidence for my hypothesis would be a survey on the heights of identical twins that lived drastically different lifestyles yet shared similar diets. For example, a twin who took many years of karate or gymnastics while his/her twin did not. Unfortunately, this scenario is very rare because most parents of twins want to give their twins have an equal and fair upbringing. However, Googling clever phrases, such as: “stunt growth weight lifting ‘twin brother’,” “stunt growth gymnastics 'twin sister',” or “stunt growth working out ‘identical twin’,” yielded many anecdotes that support my hypothesis.
Comparing Heights is Tricky
Beware of people on the internet parroting the unproven theory that working out or weightlifting does not stunt growth. These people often cite scientists that say genetically-predetermined growth plates are responsible for overall height. End of story. Truth is, there hasn’t been a study to prove one way or the other. Also beware of people sharing their personal anecdote with no control variable. Say, for example, Jamaal from the internet says he ran track and field for all four years in high school and he’s much taller than the average American man, therefore leg workouts do not hinder height at all. I hope you see that this is incredibly flawed. First of all, he doesn’t have a control variable—he is comparing himself to the average American—America is a very diverse country with many ethnicities. It would be more acceptable for him to compare his height to the average height of his ethnicity in America. More acceptable than that would be to compare to the average of his cousins. More acceptable than that would be a blood sibling. Ideal would be an identical twin that didn’t do any physical activity in high school. Secondly, running is not necessarily a high-intensity leg exercise and thus may not induce muscle growth. Sprinting is, but long-distance running is low-intensity. Among the teenagers who do work out, only a few actually work out the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, abdominals, or erector spinae with high intensity.
There is currently no explanation as to why siblings differ in height. The genetic explanation may be that one sibling “got the bad genes.” My hypothesis says that the child who uses leg and torso muscles with high intensity will grow up to be “the short one.” But it gets tricky! Women are, by nature, about 10% smaller than men, and thus 10% shorter as well. For example, say a man is 5’10” and has a sister. It’s expected that his sister is around 5’3” because this is 10% less than 5’10”. If she turned out to also be 5’10”, I would conjecture that the man’s childhood involved intense leg usage, while hers did not. If she turned out to be 4’11”, I would speculate the other way around. Another factor to consider is that, in today’s society, physical activity is reserved for the male gender. The boy is encouraged or forced to do the physical labor, especially when it comes to strenuous (i.e. high-intensity) activities, because he is to “be a man.” The girl is discouraged or excused from doing physical activity because she is to “be a princess.” If a female is doing physical work, it’s advised to be low-intensity cardio activity. This is a moot point in a modern, urban lifestyle, however, where this physical labor is nearly nonexistent. But if a (rural) family strictly adhered to these gender roles, I would bet on the boy growing up to be shorter than his sister, or barely taller.
Implications of my Hypothesis
Besides keeping high-intensity activity at a minimum, a less obvious way to maximize height would be a special diet devoid of protein. Since protein purportedly aids in muscle growth and recovery, kids can avoid protein-rich foods during developmental years to minimize muscle growth. Kids should also avoid getting fat, because fat is extra weight to carry around which leads to muscle hypertrophy. For example, if you took two kids—one fat, one skinny—with the same age, height, and lifestyle, the fat kid will have a more muscle mass. This is from carrying about daily activities with extra weight on. So I suppose diet does matter, but not in the way people believe it matters.
The harder you work, the shorter you will grow up to be—if work is to be defined as high-intensity physical labor. When I see a short man—especially for his race—I often think to myself, “He must have worked hard when he was young. Maybe he helped his parents carry heavy loads every day.” And when I see a really tall man, I cannot help but think, “He’s probably never pushed himself physically. Maybe he spent his childhood sitting cross-legged in front of a TV all day.” I’m not saying the equation for height is 100% nurture. Genetics still play a role. I would say that being short comes from generations of high-intensity leg and back work, and being tall comes from generations of comfortable living. Yes, this is Lamarck’s Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics. Again, before you try to disprove my hypothesis with an anecdote: you need a control variable, such as a same-sex sibling. For example, it is a mistake to compare your level of physical activity and final height to the national average, especially if that nation is racially diverse.
@copingvolcel is an example of this theory. Just look around you.
TL;DR: Working out will make your muscles stronger and bigger, this will exert force in the opposite direction of which your bones grow, limiting high-intensity low-repetition working out will make you taller, instead, low-intensity high-repetition should be done.
aka don't workout, get taller theory.
My take on this is don't work out until the age of 20.
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