I remember getting a message in the website email inbox where a person asked why is it that his friend who has been living a really unhealthy lifestyle like smoking profusely and drinking a lot at his formative growing years still end up being 6′ 4″ where he would be eating right and staying away from drugs only ended up 5′ 9″. He was incredulous over the fact that he felt it was so unfair that his friend would be so much taller for doing the wrong things and still be better off in terms of height.
This got me to wonder whether the claim that “smoking causes stunted growth” to be true or not. So I wanted to spent some energy in this post and do some research to see whether smoking would really cause stunted growth. Before on this website, I had looked at the age old claim and “old mother’s tale” that “drinking milk will help you grow taller” with “The Real Correlation Between Milk, Calcium, Bone Growth, And Height“and whether “drinking coffee stunts your growth” with “Does Coffee And Caffeine Stunt Your Growth?” This post is for the smoking claim.
Analysis: First, we have heard many times over from “studies” that for mothers of the person being analyzed, that the babies of mothers who do smoke are on average less in weight than babies of mother’s who don’t smoke. If we rememberr our conjecture that often the height of a person can be determined by their initial birth size. Most people in general go through a similar growing pattern and growing rate. It just so happens that many giants who were genetically predisposed to being tall were born from bigger, taller mothers who had wider hips (The wider hips to taller eventually babies theory is proposed by me) would be able to hold a bigger baby in their womb/ uterus before they give birth giving the person a greater initial amount of mass, volume, and number of cells to proliferate than other people. This was the case with Yao Ming and Karan Singh who both were born at tremendous sizes. They went through a similar growth rate pattern in their developing years like everyone else, except that their initial size at birth was much bigger than other people. So by converse logic, we can say that at least for the case for smoking effecting a person’s size and height before they are born, there is a high correlation and chance that smoking will cause them to be stunted in overal eventual height. From the website HealthGuidance.com, the theory is this…
Smoking will not affect the pituitary glands which produce the hormones necessary for growth, but however it does result in an increase in carbon monoxide in the blood. This then in turn means that the blood has a lower concentration of oxygen and of the other things that it needs to build and repair tissue such as minerals and vitamins. What this then means is that when an area needs protein or other nutrients to grow, it will not be supplied with them as quickly or in such high quantities and quality. This may then mean that that function of the body is not carried out at all, or just that it is not carried out well.
At the same time smoking may result in lower amounts of testosterone – the hormone involved in building muscle, growing hair, and burning fat. This hormone is also involved in growth as it is an anabolic hormone that tells the body when to build tissue.
I would continue to find form other websites liks LiveStrong.com that smoking does cause some stunting by around 1 inch of height. They state…
Bone Growth
Smoking thwarts bone growth in adolescence and adulthood. Smoking during adolescence is also a major risk factor in developing osteoporosis later in life. Especially for girls, who already have an increased risk of developing osteoporosis, smoking can have detrimental effects on bone density. For teenage and adult male and female smokers, decreased bone density can result in osteoporosis, arthritis and bone fractures.
Fetal and Infant Development
Fetal exposure to tobacco smoke results in lower birth weight and delayed development in infancy. Exposure to smoke during fetal and infant development increases a child’s risk of respiratory tract infections, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, behavioral problems and cognitive deficiencies, among other health conditions. Pregnant women should stay away from smokers.
What may finally put a nail to the coffin for this question and show rather conclusively that smoking will lead to stunting was this article I found from the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation HERE
Smoking won’t help teens lose weight, may stunt growth: study
Last Updated: Monday, March 24, 2008 | 4:33 PM ET
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites – links will open in new window)
Smoking cigarettes won’t help teenage girls lose weight, but it may stunt teen boys’ growth, a Canadian study suggests.
The study, published online March 17 in the journal Annals of Epidemiology, found that teenage boys who smoke are on average 2.54 centimetres shorter than non-smokers.
“Girls who smoked did not end up skinnier than girls who did not smoke. They ended up having a similar height and BMI,” lead author Dr. Jennifer O’Loughlin, with the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montreal, told CBC News in an e-mail.
“However the evidence presented supports the old adage ‘Don’t smoke. It will stunt your growth’, at least in boys.”
The study said the effect on boys’ heights may be because they are still growing when they start to smoke.
The researchers surveyed 1,293 Montreal teens from age 12 through 17 every three months about their smoking and lifestyle habits.
O’Loughlin said the researchers were most surprised to find that there was no link between weight and smoking habits.
O’Loughlin said the findings can be integrated into prevention messages to help persuade teens not to start smoking.
“Girls might not start smoking if they realize that they will not end up skinnier than girls who don’t smoke,” she said. “Boys may not start smoking if they think they might end up shorter and smaller overall if they smoke.”
She said the findings “might also help uncover the reasons why smoking affects birth weight and possibly growth in adolescents.”
The study is part of the Natural History of Nicotine Dependence in Teens Study, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society.
Me: It would appear that a lot of the Canadian websites like Canada.com report the same thing, that smoking will lead to some stunted growth. The website ScienceDaily.com would report the same study. From other sources we find evidence that smoking would actually cause the stunted growth of the lungs (Harvard). To put a final conclusion to this issue, I reference a page from the website for the American Academy/Association Of Orthopaedic Surgeons with these main points.
The musculoskeletal system- the bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments and nerves in the body- is significantly affected by tobacco exposure. Tobacco smokers experience a decrease in bone mineral density which increases the risk of osteoporotic fractures.8-12 Bone density loss is also found in people exposed to secondhand smoke.13 Furthermore, smokers have impaired bone healing, which can delay the healing of fractures and wounds, and has shown to negatively influence wound healing, bone surgery results and patient satisfaction when compared to nonsmokers.14-17
There are many musculoskeletal risk factors associated with tobacco use:
- Smoking is associated with an increase in the incidence of rheumatoid arthritis.18-20
- Smokers have a greater chance of developing systemic lupus erythematosus. An inflammatory, multisystemic, autoimmune disease of the connective tissue, characterized by fever, skin lesions, joint pain or arthritis, and anemia, and often affecting the kidneys, spleen, and various other organs.21
- Smoking is associated with rotator cuff disease in the shoulder.22
- Nicotine, the most powerful substance in tobacco, causes a decrease in blood flow to all tissues in the human body. Proper blood flow is vital for wound healing.14,16,23
- Smoking has been shown to be related to poor wound healing and delayed fracture healing.14,16,23
- Each year more women will die from hip fractures than by breast cancer. Smoking has been identified as a major risk factor for the development of osteoporosis and osteoporotic related hip fractures.24,25
- There is a strong association between decreased bone density and altered reproductive functions in women. 12
- Studies show that mothers who were exposed to tobacco delivered babies with low birth weight, and decreased bone development.7
Quitting smoking before surgery can help improve post-operative wound healing, and decrease recovery time.15,17,26
Me: There is some overwhelming evidence and studies which does suggest that smoking does stunt the growing process for adolescents who are still growing. For the people who start smoking too early, it will stunt their growth. If they start smoking after they are done growing vertically, their height won’t be effected. However their BMI will be effected since there is a positive correlation between smoking and staying thin/ not eating/ not gaining weight. How the growth path is stunted is not revealed or described in any detail by the reporters who just write for the news and not for a scientific journal. If I was guess it would be that one of the many harmful chemical elements found in the tobacco gets into the lungs, goes into the blood stream, and starts disrupting normal cellular activities. Since for a child who is still growing taller, one of the most energy and resource depleting process in their body is the vertical increase of their body. Longitudinal growth of the long bones is a very resource intensive process. The process does require that the progenitor cells in the rest zone of the growth plate to differentiate correctly into chondrocytes and than stay healthy enough to proliferate at a reasonable rate to cause the columns needed for cartilage expansion and longitudinal growth. There can be dozens of chemicals from the tobacco after passing through the blood stream come close in contact with the epiphyseal cartilage and cause the cells to break down and die at a faster rate thus depleting initial number of chondrocytes available for proliferation and thus the longitudinal potential of the person. However we are seeing that the effects of smoking are not that harmful, where on average the heights of smokers are around 1 inch shorter than their non-smoking contemporaries. If a person is willing to sacrifice that 1 inch of eventual height for a chance to puff at a cigarette, then that is their choice. However there is obviously more serious issues than stunted growth and shorter height when it comes to smoking, like a higher chance for the development of cancer. So, either stop smoking or stay away from the vicinity of smokers so as not to get 2nd hand smoking.
oh gosh Im so glad that I survived the few cruel years with the trap that swallows teens into “cool smoking”.
That time was one of the very few when I benefitted from being a weirdo.