I think it is without question that what people really want when they make a proclamation or wish that they “want to grow taller” is that they want to go through the process of growth spurts. There has been many cases where regular sized people who are living their lives suddenly get hit by this strange phenomenon and they find themselves far taller and bigger after just a season or year of dramatic body altering transformation.

When we are talking about growth spurts, we are not talking about the usual slow rate of body size increase which most young people and children experience. The average rate of height increase within USA

Let’s look at the scientific numbers behind the usual cause of a person’s growth and height , at least the US facts and figures available.

Girls

– Most girls start their sexual development between the ages of 8 and 13, and have a growth spurt between the ages of 10 and 14.
– The rate of growth in height reaches its peak by about 2 years after puberty began (average age is 12 years).
– Menstruation begins, almost always after the peak growth rate in height has been reached (average age is 12.5 years).
– Once girls start to menstruate, they usually grow about 1 or 2 more inches, reaching their final adult height by about age 14 or 15 years (younger or older depending on when puberty began).

Boys

– Most boys start developing sexually between the ages of 10 and 13, and continue to grow until they’re around 16.
– Boys tend to show the first physical changes of puberty between the ages of 10 and 16 years. They tend to grow most quickly between ages 12 and 15.
– The growth spurt of boys is, on average, about 2 years later than that of girls.
– By age 16, most boys have stopped growing, but their muscles will continue to develop.

(Note: Information taken from Kids Health)

From the Health Center at USC (University of Southern California) HERE 

KEY HORMONES

Many of the body’s hormones influence growth, such as growth hormone, thyroxine, insulin, and corticosteroids (all of which influence growth rate), leptin (which alters body composition), and parathyroid hormone, 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D, and calcitonin (all of which affect skeletal mineralization). However, the key hormone in growth is GH which is mediated by growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) and somatostatin (SS). Growth hormone secretion is increased by GHRH and decreased by somatostatin. Both growth hormone levels and IGF-I (somatomedin-C) levels rise during puberty. The increase is most marked during mid and late puberty and correlates best with pubertal stage, bone age, and time from peak height velocity (PHV).

The maturation of bones is influenced by thyroid hormones, adrenal androgens, and gonadal sex steroids, mainly estrogen. An excess secretion of these hormones can lead to advanced bone maturation, and at the time of puberty, deficiency causes delay.

At puberty, both sex steroids and growth hormone participate in the pubertal growth spurt. The ending of the growth spurt is secondary to epiphyseal closure, due to the action of the sex steroids.

An increase in physical size is a universally recognized event of puberty. Average growth velocities decrease from the first year of life until puberty from 25 cm/year during the first year of life to 5-6 cm/year during years 5 to 10. During puberty height velocity increases and peaks during the adolescent growth spurt. Landmarks include:

HEIGHT

Differences in Growth Spurts between Males and Females

Prediction of Mature Height

While predicting adult height is a difficult task, individuals have used both the bone age in calculations or a measure using midparental height as most individuals have an adult height that is within 2 inches of the midparental height. This is calculated using:

For girls:

(father’s height – 13 cm) + mother’s height
2

For boys:

(father’s height + 13 cm) + mother’s height
2

From KeepKidsHealthy.com

While there are many medical causes for being short and having poor growth, including growth hormone deficiency, hypothyroidism, Turner syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, kidney problems, malnutrition, etc., most children who are short are normal. They may have genetic short stature or a constitutional growth delay.

Children normally grow at a rate of about 23-28 cm/year in early infancy (birth to 12 months) and this then decreases to about 7.5 – 13 cm/year in later infancy (1 – 3 years). Many children between the ages of 6 and 18 months move up or down on their growth percentiles, but by 24 months, most children follow their growth curve and stay on the same percentile or growth channel.

In early childhood (3 years to puberty) they will then continue to grow at a rate of about 4.5 to 7 cm/year, up until the time just before they begin puberty, when their growth will slow to about 4 cm/year. Growth then accelerates again as they hit their peak growth velocity in puberty, to about 8-9 cm/year for girls and 10.3 cm/year for boys. Growth then slows again in girls to about 7 cm/year after menarche (the first period) until they reach their adult height. Boys and girls usually continue to grow until they are 14-16 years old, but this depends on when they started puberty.

Among the influences on a child’s growth is his overall genetic potential for growth, which can be determined from his parents heights, his nutritional status, and the presence of any chronic medical problems.

Children with short stature are usually below the 3rd or 5th percentile on their growth chart for their height. But just as important as where they are on or below the growth chart is what their growth velocity or rate of growth has been each year.

It is also important to look at a child’s weight, in relation to his height. Since overweight or obese children are usually very tall because of an accelerated growth rate, if your child is short and overweight, then he should be evaluated for a medical condition causing his growth problems.

Among the tests that are commonly performed to evaluate the growth of a child with short stature include determining a bone age, which is the chronological age of your child’s bones. This is determined by taking an xray, usually of his left wrist and hand. If your child’s bone age is much less than his chronological or real age, then there is probably still room for his bones to grow after the age that you would normally expect him to already stop growing. Girls usually continue to grow until a bone age of about 14 years, and boys stop growing after a bone age of 16 years (with a peak growth rate at a bone age of 14 years).

Other tests can include blood tests to check for hypothyroidism (T4 and TSH), growth hormone levels (usually by checking IGF-1 and IGF BP3), complete blood counts (CBC to check for anemia), blood chemistries (which can include a SMA 20 to check for liver and liver disease), urinalysis, and sometimes a karyotype to look for chromosomal abnormalities (especially in girls who may have Turner syndrome).

If the above tests are normal, or if your Pediatrician didn’t think that testing was even necessary (which is often the case for many short children), then your child’s rate of growth can just be closely followed every 3-6 months, with a further evaluation being performed if he does not continue to have a normal rate of growth.

Since familial and genetic influences strongly determine how a child grows, most children with short parents will have short children. This is termed familial short stature. You can use our height calculator to figure out your child’s genetic potential for height based on his parents heights using our Height Calculator. While children with familial short stature may be at or near or just below the 3rd or 5th percentile on their growth chart for their height, their growth curve or channel will run parallel to the normal growth curves and they have a normal rate of growth. They also have a bone age that is close to their chronological age, showing that there is not any extra room or time to grow. Although growing normally, children with familial short stature will usually be short as adults, with a similar height to their parents.

Another normal condition that can cause short stature is aconstitutional delay in growth. These children, although short, have a normal growth velocity or rate of growth and will usually have a delay in starting puberty, and possibly a prolonged slowdown in growth that is usually present in children just before they begin puberty. They will usually also have a bone age that is much less than their chronological age, showing that there is room to grow and that they will continue growing even after other children of the same age have stopped growing. Because of the extra room and time to grow, children with constitutional delay usually have a normal adult height. Similarly, other family members usually also report a delay in starting puberty and a late adolescent growth spurt and have a normal final adult height. While children with a constitutional delay in growth will eventually begin puberty, go through the pubertal growth spurt and reach a normal final adult height, it can be distressing for many teens to be so much shorter and less developed than their peers. In this case, he may need referral to a Pediatric Endocrinologist for an evaluation and possible treatment with montly testosterone injections to hasten the start of puberty (although it will eventually start on its own without treatments).

Many parents are worried about growth hormone deficiency in their short children. Growth hormone is required for normal growth, and children with growth hormone deficiency are short, often look younger than their chronological age, and they can be chubby with their weight higher than their height. While they will usually have a delay in their bone age, like children with a constitutional delay, children with growth hormone deficiency will have a slow rate of growth and they will have a growth curve that falls away from the the normal growth curves (unlike other normal causes of short stature which have a normal rate of growth and a growth curve that runs parallel to the growth chart). Testing that can be done if your Pediatrician suspects your child has growth hormone deficiency include checking the levels of IGF-1 and IGF BP3, which will be low. A growth hormone stimulation test may also be done by an endocrinologist.

Treatments for growth hormone deficiency include growth hormone replacement. Other conditions for which growth hormone is currently being successfully used include Turner syndrome, chronic renal failure and Prader-Willi syndrome.

Growth hormone defiency may be congenital (a child is born with it), or it may be acquired later in life from head injury or a brain tumor or mass.

Recently, the indications for which kids can be treated with growth hormone has been expanded. Growth hormone can now be used for the long-term treatment of children with idiopathic (of unknown origin) short stature, also called non-growth hormone deficient short stature, who are more than 2.25 SD below the mean for age and sex, or the shortest 1.2% of children. For example, according to the FDA, for 10-year old boys and girls, this would correspond to heights of less than 4′ 1″ inch. This would further correspond to heights of less than 5′ 3″ and 4′ 11″ in adult men and women, respectively.

Some new studies and reports have recently shown that another group of these short kids, those who were born Small for Gestational Age (SGA), may also benefit from treatment with human growth hormone. The International Small for Gestational Advisory Board has recommended that if ‘a short child who was born SGA has not caught up by age 2 to 3 years of age and whose catch-up growth has stopped should be referred to a pediatrician who has expertise in endocrinology.’

From LiveStrong Article HERE

Environmental Factors

This is the third in a series of posts where I try to find the tallest people of a certain age group.

The first post was Karan Singh who in 2010 was dubbed the tallest toddler in the world. He should be 4.5 years old now and considered a small child and I really don’t know how much taller he is now compared to tall years ago. Maybe he is over 5 feet tall, even maybe pushing 6 feet??

The second post was Brenden Adams, a native of Washington State in the US who stands at 7′ 4.5″ back in 2010 when he was reported by the news and even ended up on Oprah who introduced Brenden to a fellow giant Shaquille O’Neal. So far the doctors and genetics found out what was causing his abnormal height and growth and managed to turn on puberty to stop his growth and stabelize his body to some level of homeostatic equlibrium.

This post however is slightly difficult to make because the currently there seems to be 3 contenders to the title of the world’s tallest female teenager. So who are the 3 candidates?

1. Elisany Silva– A native of Brazil (born September 27, 1995) who stands at 6′ 9″ (or 2.06 m for the rest of the world) was 14 years old when the news picked up on her story in 2010. So she would be 16 now. Her height has stablized so it appears that she stopped growing. Her reason for her abnormal growth was because of gigantism. One medical expert said that, “She might have the symptoms of the disease, which may be the headache, vision problems, and death of some other glands, like the thyroid, adrenals and the ovaries….It might cause serious implications for her health and even death.'”

Daily Mail UK – Huffington Post – Youtube Video Of Elisany (In Spanish I think)

2. Marvadene Anderson – A native of Jamaica (born May 1, 1993)who stands at 6′ 11″ (or 2.10 m for the rest of the world). Her height appears to be natural and genetic since her father and sister is also very tall. She had held the title of world’s tallest female teenager for around 2-3 years but now she recently turned 19 and was planning on going to the University of Pittsburgh. Does that mean that she can no longer be classified as a teenager any more? She was featured on The Learning Channel for the documentary The World’s Tallest Children and also on The Oprah Winfrey Show

Wikipedia Article – The Daily Telegraph UK – Jamaica Observer

3. Malee Duangdee – A native from Thailand. She’s 19 years old and she’s 6′ 10″ (208.3 cm). Her condition is from a brain tumour that was diagnosed when she was nine. It caused a hormone imbalance and impaired her vision. I would guess it is another case of the pituitary gland being pushed so that it releases an excess of growth hormones. Apparently she has to get an injection every 3 months worth up to 2000 British Pounds to control her growth. The news that reported her was in 2011 and she was 19 so now she is 20 years old. Does that mean I can not list her as a potential candidate for the title of the world’s tallest female teenager?

Izismile – Metro UK – Daily Mail UK

NOTE: In a rather interesting twist of events, I just found a new contender to the title of the World’s Tallest Female Teenager. 

4. Jessica Pardoe – A native of the UK (Great Britain). She was 18 years old and stand 6′ 9″ (2.06 m). When she was reported and interview by the press and in the news, she was 18 years old and it was 2011. She would be 19 years old right now. She has a size 11 feet and a 38″ inside leg inseam. Her height and size is natural and comes from genetics. Mother is 6′ 0″ and father is 6′ 7″. Has a 1 year younger brother who is 6′ 10″.

Mirror UK – Daily Mail UK

So that is the 4 people I have currently found who can claim the title of the tallest female teenager in the world currently. Overall, they are all 6′ 9″ or taller. However 3 of the 4 are 18 years old or older so I am not sure whether they can be still called a teenager. Some are still in high school while others are starting college. I guess this is one of the posts where I leave the end question to the reader.

  “” Who in your opinion is the Tallest Female Teenager In The World?””

The teenage years are for most people a difficult time filled with problems that the average adult would like to forget. You are often worried about your acnes problems, your popularity in school, your social standing within your circle of friends, and how you look to the opposite sex. On tope of all that there is the torrent of hormones that is rushing through your body that makes it difficult to concentrate on your school work, and your responsibilities and obligations.

While most of us at that age is probably worrying about whether our 5 foot diminutive selves will ever get to that special 6 foot in height and often on our knees late at night praying to gain taller, Brenden Adams have a completely different set of problems. He is tall, and I mean REALLY tall. He was given the illustrious title of World’s Tallest Teenager in 2010 and now he is 19 at the time of the writing of this post.

I understand that the teenage years are only a few years between 13-17 and soon he probably will be over that age, and that title will go to someone else.  However, I wanted to talk about him because his case and the disorder that he suffers form that causes the enormous height is so unique and may actually help us understand more the way the human growth processes actually work.

I feel that I can’t do justice in explaining his condition well enough so I will just quote from other articles about his condition.

From the website The Tallest Man

“”He is considered the only person who has grown so fast and so big because of an altered chromosome 12.

Brenden Adams was born on September 20, 1995. He was born at Kittitas Valley Community Hospital and grew up in Ellensburg, Washington. His birthweight was an average 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measured at 19.5 inches long.
Because of the teen’s neverending growth, he was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, a bleeding disorder, a heart disorder, and athritis in his overgrown joints that started affecting him between the ages of two and eight. With of the fear of leukemia, doctors went in and performed a bone-marrow biopsy so that they could study his cells. To their suprise, the biopsy unveiled that the teen was suffering from a chromosomal disorder that causes him to grow at an accelerated speeds. It is said that only two percent of the population has this “balanced chromosomal inversion”. What happens is that some of the genetic material gets rearranged when the cells divide during the earliest stages of developing. The teen’s 12th chromosome was affected and altered which affects a person’s growth.

The World’s Tallest Teen, Brenden Adams is not only tall, but he physically and visually is different. His mother says that he constantly needs his team of doctors and visits them frequently to maintain his growth and other physical body changes. The teen has abnormally huge joints, fatty tumors, and extra teeth. “”

From the website World Record Academy

“”It was my 12th chromosome that broke in half and flipped over and reattached,” although doctors do not know what exactly caused his rapid growth after birth.

Normal-sized at birth, Brenden grew quickly – getting all his baby teeth by four months and growing as tall as an 8-year old by the time he was 4.

Still, he is extremely limited on the football field. “He can’t run, he can’t really jump,” his coach Kevin Wetzel told KXLY4. “There’s not a whole lot he can do. If you want to get him some action, you have to be creative.”

So Wetzel designed a play specifically for him. He goes out on a five-yard buttonhook play and the quarterback just floats the ball up to him. Even the next tallest player on the field can’t jump nearly as high as Brendan can reach.

In Brenden’s case, his 12th chromosomes don’t match. Experts don’t know why, but the middle of one of them broke off, flipped around and re-attached at the zygote stage of development, disrupting a critical gene that controls growth.

“This gene is functioning despite the regulation that it shouldn’t be,” said Dr. Gad Kletter, Brenden’s endocrinologist at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. “It’s over-functioning. He was predicted to be over eight foot tall.”

Kletter finally figured out how to stop Brenden Adam’s hyperactive growth gene – by inducing puberty. “We induced puberty,” explained Kletter about the weekly shots of testosterone, “to fuse the bones and stop the growth.”

And so far, the shots seem to be successful. Brenden’s growth has slowed down.

Brenden’s mom, Debbie Ezell, said he requires a team of doctors simply to stay on top of his ever-growing frame. He has oversized joints that restrict his movements, fatty tumors, and extra teeth – twelve of which were recently removed.

Amazingly, his dad, Willie Adams, said there was no hint of any of this when Brenden was born at 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 19 1/2 inches in length. His mom says they first started to notice something was different at his 2 month check-up. “They said, these measurements just aren’t right. He’s too long,” Ezell said. “And at four months, he had all of his teeth.”

Here is Brenden Standing with NBA all time great Shaquille O’Neal who is 7′ 1″ himself. If you have ever seen an NBA basketball game with Shaq, you might be able to get to imagine just how large they really are.

Wikipedia – World Record Academy – The Tallest Man –

Update 9/16/2014: It has come to my attention just this morning from the amount of increased traffic to this website that there has been an update written about Karan. It seems that the website for International Business Times, based in the UK, did a piece on Karan entitled “India: Karan Singh is World’s Tallest 5-Year-Old at 5ft 7in“. A few Indian news websites also got the news and wrote their own piece on the little boy. Currently, he is now 5 years old and is now at 5′ 7”.

Some Scientific Analysis On Karan Singh’s Final Projected Adult Height

First, let’s remember the case of Igor Vovkovinskiy. When Igor was around 7 years old, his mother moved from one of the Russian nations to come to the USA. Igor was already 6 feet tall. We can use Igor as a standard or reference basis. Igor now stands around 7′ 8.3″.

Karan was said to be 4′ 7″ at the age of 2.5 years old, but that was in 2010. Since it is now at the end of 2014, he should be actually closer to 6 years old, NOT 5 years old this year. Being 5′ 7″ at the age of almost 6 years old, suggests that he will probably end up around the height of Igor, and has the potential to be taller.

Medically, the way that the endocrinologists have traditionally done a calculation of a person’s height is to look at how tall a person is at 2 years old and then double that. I would guess that Karan was around 3′ 9″ – 4′ 0″ when he was 2. That means that Karan’s adult height would be around 7′ 6″- 8′ 0″, which agrees with the growth pattern projections as predicted by looking at Igor.

Some quick back of the envelope calculations

It is generally said that for the average healthy growing male, they grow on average about 2-2.5 inches per year, starting from the age of 6 until bone maturity. Since Karan is about 6, let’s assume that he can keep that type of rate of vertical growth for the next 10 years, until he is around 16 years old, which is usually when height growth in people naturally starts to taper off. This also takes into account the insane growth spurts seen around ages 11-14, when puberty sets in. So we did account for puberty into the calculation, and just averaged out the rates of vertical growth over a 10 year span. We are talking about a kid here who has an above average growth pattern. In the years between 2010 and 2014 he went from 4′ 7″ to 5′ 7″, which shows a 2.5 inches of growth per year. At his current height, he would be 67 inches. Multiplying 2.5 inches by 10 years, and adding it to the 67 inches. it turns out that it comes out to 92 inches, which converts to 7′ 8″ tall. (He might grow more after the age of 16, which will happen, but those extra inches are accounted for in the 2.5 inches multiplied by 10 years calculation.)

If we look at the extreme cases of human height, and how their growth pattern worked out, it seems that they keep on growing into their 20s. Yao Ming supposedly kept growing until he was 22-23. If a child develops gigantism, the excess GH can somehow increase the amount of time to grow, just like what happened to Tanya Angus and Sultan Kosen, who both ended up growing even when they were around 25-27. The stranger thing is that GH Therapy somehow has the exact opposite effect when researchers looked at it in the lab, and saw that bone maturity was being accelerated.

Since Karan is idiopathically tall in stature, he will probably keep growing until he is around 23-24. I personally predict that Karan, given his combination of genetics and lifestyle, will end up around 7’8″-7’11”. The real hindrance to his growth is the level of sanitation and healthcare in his country, being India. India has a history of sub-par sanitation conditions. The fact that the kid was given mostly sweets when he was a kid by his parents, instead of wholesome food high in protein foods and a lot of dairy means that Karan’s real growth potential has been stunted. If Karan was born and raised in a country like the Netherlands or Denmark, with a high consumption of dairy products and milk and a high quality of living standard, he probably would have shattered some serious height records and ended up around 8″1-8’3″ as an adult.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

To make things a little lighter today, I wanted to make a post about the tallest toddler in the world. Enter Karan Singh.

Back in 2010 a few articles was written about this boy wonder who was towering over other babies his age. At the time (Fall 2010) he was 2 and a half years old and stood a crazy 4 feet 5 inches. Of course one does not need to assume a pituitary gland condition isn this case. It appears that his height is all genetic. His mother is Shweatlana Singh, who has been billed as Asia’s tallest woman. However that fact comes into contention because on the website The Tallest Man she is listed and measured before at “only” 6’8″.  His father is 6ft 7in tall Sanjay Singh. Now that is a tall family.

Karan himself is nearly double the height of kids his own age and has the height of most kids at the age of 10. He was born at 13 lb and 24 inches. Compared these numbers to say Yao Ming’s numbers (12 lb and unknown height length) and one realizes that this kid is going to be HUGE. His mother already is stating that he will soon outgrow her. Being at his age and height, he appears to be constantly hungry always asking for food.

Here is a nice picture of his mother to the right . Very tall. What is a little concerning to me is whether this child is truly going to get to his true maximum height getting only the type of food and nutrition that is available in his native country. Shouldn’t a toddler like him who has the potential to become 8 feet tall naturally be given the best in nutrition, food, and medical care? I am a big basketball fan and would enjoy watching him play in the NBA in maybe 15 years. Whatever happens I would like to keep track of his growth progress over the years to see if his height potential is reached as his parents proclaimed.

From the video he does look extremely large.
Reference Link 1 – Reference Link 2 – Reference Link 3

So this little trick is not a real method or technique but more of a tip, a slight hack on the measuring process.

I found out about this trick while going through my obsessive height measuring days about 3 and a half years ago when I went through a 3-5 month period where the only thing I wanted to do or accomplish was to figure out way to add height. I would swim for 2 hours a day doing intense drills, eat a meal heavy in protein and fiber, go home and lie down, and sleep another 9 hours. That was my day and I would do stretching, and yoga, and everything to my body to make it stretch and elongate.

I even shaved my head to make sure the measurements were accurate. I was completely bald for over 3 months during that time. (I know, I should have gone out and gotten a girlfriend. I probably was driving myself crazy)

I bought a ruler that was exactly 6 foot in length, and made a light black horizontal line mark for where 6 foot was but after the edge of the ruler. That meant that If my head ever even touch the black mark in any way, my height had elipsed and reached the 6 foot mark.

A mark was made for 6′ 0″, also 5′ 11.5″ line , and then a 5′ 11″ line. I knew that if the tip of the middle of my head ever crossed that 6 foot black horizontal line mark, I was over 6 foot. I noted that every morning when I woke up, the tip of my head clearly passed that point. I was 23-24.

I remember when I was 20-21 and I had come back home from college for the Summer and was getting measured by my mother on height in the morning right after I woke up. She noted that I was around 5′ 11.75″ . She smiled and joked that I was almost to the 6 foot mark. I didn’t like that.

So fast forward 3 years and I am trying to get myself that extra 1/4th of an inch to prove to my mother that I was over 6 foot. I would sometimes stand beside that door where the marks were and see how close I could reach those marks by moving my head or tilting my head. And this was where I had noticed the trick.

For most people, the shape and form of the skull is an oval but not completely the perfect shape. Apparently for most people, the back of the head skulls is slightly longer than the front part. The front part of the skull is not bulged out because the frontal forehead has to slide and slant down to reach the occipital bulges which is where our eye brows are.

This is the Frontal View of the Skulls. As you can see, the human body and head is symmetrical in almost everyway. Symmetry is a huge property that this universe exhibits. It seems that for every great force or phenomenon in the world, there is an equal and opposite phenomena that counteracts it and balances the universe out.

From this position, we can turn and twist our head and the top or tip of the skulls does not go up or increase in any way since everything is symmetrical.

This is a side view of the human skull. What you will see is that from the side, the human skulls does not show symmetry from the left side and the ride side if we drive a line or transverse plane that cut the skulls in half in the middle from top to bottom. The back of the human head is far larger and bigger than than the front part

The trick is that we can exploit this assymetry when we are in the process of measuring height. 

If we use  a few mathematical tricks to find the area center of this picture (using integration of curves of areas from calculus) which is 2-D, we can then put a pin through that point on the picture. Now, what happns if we then turn or twist or tilt the picture?

If we turn  the picture on the right in a clockwise direction, the tip of the head does no increase but decrease. However, if we turn the picture in the counter clockwise direction, the tip of the top of the head does increase.

And that is the trick. Of course we have only a limited degree of free the head can actually go through, like 90 Degrees. However, in certain positions and degrees that the head tilts towards, the back of the head which bulges out will indeed show that the tip of the head increase slightly. I personally have found that one should tilt the head about 45-50 Degrees away from the imaginary axis drawn through the spine of the body.

Of course this trick is more for the type of person who is obsessive with measuring themselves. With the right tilt of the head in the downward position, the back side of the head will rise up and give one another 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch. I got about an extra 1/8th (or more) of an inch increase in height when I simply just tilted my head down at the right direction with the right Degrees in angle.

If you wanted to potentially use this technique to add even more than say 1/8th of an inch, to say 1/4th of an inch, I would strongly suggest that you practice stretching, tilting, and rotating your head and neck on a regular basis. It will not only help with your skull and neck flexibility thus improve blood circulation, you can also theoretically (but maybe not actually) increase the length of your neck for added height by both decompressing the cervical/ neck vertebrate and tilting your skull in the right angle to add that needed extra 1/8 th – 1/4th of an inch

Now that is not a lot but if one is right at the edge of reaching a new height threshold, the trick just might push them over. I once managed to pursuade my Organic Chemistry teacher to give me 2 extra points on a final exam after coming into his office hours when the class was over and I managed to improve my B- stnading to a full B.

So, sometimes the smallest extra lift and increase in effort is what it takes to give us the needed boost to get us to reach our goals. Hopefully this trick is something you ca take with you the next time someone wanted to measure you.

Note: This trick will not work with everyone because everyone’s skull is different. For some people, the back of their head does not bulge out alot. Also, be careful when doing the twisting and stretching of the head and neck. I am not responsible for any exercises you decide to do and/or any injuries you might suffer because of my advice.  

I have already stated once that I used to be crazy about basketball, (and volleyball…and swimming) I also love to talk about height and how to grow taller. So I wanted to throw in an article about basketball and height, which is a related subject.

The purpose of this post is to ask the reader this “At what time during the day is considered one’s true height?“- HOW are we really measuring our height? – Should we standard the process to have some consistency?

We all know that one’s height changes throughout the day because of our back vertebrate and the disks compress and make us shorter as time continues. When we wake up after a long night of sleep, we go back to the highest height.

Lets look at the height of Lebron James and the height of Kevin Durant, two of the premier NBA players, if not the best basketball players on the planet at this time (Summer, 2012).

Let’s take a look at picture #1.

On the NBA site and on the individual team’s websites, the heights of Lebron James on the Miami Heat website is listed at 6′ 8″ at 250 lb. If you want to see the Reference, click HERE.

On the NBA site and on the individual tema’s website, the height of Kevin Durant on the Oklahoma City Thunder website is listed at 6′ 9″ at 235 lb. If you want to see the Reference, click HERE.

What I don’t seem to understand is why there seems to be such a large height difference between the two players in that picture.  I would guess that the two players seemed to have a 3-4 inch height difference between them. Let’s take into consideration the angles, the body positions, and the footwear.

Lebron James is standing closer to the camera so in theory he should look bigger due to the Law of Perspective. He does not. Both Lebron and Kevin are leaning towards the center of the picture, to the woman in the middle. However, Lebron seems to be leaning back a little while Kevin is leaning in.  Overall, they are both facing the camera .

Kevin Durant has a natural posture of stooping, but he still looks far bigger in that picture with his posture problem.

From a measurement of the average human head/skull, the distance from the horizontal line from the middle of the eyes to the top of the skulls is usually between 4-5 inches in length. From that picture, it look like that the middle horizontal line from Kevin Durant’s eyes line directly lines up to the tip of Lebron’s head. So, does that mean the Kevin is 4-5 inches taller than Lebron? What the hell is going on?

Let’s now do a better analysis

Refer to Picture #2.

From this picture we note that again  the two players seem to have a height difference far more than just 1 inch. If you don’t remember how big 1 inch is, either go find a measuring stick or ruler in your house. If you can’t even find that, look at the first part (endpoint) of your thumbs. That is about the length of an inch (assuming you are an average sized US male).

The height difference looks slightly less this time, removing the angle and posture problems that was involved in the last picture. We can say that the height difference between the two is more like 3-4 inches.

So how does the listings on the websites have such a difference between what the pictures say?

Let’s go to what the old measurements for the two players were. If we go to the predraft measurements, we see something strange. For the Predraft Express Website, click HERE.

The official measurements of Lebron James on the Dredraft Express Website are:

Rank Pick: 1st in 2003 by Cavaliers (Born 12/30/1984 – was drafted at age 18.5 years old) – Went directly to NBA from high cchool

Height Without Shoes: 6′ 7.25″

Height With Shoes: 6′ 8″

Weight: 245 lb

Wingspan: 7′ 0.25″

Standing Reach: 8′ 10.25″

The official measurements of Kevin Durant on the Dredraft Express Website are:

Rank Pick: 2nd in 2007 draft by SuperSonics (Born 9/29/1988 – was drafted at age 18.75 years old) – Spent 1 year in college

Height Without Shoes: 6′ 9″

Height With Shoes: 6′ 10.25″

Weight: 215 lb

Wingspan: 7′ 4.5″

Standing Reach: 9′ 2″

No Step Vertical: 26″

Maximum Vertical: 33.5″

From these number, we could argue that Lebron was only 18.5 years old when drafted so he could have grown the extra 3 quarters of an inch to hit 6′ 8″ as he is always billed. That is completely reasonable because guys have shown to be able to continue to grow in height even up to age 21-22. Given that most of the NBA players have amazing height genes and often have dramatic crazy growth spurts, it is definitely reasonable that he reached that height. But then, shouldn’t Lebron then be only 1 inch shorter than Durant? It doesn’t look like it. If the height difference between the two was really 1.75 inches, then it might be acceptable to go with that difference to explain the pictures. However, we are going with the opposite assumption. Lebron is 6′ 8″ and Kevin is 6′ 9″. So if we go with this arguement, what the hell is going on then with the pictures? Could it be that Durant also grew another inch (or more) since he was only 18.75 when he was drafted? It is likely but how come his height has not been adjusted on the teams website?

So let’s bring up picture #3

This picture may be the greatest example at how varied the human body can be. It is also a spectacular example of just how big these NBA players are compared to normal human beings. Kobe Bryant was billed at 6′ 7″ when he first came into the league at age 17, but he had big hair back then. He is now listed at a reasonable height of 6′ 6″. Dwayne Wade is listed in the league at 6′ 4″ and his predraft measurements show that he is 6′ 3.75″ without his shoes on. Given the these facts, and then looking at the picture maybe it is time to recognize the fact that Lebron James is really 6′ 8″.

If not, then there is only two other possibilities.

1. One, he is listing his height as himself in shoes, which makes him 6′ 8″ exactly as he is billed.

2. He is listing himself using his height during the morning, when he wakes up after sleeping. His height would have increased from the vertebrate decompression.

For me, who is slightly over 6′ 0″ when I wake up and slightly more than 5′ 11.25″ late at night, I understand that one’s height can change. For a person like Lebron who has a bigger body, that means that the variation in his height is probably a lot larger than mine. His height could possibly range form 6′ 7.25″ up to 6′ 8.5″ through out the day. It is totally reasonable to say that Lebron is indeed 6′ 8″ for much of the day. Of course, all of this height speculation on Lebron is assuming that Kevin Durant has not grown over his predraft measurement listed height of 6′ 9″.

So, if this NBA player is listing his height at his maxium height of the day, should I do the same? Should I claim that my height is 6 foot even though it is only that measurement for a short time during the day?

So then, we go back to the original real question this post is supposed to ask, “At what time during the day is considered one’s true height?” – HOW are we measuring our height? – Should It be changed or altered to have some form of consistently?