Are injections useful for children to grow taller?

Children need to face many problems during their growth, such as the problem of height. Many people worry that their children will not grow tall. Generally speaking, there are many factors that cause a child's height. The child's height is largely related to genetic factors, but acquired nutrition and other factors are also very important. However, whether a child should get an injection for his height should be decided under the guidance of a doctor.

How to predict your child's adult height

Boy: Add 12 cm to the mother's height and keep the father's height unchanged. For example, if a boy's mother is 160 cm tall and his father is 188 cm tall, then his future height is likely to be between 172 cm and 188 cm.

Girls: Subtract 12 cm from the father's height, the mother's height remains unchanged. Using the above example, if it is a girl, her height is likely to be between 160cm and 175cm. Medical research shows that 80% of growth hormone is produced during sleep.

By age three, your child should typically be halfway to his or her eventual adult height.

How do children grow taller?

The growth of the human body from about 50 cm at birth to 180 cm is actually a process of continuous cell division and proliferation and nutrient metabolism.

The height of the human body is the result of the lengthening of bones. Bone cells change from one to two, two to four, and four to eight, continuously dividing and growing, thus bringing about bone growth. This process is medically known as cell proliferation. The rate at which the human body grows depends on the rate at which cells multiply. We all know that the human body grows at different rates in different periods. Children grow fastest before the age of 5, growing 20 cm per year. By the age of 5, the growth rate stabilizes at around 6 cm per year. During puberty, the growth rate accelerates to 10 cm per year, after which the increase basically stops. Why is this? Scientists have discovered that the rate of cell proliferation is closely related to growth factors. The more growth hormone the pituitary gland secretes, the faster the cells proliferate. The human body secretes different growth factors at different times, so it is not surprising that the growth rates are different.

What are the factors that affect a child’s height?

Key factor 1: Lack of core nutrition affects children's height

If you say that Chinese children are shorter than Japanese children, people probably won't believe it. However, statistics from researchers show that the average height of Chinese 7-year-old boys and girls are 0.6 cm and 0.5 cm shorter than their Japanese counterparts, respectively. Male and female teenagers aged 15 to 18 are 1 cm shorter than their Japanese counterparts, on average. 4 cm and 0.6 cm.

What causes this difference? Genetic genes account for only one-third of the factors that determine height, while acquired environmental conditions account for two-thirds. Among the acquired conditions, core nutrients such as lysine, zinc, and calcium are the most critical. According to the "Chinese Adult Physical Fitness Monitoring Report" of the General Administration of Sport of my country (formerly the State Sports Commission) in 1998, Chinese men over 40 years old are 1.2 cm taller than Japanese men of the same age on average, while men under 39 years old are 0.68 cm shorter than Japanese men of the same age. The height advantage of Chinese people over 40 years old is now a thing of the past. The results of the fourth national nutrition survey show that Chinese children’s intake of core nutrients such as lysine, zinc and calcium is seriously insufficient.

In 2004, the results of a nutrition survey released by the Ministry of Health showed that the average Chinese person only gets 41% of the daily calcium requirement from food, which is 59% short. The figure for children is even lower. A large-scale survey report on zinc deficiency in children in China showed that the zinc deficiency rate for infants under 1 year old is as high as 93.90%, 86.70% for those aged 1-2 years old, 72.90% for those aged 2-4 years old, and 34.60% for those aged 4-7 years old. Lysine is the first deficient amino acid. There are 22 kinds of amino acids in the human body, 8 of which cannot be synthesized by the human body and can only be obtained from food, becoming deficient amino acids. Among these 8 deficient amino acids, lysine has the lowest content in food, so it is the first deficient amino acid. It is urgent to supplement children with core nutrition!

Key Factor 2: Core Nutrition Participates in Children’s Growth

Lysine is a very effective promoter of growth factor secretion.

A large number of experiments at home and abroad have shown that sufficient lysine supplementation in the human body can stimulate the pituitary gland to increase the secretion of growth hormone. These studies also measured biological molecular indicators related to bone growth, such as ALP (bone alkaline phosphatase), IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), TGF-b (transforming growth factor), OC (osteocalin), NO (nitric oxide), etc. These active factors produced and secreted by bone cells were significantly increased under the action of lysine. This shows that lysine can activate bone cell proliferation and stimulate its functional activity.

Key Factor 3: Zinc is directly involved in DNA replication

Studies on the involvement of zinc in DNA replication have shown that in the absence of zinc, the DNA replication rate per unit time slows down significantly and the amount of DNA synthesis also decreases significantly, thereby slowing down or stagnating the cell division rate. The elucidation of this cellular and molecular mechanism of zinc finally revealed the secret of why zinc deficiency leads to growth and development stagnation.

The human body contains about 1,300 grams of calcium, 99% of which is found in bones and teeth. Therefore, calcium is not only the main functional component of bones and teeth, but also a storage depot of calcium in the human body. Bones can only be strong and firm if they are not biomineralized by calcium. It can be imagined that calcium-deficient bones will become soft and deformed, and the child’s growth will be out of the question.

Key factor 4: Parents’ childbearing age affects their children’s height

Research shows that a person's height is determined by many factors. For example, the number of children in a family and the order in which the children are born will affect their height.

Parents' education level and work also affect their children's height. For example, children born to parents who engage in heavy mental work have a higher average height than those born to parents who engage in manual labor. The urbanization process also indirectly affects children's height. For example, children in cities mature earlier and are physically better than children in rural areas. Improved nutritional environment is one of the important factors. In addition, the age of parents when they have a child will also affect the child's height.

Key factor 5: Staying up late will affect children’s height

In recent years, a large number of investigations and studies have confirmed that the amount of growth hormone secreted by short children is far less than that of normal children, and a considerable number of children do not get enough sleep at night. Since children secrete abundant growth hormone during sleep from childhood to pre-adolescence, the amount of growth hormone secreted from 9 pm to 9 am the next day is three times that of the 12 hours during the day. In particular, there is a secretion peak 70 minutes after falling asleep at 9 pm. In view of this, children should not stay up late.

Key Factor 6: Lack of maternal love affects children's height

Some experts have found that emotional disorders can also affect height.

If a child grows up in an environment lacking family warmth and does not receive sufficient maternal love, then his height will often be shorter than children of the same age. Foreign countries call this type of dwarfism emotionally blocked dwarfism, and some information calls it "love blocked syndrome."

The main cause of emotion-blocked short stature is that the functions of the hypothalamus and pituitary systems are inhibited by emotions, which in turn causes a decrease in the secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland. In addition to being short in stature, such children also have abnormal behaviors such as delayed intellectual development, drinking and eating more, talking to themselves, hyperactivity, and poor interpersonal relationships.

Children with emotional blockage generally have restless sleep and lack a sense of security. Sometimes they wake up from their dreams by shouting or crying, which affects their sleep quality. Children's growth hormone is only secreted vigorously during deep sleep and sound sleep. Therefore, for children who have restless sleep and are easily awakened, the secretion of growth hormone is likely to be greatly inhibited. This is also one of the important reasons why children do not grow tall.