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I am an adult, and I want to be taller. I know about many medicines which claim to treat stunted height. Is there any truth behind these?

Pills N Pillows
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kabir khan
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    Can you please clarify your question? You say you know it's due to genetics. Are you also asking for any medications which might be a cause of stunted growth? Might it not be easier to list the medications you've been exposed to so we can research them first? Did you grow up with consistently good nutrition as a child? How tall is the average adult male in your part of the world? The more we know, the better we can answer you. – anongoodnurse Jun 16 '15 at 06:50
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    @anongoodnurse the way I read the question, it is not about which medication exposure might have caused it in the past, but if there is a substance which might be used to produce a further growth in an adult. – rumtscho Jun 16 '15 at 14:45
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    @rumtscho - ah, that makes more sense, thank you! – anongoodnurse Jun 16 '15 at 17:09

2 Answers2

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Unfortunately, height is genetically based.

At 24 years old, it is unlikely that you will grow more, but the only way to know for sure is if you have an x ray done of the growth plates in your bones to see if they have disappeared. If they have, then there really is no natural way to increase height.

There are surgical procedures (See this article) where you can potentially add a few inches, but they are very costly (The procedure described in the article cost ~ $90,000 US dollars), and they are reported to be very painful, long (3+ months) and require extensive rehabilitation and physical therapy to be successful. According to the article, most places that do the procedure use it primarily for physical afflictions such as dwarfism, and do not recommend it for purely cosmetic reasons.

JohnP
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    "height is genetically based" -> There is certainly a genetic factor, but environment almost certainly plays a role as well. See for example this article. Another interesting is this one; I don't see how a 10cm height difference from 1955 to 2009 can be explained only by genetics. (In North-Korea, unfortunately, the opposite is the case; height has severely decreased since the '50's due to malnutrition). – Martin Tournoij Jun 17 '15 at 15:09
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    @Carpetsmoker - You are correct, but that is a societal or cohort trend. On an individual basis, your potential height is determined at birth (Genetics). This can be impacted by a disease state or malnutrition as you indicate, however. – JohnP Jun 17 '15 at 15:43
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    Better to say that genetics determines a person's maximum adult height. But even this is not 100% true. If a young person develops a tumor that produces human growth hormone, then s/he can grow well past their genetically determined maximum height. To the extent these tumors have a non-genetic cause, a person's maximum adult height is non-genetic. – Iron Pillow Jun 28 '15 at 19:08
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The only known non-surgical method of gaining height at this age is to go into space. Without the pull of earth's ground level gravity astronauts have been shown to gain height.

Astronauts in space can grow up to 3 percent taller during the time spent living in microgravity, NASA scientists say. That means that a 6-foot-tall (1.8 meters) person could gain as many as 2 inches (5 centimeters) while in orbit.

However, this height is lost once earth's full gravity is restored.

https://www.space.com/19116-astronauts-taller-space-spines.html

Graham Chiu
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    Additionally, there have been known cardiac complications upon returning to Earth's gravity after prolonged weightlessness, so even that avenue is not without peril. – JohnP Mar 07 '18 at 20:30