As growing pains are a thing in adolescents, with bone, joint and muscle aches, why isn’t that pain also constantly present for infants and toddlers who are growing at a much faster rate with their bodies subject to greater developmental stresses?

Question

As growing pains are a thing in adolescents, with bone, joint and muscle aches, why isn’t that pain also constantly present for infants and toddlers who are growing at a much faster rate with their bodies subject to greater developmental stresses?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I grew 8 inches in less than a year and have never experienced growing pains, I always assumed they weren’t actually a thing

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Growing pains aren’t actually a proven thing, as others have mentioned.

But I would like to add that babies have a completely different pain sensation that you are probably familiar with. Babies nerves are super juvenile, and underdeveloped for the most part. A lot of their nerves don’t even have myelin sheaths yet (one of the reasons they can’t walk until they are 1-2). So it’s possible that babies don’t sense the “growing pains”, if they exist.

Answer 4

Babies grow in spurts, sometimes growing multiple centimeters in a day! Then they have periods of stasis (no significant growth). In these growing periods they are VERY fussy.

EDIT: “Dr. Lampl measured thirty babies daily and found that babies grew between 0.5 and 1.65cm in one day, between two to twenty-eight days of no growth. These growth spurts changed their sleeping patterns, inciting tantrums as well as insatiable hunger. ” [http://sites.nd.edu/emily-clarke/2019/12/06/chapter-8/](http://sites.nd.edu/emily-clarke/2019/12/06/chapter-8/)