If bodily processes are so strongly governed by hormones that taking cross-sex hormones can trigger essentially a second puberty in post-pubescent people, and people like Andre the giant have their size thanks to an overactive pituitary gland which is what produces growth hormones, why can’t we just inject people with the right hormones to make them taller? Seems like there would be a pretty big market for that.
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Adults have fused growth plates. IGF3 will cause you to gain weight. If you exercise, you’ll gain muscle like crazy. IGF mixed with other steroids is what all those monster body builders are taking.
It just can’t make you taller. It will make your facial bones grow because the growth plates don’t fuse fully.
Children have growth plates in each long bone. A growth plate is an area of soft bone at each end of the long bones that allows the bones to grow longer. The growth plates fuse together by the time a child is 14 to 18 years old. That fusion prevents further length from being added to the bone. So injecting hormones to adults who already have their growth plates fused would do nothing to their height.
>why can’t we just inject people with the right hormones to make them taller?
Part of the growth process involves our bodies *stopping* growing, and part of that includes our bones’ *growth plates* turning into bone.
People like Andre, their growth plates simply didn’t turn to bone for longer than normal — among other changes.
Injecting adults with growth hormone won’t undue those changes, and it will hurt way more than it could ever help.
You can to children/teens in some cases. My buddy had it injected into his legs at like 15 because he was very short. Now he is taller than me. Pretty crazy.
If you give a kid increased growth hormone, they grow taller and longer (see individuals with gigantism).
If you give adults growth hormone they dont get taller because the area of the bones that grow (growth plates) seal up, normally in your mid to late teens, otherwise we’d all keep growing, as we dont go down to zero growth hormone. This condition is called acromegaly, and you do see some growth of certain bones, namely the face and the hands.
Being to tall is a pain. Beds to short, seats ceilings and doors to low, planes and cars to tight.
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