Eli5: Why can’t we just inject adults with growth hormones to make them taller?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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