I’ve been wondering this for a pretty long time
In: Biology
>How is this possible…
It’s possible when things don’t work out like they “should”. Adults know “should” is just wishful thinking.
Mutations, bad diet, bad luck, poor leadership, resentful neighbors… The world is full of agents that don’t let things happen like you’ve hoped for.
Sunbeam radiation hits your DNA that controls growth plates, wrecks the gene that controls them. Sure, they should do their job. Good luck.
I seen a recent documentary on Dennis Rodman and he grew a foot all of a sudden after high school, not quite the same transformation as Adam Rainer, but still pretty significant.
Growth plates are made of cartilage. Some of the cells that make up these plates divide continuously while others are slowly “converted” into cells that develop into bone. This process is controlled by levels of growth hormone in your blood.
In most people, the levels of growth hormones that work on these cells gradually peter off, which means that your growth plate cells divide slower and slower, while still “becoming bone” at the same speed. Eventually, all your cartilage cells are now bone; there are none left to renew the pool, and so you can “no longer grow”.
Acromegaly is a disorder of the gland that produces growth hormone. It becomes less sensitive to signals that tell it to stop making growth hormone, so even after the normal “puberty age”, the body still is producing growth hormone → the cartilage in your growth plates is still self-renewing fast enough to keep up with bone formation → you essentially never stop growing.
Rainer’s dwarfism isn’t related to his acromegaly. If not for this condition, he would have lived out the rest of his life following a similar growth pattern to most other people with dwarfism.
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