In modern society, the pressure of competition is greater, parents want their children to be excellent in all aspects, and also in height. With the improvement of the standard of living, the average height of young people around us is gradually increasing, parents and the social concept of the child’s height expectations are also “high”, if it is a boy, I hope to grow as tall as Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, if it is a girl, I hope to have a tall body like a model. So there are always some parents feel that their children are a little short, so how tall is normal for a person to grow? The height geometry belongs to the category of short stature it?
What is short stature? Short stature refers to a comparison between children of the same race, sex and age in a similar living environment, if the height of some children is lower than the 3rd percentile of the normal population, that is to say, if 100 children of the same age and sex of different heights are lined up, the shortest 3 people belong to short stature.
The growth and development of people is determined by both genetic and environmental factors. Genetic factors account for 60-70% of the total. Genetics determines the possibility of growth and development, while environmental conditions determine the speed of growth and development and the degree of growth that can be achieved. Different races, families and individuals may have different effects on height, such as the delay of sexual maturity, nutritional needs and resistance to diseases.
In addition to genetic factors, there are other factors, including the following: (a) Maternal factors: The child’s height is caught from the mother’s womb. The mother’s nutrition and mood when pregnant, the presence of diseases such as hypertension, gestational toxemia, diabetes and infections can affect the health of the child. Some mothers drink alcohol, smoke, take drugs with strong side effects, take X-rays, and have uterine and placental abnormalities when they are pregnant, all of which are detrimental to the growth and development of the fetus.
(ii) Nutritional status: Proper nutrition allows the full potential of growth. Proper nutrition includes proper amount as well as proportion. Lack of nutrition will lead to dwarfism, but over-nutrition will cause obesity, which in turn will inhibit the secretion of growth hormone and also affect the height of the child.
(C) Disease factors: Acute diseases can affect the child’s weight, such as pneumonia, acute diarrhea and so on. But some chronic diseases, such as chronic hepatitis, nephritis, etc. on the height and weight of the impact may be greater.
(D) living environment: our living conditions, living habits, cultural upbringing, sports, health care level, etc., have a certain impact on growth. Some rural children are born at home with poor sanitary conditions, all of which may have an adverse effect on their later height. In addition, living conditions, sunlight, air, water, living habits, family economic situation, exercise, health care service levels, etc., also have a role in the child’s height.
(E) Endocrine factors: mainly include growth hormone, thyroid hormone and sex hormone. From infancy to pre-puberty depends on growth hormone and thyroid hormone. The growth rate accelerates again during puberty, and the growth of this period depends on the above two hormones, and is influenced by sex hormones.
(6) Chinese medicine reasons: Chinese medicine believes that human growth is related to the kidney and spleen. The growth of the human body depends on the filling and nourishment of the kidney essence, and the kidney is the origin of the congenital, and the growth of the bones of children with congenital kidney deficiency will appear to be short in stature; the spleen is the origin of the congenital, and is the source of biochemistry of human qi and blood. There is also a certain relationship with the liver, because the liver is the storage of blood, mastering the growth of the human tendons and bones, liver blood is sufficient, the tendons and bones grow well. If there is a lack of liver blood, the tendons and bones lose nutrition, which can also lead to slow growth and short stature.
There are many parents who look at their children’s growth curve, but when they ask how many centimeters their children can grow each year, they can’t answer anything, they just say “probably”, “maybe”, “I didn’t notice”, etc. “I haven’t noticed” and so on. Most of the answers seem to be as if the child is always so much shorter than other children, with other children as a reference, without a specific quantification. Let’s introduce the growth pattern of children.
There are two stages of rapid height growth in the normal human growth process, the so-called growth spurt: infancy and adolescent development. Parents can find that children grow particularly fast in the first 2 years of life, with newborns increasing in height by 25 cm in the first year of life and by about 12 cm in the second year. When a child enters puberty, he or she can gain an average of 7 to 10 centimeters per year, and this period lasts about three years, with a total increase of about 25 to 28 centimeters during this period. After the age of 3, the child’s height increases by an average of about 5 to 6 cm per year.
Doctors advise parents to keep a detailed record of their child’s growth. Growth rate is the most direct and simple way to determine if there is a growth disorder. If the growth rate is less than 4 cm per year for a child over the age of 3, think about the presence of a growth disorder.
To record your child’s growth, you need to help your child measure his or her height and weight regularly and make records. How about accurate height measurement. It is best to do a dedicated measurement, the same measurement can reduce the error of human factors. You can have your child lean against a wall, stand straight with his chest up, ask for three points to form a line, that is, the back of the child’s head, hips and heels are against the wall, use a book flat on the child’s head, measure the height. This way, if you measure every six months or a year for a few years, you can clearly see the growth pattern of your child and identify problems in time. Not keeping records is not conducive to problem tracking. In addition, parents can also record the child’s youthful development, such as when the girl’s menarche, the boy has not changed voice, there is no precocious sexual maturity phenomenon. This is because these physiological phenomena are sometimes closely related to the child’s growth.
Four What kind of effect does precocious puberty have on height With the improvement of living standards, the incidence of precocious puberty is on the rise. Although the current height of precocious children is not short, their bone age is already overdue, and a large amount of sex hormones are secreted in advance, causing the epiphysis to close early, resulting in premature stoppage of height growth and eventually short height in general. Parents must not give their children tonic products at will, and the few children with malnutrition and delayed growth must be taken under the guidance of a doctor. The first menstruation is an important sign of youthful development in girls. The fastest growth in height for girls is about a year before menarche, and then the growth rate gradually decreases. After menarche, the growth rate also decreases significantly due to the gradual healing of the epiphysis caused by the increase in hormone levels, but the average height can still increase by 5 to 6 cm.
The secretion of growth hormone is related to many factors, and reasonable movement and sufficient sleep can stimulate the secretion of growth hormone. Therefore, parents should pay attention to the arrangement of children’s work and rest time outside of the intense study, to ensure that they have time for physical exercise, and to pay attention to the quality of their sleep.
If a child is found to be short in stature, he or she needs to be seen by a doctor in the endocrinology department of a regular hospital in time, and the earlier the treatment, the better the results may be. The current accepted method of treating dwarfism is standardized human growth hormone injection therapy. For some children with growth hormone deficiency, the effect of growth hormone injection is obvious, and some affected children even grow 15 cm taller in 1 year. Growth hormone deficiency is a deficiency of growth hormone secreted by the pituitary gland due to various reasons. Growth hormone is a hormone that promotes body growth. The main physiological role of growth hormone is to promote the synthesis of various tissues in the body, especially protein, and stimulate the growth of cartilage in bone joints and epiphysis, thus making the body taller. Growth hormone and sex hormone may affect height, but these hormones only play the role of “driver”, and they must have certain conditions, such as adequate nutrition, exercise and sleep, in order to give full play to the hormones. The blind use of hormones to promote height is absolutely undesirable, and you must go to the hospital to find out the cause.
According to the characteristics of children with short stature, we can identify kidney deficiency, spleen deficiency, liver blood deficiency and heart blood deficiency.
If the child is smaller than other children at the time of appearance, it is mostly due to congenital deficiency, that is, kidney deficiency, and in this case the kidney should be tonified, and Liu Wei Di Huang Wan can be taken. This kind of slow growth is mostly related to spleen deficiency, liver and blood deficiency, attention should be paid to regulate the spleen and stomach, usually can take Ginseng and Baizhu San.