Some parents ask if their daughters will stop growing since they are less than 11 years old when they get their periods. How much taller can she get if she wants to grow? This is not a question of “right and wrong” and it is difficult to explain in a few words. To answer the question of whether precocious puberty needs to be treated, we must first understand the laws of pubertal growth and maturation. Along with the development of secondary sex characteristics, the acceleration of height growth (height spurt) is an important feature of pubertal growth. The process of height gain generally occurs six months to a year after breast development in girls and around the time of voice change in boys, and takes about a year. The average annual growth rate for girls is 8 to 9 cm, and for boys it is 1 to 2 cm more than for girls. After this period, growth decelerates and returns to pre-pubertal speed, i.e., about 4 to 5 cm per year, and then decreases sharply after 1 year to only 1 to 2 cm per year until the epiphysis is completely closed and stops growing, i.e., reaching the annual height. Deceleration time, girls before and after menarche, boys after the change of voice. Adolescent growth has an important impact on adult height, the main factors are: 1, the beginning of youth development (meaning that girls begin to develop breasts, boys become loose scrotum, testicular enlargement) height: short at this time, regardless of the beginning of late development, early later are shorter. 2. The speed of sudden increase in height has individual differences and can range from 6.4 to 11 cm. Some children have almost no growth acceleration, this situation generally has a pathological basis, such as underlying chronic wasting disease, malnutrition or even endocrine abnormalities, should be promptly checked for causes to avoid the loss of this should be increased height. 3. The duration of growth spurt is only half a year for some children, while some can last as long as 2 years. 4.The years from the beginning of development to the complete fusion of the epiphysis bone growth is the basis of body growth, bone has a growth area called epiphysis; bone cells in this area actively proliferate during childhood to make the bone long. When the sex hormones secreted by the gonads (ovaries or testes) reach a certain high concentration in late adolescence, bone growth slows down and maturation accelerates until the epiphysis fuses with the diaphysis, i.e., the bone growth zone closes and growth stops, at which point no growth-promoting substance can make the bone grow again, which is why adults cannot grow taller. The balance between adolescent growth and maturation is a harmonious balance between adolescent growth and maturation, which allows the child to eventually develop into an adult with an adult body and fertility. It is not difficult to understand why the balance between the two is tilted toward the growth end of the spectrum, i.e., faster growth than maturity, if it is desirable for the benefit of height, so that adult height increases. As the speed of maturation is related to the number of years of sustainable growth, the slow progress of the epiphysis closing late, its adult height will be higher than the fast progress, combined with the aforementioned growth law is also a matter of course. Unfortunately, early adolescents often have a tendency to close their epiphyses prematurely, resulting in a short adult stature due to the “momentum” of maturation. Conversely, there are cases where youthful development is late or slow, but their growth rate is not as fast as desired, and their adult height is often not satisfactory. The role of bone age in determining adult height Bone age is an important and quantifiable indicator of the maturity of human development. Bone age reflects the percentage of body growth completed at a certain bone age until the final height of the body, so it can be used to predict adult height in children and adolescents. The height and bone age measured at the same time (judged by x-ray) can be calculated to estimate adult height, but it is not reliable for younger ages because of the many factors that influence it, but it is more reliable up to puberty. Therefore, if you ask how much you can still grow after menstruation, it is determined by the bone age at this time. For example, we recently saw two girls, one 9 months after menarche and her bone age was nearly 14 years old, while the other 21 months after menarche and her bone age was only a little over 13 years old. Obviously the latter has much more room to grow than the former. In addition, we can use the parents’ height to calculate the child’s genetic height and estimate the child’s growth potential in combination with the skeletal age. Precocious puberty is the onset of paraphimosis in girls before the age of 8 and in boys before the age of 9. The main consequence is short stature in adulthood, but early development and short stature cannot be equated, because the growth process also obeys the aforementioned rules. In general, the development starts before the age of 6 years or is close to 8 years, but the momentum of maturation is too strong and the adult height is easily impaired. Precocious puberty does not always require treatment, but when the goal is to improve adult height, the following cases need to be treated: 1. 2 years or more above the age of bone; 2. 2 years above the age of height; 3. 3. 3. 3. 4. 4. 4. 4. 4. 4. Specialists need to deal with each child differently, and those with excessive maturation momentum are the focus of timely treatment. At present, it is common to use drugs that inhibit gonadotropin secretion in order to suppress gonadal growth suspension, so that the sex hormones produced by the gonadotropin can be reduced to the pre-developmental level, thus slowing down and relieving the harm of accelerated bone age, thus prolonging the growth time and improving adult height. When the drug is discontinued, the gonadal inhibition is lifted, the gonads resume development, and the child completes his or her puberty in due time.