With the improvement of people’s living standards, children’s height has become more and more important to parents and the community. What are the factors that can affect the height of a child?
The first is the genetic factor. As the saying goes, you get beans and you get melons. The child’s height is influenced by the parents’ genes, generally the parents of high children’s height is also high, parents short children also grow short. However, it is not absolute. For example, if parents are short due to acquired factors (disease, trauma, malnutrition, etc.), their children may not be short. Therefore, if the parents are short, we should also trace the height of the child’s grandparents, grandparents and uncles, aunts, uncles, etc. to see if they are short. If these relatives are not short, the child must not be short.
Secondly, the intrauterine environment during the fetal period: the mother’s nutrition during pregnancy, living environment, emotions and diseases have an impact on the growth and development during the fetal period and after birth. Many studies at home and abroad have shown that many health problems in childhood and adulthood are related to the intrauterine environment during the fetal period. For example, intrauterine malnutrition not only causes children to be born short, but also increases the incidence of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dyslipidemia in childhood and adulthood.
The third is the nutritional status after birth. Adequate nutrition is the guarantee for children to grow taller, and malnutrition will definitely cause children to be short in height. But not the more nutrition supply, the better the quality of nutrition, the higher the child must grow. It is important to promote comprehensive and balanced nutrition, rather than pursuing high-grade and high-quality nutrition. To put it plainly, we should eat a variety of grains and cereals, fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and shrimp, all of which should be eaten in rotation. But can not eat more, eat fine, each kind of food, each meal can not eat too much. Not only that, you can’t pick high-class food, your favorite food to eat. Otherwise, eating too well, too full will cause excess energy, and cause obesity and precocious puberty, but will affect the height.
The fourth is activity. The child’s activity has a great impact on height. Experiments have proved that longitudinal movement (such as jumping rope, touching high, playing blue ball, etc.) can promote cartilage ossification of the long bone epiphysis, subperiosteal bone formation, so that the long bone growth, thickening, from the face to make a taller. If the child does not love activities, sitting indoors all day long playing computer, watching TV, is not conducive to the growth of the long bones, but also the spine stretch, not conducive to receive sunlight and lead to vitamin D deficiency, which is not conducive to height growth.
Fifth is the spirit and sleep. The child’s mental relaxation, happy and lively is conducive to the hypothalamus to secrete growth hormone releasing hormone, so that the body’s growth hormone increases, promoting height growth. On the contrary, if a child is depressed at night, it will affect the secretion of growth hormone and the normal functioning of the body systems, which will cause the child to be short. Likewise, regular and adequate sleep is beneficial to the secretion of growth hormone and the growth of children. Long-term sleep deprivation and late sleep will cause children to be short.
Sixth is disease. Many chronic diseases can affect your child’s height. For example, chronic or recurrent asthma causes systemic hypoxia, congenital heart disease reduces blood supply and oxygen supply to the body, chronic kidney dysfunction, diabetes, etc. can cause growth disorders and cause short height.
The seventh is family and social environment. Good living environment, abundant sunlight, fresh air and family harmony can promote children’s growth and development. On the contrary, social unrest, irregular life, environmental pollution and excessive social pressure are not conducive to the growth and development of children, resulting in short height.