With the improvement of living standard and nutrition, the height level of Chinese people is developing with a trend of 1 cm height increase every 10 years, however, there are still some children who encounter height problems. Li Hui, director of the Growth and Development Research Unit of the Capital Institute of Pediatrics, said, “Genetics determines an individual’s potential for height development, and acquired factors influence whether the potential can be fully realized; what we need to do is to seize the opportunity to eliminate the unfavorable factors affecting height growth, so that the potential can be fully realized without leaving regrets.” There are many misconceptions about children’s height that need to be corrected by parents in a timely manner.
Developmental process should always focus on height.
Many parents who bring their children to the clinic can only shake their heads when asked how their children grow and how many centimeters they have grown in a year. Growth is an accumulative process, parents can only be clear about their child’s growth and development pattern, and always pay attention to height changes throughout the development process of their child, so that problems can be detected early and solved in time.
In the first year of life, the child’s height will generally grow by 25 cm. In the second year, it will grow 10 to 12 cm. After two years of age until puberty, the growth will be 5 to 8 centimeters per year. Adolescence will be a growth spurt for children, and annual growth may reach 8 to 10 cm for boys and 7 to 9 cm for girls, after which the growth of children’s height will gradually slow down.
Parents should monitor their children’s height changes regularly, at least once a year for school-age children, to compare normal height levels. At the beginning of puberty (8 to 10 years old for girls and 10 to 12 years old for boys), it is best to do a comprehensive growth check to evaluate the child’s growth and development so that problems can be detected early.
Short stature can not be “wait and see”.
There are many factors that can cause a child to be short in stature, and physical developmental delay is only one of them. It is not right for parents to think that their children are developing late and take a wait-and-see approach, which will often make them miss the best treatment period and eventually lead to no hope for their children to increase their height.
If your child is short in stature, you should first rule out possible disease factors. Endocrine diseases, chronic diseases (such as hepatitis, asthma, heart disease), hereditary metabolic diseases, chromosomal abnormalities, etc. can affect a child’s height growth, whether the child is a late grower, which requires a doctor’s examination to reach a judgment. Parents should take their children to a regular hospital in time if they find problems with their children’s growth.
High protein foods can also affect height.
In the past, children did not grow because of inadequate nutrition, but now many children are over-nourished and develop earlier, and also make the height growth stop earlier.
Overnutrition makes children sexually precocious, so that puberty arrives early and the sexual development period is advanced. Such children may be taller than their peers at a certain age, or at least not short, but premature promotion of bone development leads to early closure of the epiphysis before the growth period, and they will eventually become short. Children who show early development of sexual characteristics, or children who suddenly grow very fast, should see a doctor promptly. Parents should pay attention to the child’s nutritional balance, do not just give children to eat nutrition and health products.
Excessive stress can also affect growth.
Children need good sleep habits, late sleep and lack of sleep can affect the child’s height. Human growth depends on the growth hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland, and growth hormone is mainly secreted during sleep. Therefore, a child’s sleep habits should not be taken lightly, no matter what the reason is, help your child find a good way to study and try not to let your child stay up late.
Children also need adequate exercise. Growth hormone is also secreted more after exercise, which can increase metabolism and promote bone growth, and can also enhance the body’s ability to prevent diseases and reduce them. If the child is mentally stressed for a long time, it will also affect the growth of the child, so parents should help the child to eliminate tension and let the child grow in a happy mood.
In case of dwarfism, it is important to take advantage of the timing of diagnosis and treatment.
After school starts, classes are filled with seating rows and standing lines, especially for new students. However, if your child is still sitting in the first three rows of the class because he or she is short after a summer vacation, and the growth rate is less than 4 cm per year, and the gap between your child and his or her peers is gradually widening, you should pay more attention to it and take your child to a pediatric endocrinologist for a consultation as soon as possible. Take your child to a pediatric endocrinologist for an early consultation.
In clinical medicine, the standard deviation method and height percentile method are used to determine short stature: the child’s height is lower than the 3rd percentile or two standard deviations of the normal height standard for children of the same age, sex, region and ethnicity (i.e. more than 5-10 cm lower than the average height). 3.77%.
Dwarfism is a disease.
Parents of children with dwarfism often prefer to take health supplements to “help them grow”, but the huge financial investment has led to the painful lesson that “health supplements are ineffective in increasing height!” The root of dwarfism is a disease, and the right way is to identify the cause and treat the cause. According to a survey, 70% of parents in China do not know that their children’s short stature may be caused by diseases.
There are various causes of dwarfism, including endocrine diseases, familial dwarfism, somatic growth and developmental delay, chromosomal abnormalities, etc. Among them, some children suffer from growth hormone deficiency, which is a growth disorder and short stature caused by insufficient secretion of growth hormone, and used to be called “pituitary dwarfism”. For these children, growth hormone injections are an effective treatment.
Explanation of growth hormone.
When they learned of the diagnosis, many parents immediately gave up on the treatment, “Growth hormone is a ‘hormone’, how can children use it? There will be many adverse reactions!” What people usually call “hormones” generally refers to glucocorticoids and sex hormones, and parents are concerned about using these hormones for their children, although they are also called “hormones”, growth hormone is not among them.
Growth hormone is a protein hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland and consists of 191 amino acids. It is essential for the regulation of normal growth from birth to adulthood, and is the only hormone that causes linear bone growth. Growth hormone used as a drug is synthesized using recombinant genetic techniques and has the exact same chemical structure as the growth hormone produced by the human pituitary gland. Glucocorticoid is a steroid hormone secreted by the adrenal cortex. Sex hormones are several steroid hormones secreted by the gonads and adrenal cortex. Whether in terms of source, chemical structure, or physiological and pharmacological effects, growth hormones are completely different from glucocorticoids and sex hormones. Proper injection of growth hormone and timely follow-up will not produce glucocorticoid or sex hormone-like effects and side effects.
Seize the opportunity to treat dwarfism.
After the doubts about drugs are relieved, the next step is how to grasp the best time to treat dwarfism. At the age of 4, growth hormone and thyroxine are basically formed in the human body, and diet and sleep habits are gradually formed, so we can see whether there are defects in the figure, and these conditions play a decisive role in future growth and development.
It is recommended that parents measure their children’s height every 2 months, and if the growth rate is too slow, it is time to see a doctor. Domestic treatment for dwarfism is received relatively late, with 70% of the age range being between 11 and 16 years old. In contrast, the average age of treatment abroad is 6 years. The older age of initiation of treatment contributes less to adult height, and early treatment can maximize the adult height of the child. Therefore, 4-6 years of age is the ideal age for the diagnosis and treatment of short stature caused by growth hormone deficiency.