I look at my daughter and cross my fingers that she'll inherit her grandfather's gene for height. The poor kid has a one in four shot at being tall. So I can hope . . . or I can put her hormones.
The results of a twenty-year study of children diagnosed as being of short stature has determined growth hormone can boost their final height by as much as eight inches. Published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, the study followed one hundred fifty kids from the time they were diagnosed through two decades. They determined even kids with normal levels of growth hormone benefited from the treatment.
Before you think of this as a way to beat genetics, the study says the therapy has better success for children whose parents are of normal height than those with short parents. I guess my daughter's out of the running before we even get started.
Then again, I would be too worried about the risks to even consider it. As much as I abhor being short, I hear hormone therapy and I see big flashing warning lights. We're talking about human growth hormone here. Although legal for medicinal purposes, this is the stuff that has landed our beefed up baseball players in front of Congress and been linked to cancer.
Is being short really that bad?
Image: National Institutes of Health
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