The best online site for a choice of stores selling tall clothing and large size footwear.
Most people think of height as a personal trait that has little to do with their health, much less the society around them. But when scientists collect height data for entire populations, intriguing patterns appear. According to a new study, American men were the third-
The study, published last week in eLife, was led by researchers at Imperial College London in collaboration with the World Health Organization and almost 800 researchers around the globe. They combined data from 1,472 sources such as epidemiological studies and population health surveys, which included height measurements for 18.6 million adults born between 1896 and 1996.
The team produced average-
Height is still increasing in some Latin American and southern European countries but it has plateaued in many other places in the last few decades. North America was the first to stop growing, around 30 or 40 years ago, and the U.S. has experienced the smallest increase of any high-
Height is one of the most heritable human traits, but the researchers say environment also plays a role. “Genetics doesn't change so quickly, so if you see a change over 100 years, it has to be environmental,” says the new study’s co-
Put simply, the idea is that genetics determines a range and environment determines where people end up within it. “Each of us has a genetic potential height, so if the nutrients you get in early life aren’t enough, you don't reach that potential,” Di Cesare explains. In turn, height has been associated with changes in risk of certain diseases. Taller people have a lower risk of heart disease but greater one for some cancers including colorectal, breast and ovarian. On balance though, taller is better. “There's good evidence that taller people, on average, live longer, and a big part of that is due to lowered risk of cardiovascular diseases,” senior author Majid Ezzati told reporters during the EuroScience Open Forum conference in Manchester, U.K., where the findings were announced.
The team compared changes in height with changes in risk of dying between ages 50 to 70, finding that countries that had grown most tended to have declined most in risk of premature death. “In the case of men, countries that gained 10 to 12 centimeters in height had about [a] 20 to 30 percent decline in risk of premature dying,” Ezzati said. “Slightly smaller for women, about 10 to 20 percent, but those are big changes.”
Another factor that could affect average height is immigration, but not all countries with high immigration show the same pattern as the U.S. “There are other countries where immigration is high, like Canada, Australia or the Netherlands, and Netherlands ranked first” in height, Di Cesare says.More tellingly, the findings are consistent with earlier studies that explicitly accounted for immigration. Economic historian John Komlos, a visiting professor at Duke University, published a study in 2007 that excluded immigrants. It also found that the U.S. plateaued earlier—and shorter—than many European countries. “The west European welfare state creates the best conditions for optimal growth of the human organism,” says Komlos, who was not involved in the Imperial College–WHO study. “That's a major finding of this research.”
Komlos has also studied obesity—and has found that not only are Americans falling short, they are also getting wider. Given there is no shortage of access to food in the U.S., studies like these suggest that, in high-
The new study contributes data on many more countries, and findings include the fact that people in south Asian countries (such as India and Bangladesh) have stopped growing at shorter heights than east Asian countries (Japan and South Korea) whereas parts of sub-
The authors assert that the study shows the potential of using height as an indicator of human development. It is easily measured and provides a link between early-