How to Get Taller: What Can I Do to Become Taller? (for Teens)

Height is something that many care deeply about when it comes to aesthetics. Even though the obsession is more prevalent in men, women aren’t spared completely either. Sadly, there are numerous tricks and devices out there in the market that promise to make you tall, but in reality, none of them truly work enough to make a difference.

Remember, most of it depends on genetics

Even though several factors can decide how tall you’re going to end up, about 60-80% of it depends on your genes. The rest is dependent on environmental factors like your nutrition and activity level.

Generally, a normal person with no physical condition affecting their height will grow about 2 inches every year between the time they turn 1 year old and their puberty. But this is average and everyone grows at a different rate.

Girls tend to experience a growth spurt in their early teenage years and usually stop growing taller after they have gone through puberty. Know what this means? You likely can’t do much as an adult to increase your present height.

But, there are certain natural ways you can contribute to your maximum height potential during your adolescent years and if you maintain these habits, you can make sure to retain your height and promote overall well-being as an adult.

Natural ways to reach your height potential

Try these natural ways to get to your potential height quickly and effectively:

• Eat well-balanced meals - During your growth years, take a well-balanced diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, proteins and dairy products. You should also try and avoid foods with sugar, trans fat and saturated fats as much as possible. If you are experiencing a decrease in your height due to age or a medical condition, you should increase your calcium and vitamin D intake by incorporating foods like dairy products, tuna, egg yolks and fortified milk.
  

• Try supplements, but with caution - Calcium and vitamin supplements are great when prescribed by a doctor or a nutritionist to a child or an adult suffering from bone loss. But, if you are planning to try supplements in the market that promote abnormal height increases, it is best to stay away from those. After your growth plates fuse together, it is impossible for a supplement to make you taller, no matter its claims.

• Lead an active life - As kids or teens, staying active with strength-building exercises, yoga and aerobics can help push you towards your potential height faster. As an adult, exercising daily reduces the risk of osteoporosis, a disease that causes loss in your bone density, making you “shrink” in size. Further, yoga aligns and strengthens your muscles, helping greatly with your posture. If you have good posture, you can appear taller.

• Get adequate sleep - As an adolescent, it is very important to get adequate sleep to promote the production of the growth hormone HGH while resting. Even though sleeping less occasionally will not cause an issue, try to clock in adequate hours as much as possible.

• Practice good posture - It’s very important to maintain good posture as slumping or slouching can affect your actual height over time and contribute to other ailments like pain in the back or in the neck. Talk to your doctor to see if you need to incorporate a standing desk or a memory foam pillow to correct your posture. You can also try certain exercises designed to help you with good posture.
  
  

There are medical procedures to increase height

There is a surgical procedure available called distraction osteogenesis, which can make adults taller but it was originally invented as a treatment method to treat dwarfism or uneven legs. In it, the doctor breaks the bones of a person’s legs surgically and separates them at the ends.

The procedure is done inside an apparatus and each day, the apparatus is opened to grow the distance between the bones by about a millimeter. The maintained separation ensures that a callus is formed between the two parts of the bone, which eventually gets replaced by collagen and subsequently bone tissue.

The treatment, however, is only able to impart a couple of inches to your existing height and is extremely traumatic and painful. The surgery is high risk and the person essentially has to learn how to walk again.

The ‘how to get tall faster’ tricks that DON’T work

There are certain myths around exercises and activities that either make you grow in height or apparently impair your ability to grow tall. These are not true and include:

• Stretching activities like hanging, climbing, swimming or using an inversion table to increase height.
• Weight training does not impair your ability to grow tall, even when done in your adolescent years.
  
  

Learn to accept yourself

Insecurities can have a sneaky way of making a place in our lives, but it is important to remember that your stature doesn’t have to define you. You are so much more than how tall you are and realizing this and accepting yourself the way you are can prove to be much more beneficial.

Height is one of the attributes that you can do very little about and so it is best to love yourself the way you are and focus on areas that you can actually work on to get an improved life. Always remember that building a good character is much more important than being tall.