I’ve been reading over at Mark’s Daily Apple on and off for the past couple months, mostly for the success stories, but his recent discussion on the correlation of height and health caught my eye.
Another source found that Paleolithic humans living between 30,000 and 9,000 BC ran almost 5’10″, which is close to the average modern American male’s height.After agriculture was fully adopted, male height dropped to 161 cm, or 5’5.4″. Females went from 166.5 cm to 154.3 cm under the same parameters.
We know these changes to height also reflected worsened health, because with shortness came dental pathologies like caries, plaque, and decay, signs of arrested growth indicating instances of severe malnutrition, and skull abnormalities that stem from iron deficiency. People got shorter, sicker, and less healthy. Height wasn’t a cause of poor health, of course, but it was an indicator.
In my case, I was one of the tallest in my class (of kindergarteners) before I was diagnosed with Crohn’s. In one year, I went from standing in the top row for class photos to standing in the front as one of the shortest in my class. I’m now a decent 5’4″ (ish); taller than my mom, so at least I accomplished something! My GI is even surprised that I’m as tall as I am, considering the massive amounts of flaring that I went through my childhood and early teen years.
The height/health correlation that Mark brings up isn’t new. I’d heard of something like it a couple years ago, and it smacked of truth. Like I said before, I’m pretty short. My brother, however, who comes from the same genetic stock, is 6’6″. Given that we grew up in the same house, ate the same food, and got about the same level of exercise (he did sports, I did ballet), by all rights I should be taller. So I found a height estimator that pediatricians use to estimate the height of babies and toddlers. I don’t have the exact numbers, but by those calculations, I should have grown to about 5’8″.
If only there were a way to circumvent chronic disease, malnutrition and massive amounts of childhood Prednisone: I could have been a supermodel.