Feeling Too Tall or Too Short?

“Line up shortest to tallest!” the teacher calls out. “Not again,” some kids might groan — especially if they have to stand at one end or the other.

For most kids, height isn’t something they can change, so what do you do if you don’t like how tall or short you are? It might be girls feeling too tall and boys feeling too short. But some really tall boys might not like all that height and some shorter girls might get tired of all the jokes or of feeling like they’re staying little while their friends are growing up.

It’s in Your Genes

But the truth is that everyone is growing up — it’s just that they’re doing it at their own pace. In other words, your body grows on its own schedule. You can’t wish yourself taller or stretch yourself. Or if you’re already tall, you can’t do anything to hurry up your friends up so you’re not the tallest one.

For kids concerned about their height, there are two big questions:

1. When will I grow taller (or stop growing)?
2. How tall will I be?

Your genes, which you inherited from your parents, largely determine how tall you will end up being and how fast you’ll grow. Kids get taller more quickly during growth spurts, times when their bodies grow fast — as much as 4 inches or more in a year during puberty, for example!

When Does Height Happen?

Your biggest growth spurt happened when you were a baby. In that first year of life, you grew about 10 inches as you got bigger and stronger. Since then, you’ve probably seen your height increase a few inches a year. You might find out how much you’ve grown during your annual checkup at the doctor’s office or when your pants get too short. Uh, oh — we can see your ankles!

After babyhood, the next big growth spurt for kids comes during puberty, a time of many changes when boys and girls grow bigger and start to look more like adult men and women. But no one can tell you exactly when you’ll experience these changes.

Puberty starts at different ages for different kids and it is a process that takes a couple of years. So the getting taller part will happen at different ages, depending on the kid, and whether he or she is a boy or a girl.

In general, puberty starts:

• between ages 8 and 13 in girls
• between 9 and 14 in boys

During puberty, boys and girls will have a growth spurt and grow to their adult height. So that means girls who start puberty the latest will still be getting taller in their mid-teens. For boys, the latest to reach puberty will still be getting taller into their late teens. A few of these boys may grow taller even into their early 20s!

How Tall Will I Be?

You might want to know how tall you will be. Will you be nose to nose with your mom or dad someday? There’s no way to know for sure how tall a kid will be as an adult, but it’s easy to get a clue: Look at your parents and the other adult members of your family. How tall are they? Chances are you’ll be around the same height as your parents. If one parent is tall and one short, then you’re likely to end up somewhere in between.

But you could be taller or shorter, too. Boy, there are a lot of “buts” when it comes to height! That’s because your height is determined by your genes — the complicated code of instructions that you inherit from your parents. Genes tell your body how to grow and determine lots of things, including how tall you are.

But those genes don’t make you an exact copy of your mom or dad. Kids only get some of the genes from each of their parents, and parents don’t give the same bunch of their genes to each kid. If you have brothers and sisters, you know this is true. Brothers and sisters can look very different even though you have the same parents. Even identical twins can end up being different heights!

Height-Related Worries

Here are some things some short or tall kids might have to deal with:

You’re too short to ride the rides you want to ride at an amusement park.
This one is upsetting. You’re all ready to board the super-fast roller coaster and the ride operator says you’re too small. Sometimes, you will be allowed to ride with an adult, so try to have one handy.

You still have to use a booster seat in the car.
Though you haven’t used a car seat for a long time, older kids are supposed to use a booster seat until they are 4-feet-9-inches tall. The seats are meant to position the seat belt properly in case of a crash. If your friends don’t have to use one and you do, you might feel funny about it. On the plus side, sitting higher makes it easier to see and might help if you get carsick and need to keep looking out the window.

You’re a girl who’s taller than the boys.
This can make a girl feel awkward, especially when it comes time to be paired up, like at a school dance. Eventually, this evens out, but it takes a little while because many girls have their growth spurts before the boys do.

Someone teases you about being too tall or too short.
This kind of teasing is the worst. You can’t change your height, so what are you supposed to do? As with most teasing, try not to let it bother you. Tell a teacher, parent, or another adult if it’s bothering you and the person won’t stop.

What Can I Do Right Now?

If you are still worried about your height, talk to your parents and your doctor. Most kids don’t have a growth problem that needs help from a doctor, but it’s always OK to ask if you’re concerned.

So for most kids, it seems like there’s not much to do but wait to see how it all turns out. But you can do something right now: Eat healthy and take care of yourself. If you get the nutrition, sleep, and exercise you need, you’re likely to reach your maximum potential height. In other words, you’ll grow as tall as you were meant to grow.

And even though you may hear people say it, taking extra vitamins or supplements that you can buy in a store won’t help you get taller. Just stick to a healthy diet if you want to be the tallest you can be!

Kids who wish they weren’t so tall should still eat healthy and take care of themselves, of course. Eating less won’t make you end up any shorter unless you really starved yourself and made yourself sick.

As they get older, most kids learn to feel comfortable with their height, whether they turn out tall, short, or somewhere in between.

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Article by KidsHealth.org

5 Gifts to Improve Someone’s New Year – 2010 Gift Guide

1. Give the give of health

Gift a Single Recreational Cooking or Baking/Pastry Classes. There is a great starter 4-Week Healthy Cooking Series. For your gift all the service, ingredients and equipment to succeed in today’s restaurant kitchens and master techniques that can be used at home. Classes encompass current cooking trends and recipes so that meals will taste fantastic. This is a great way to learn to Cook and Bake, while making new friends and having fun!

2. Give the gift of confidence

There’s not much you can do about height but here’s a simple gift for under $20.00 that could help your friend step into the new year feeling like a brand new person.

3. Give the gift of wellness

Here are 3 ideas around Health and Wellness that extend on the idea of better eating:

I. Give a gift certificate for a day at the spa

II. Get a friend or family member a gym membership to help change their physical appearance and inner outlook on life

III. help a friend find a more balanced day with a gift certificate to Yoga Works
4. Give the gift of giving.

Kiva’s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.

5. Give the gift of organization.

File with style! These colorful, patterned Letter-Size Interior File Folders make organizing more fun! Made from premium, heavyweight coated card stock, they feature 1/3 cut tabs

Life & Style: How Tom Makes Himself Taller

From the pages of the August 30, 2010 edition of Life & Style, Tom Cruise is critic-ed on the night of the Knight and Day premier in London for looking as tall as Cameron Diaz. Reportedly, Jimmy Au’s tailor to Stars 5′ 8″ and under has dressed Tom in the past. The magazine also reports that Cruise uses Lift Kits shoe insoles to help boost his height, which can also be found at Jimmy Au’s. Check out pages 44 and 45 to get the full scoop.

Tom Cruise – Knight and Day – Short and Tall

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz at the premiere of Knight and Day in London. Cruise looked to be the height of Cameron Diaz. Tom is reported to be about 5′ 7″ tall and Cameron around 5′ 9″ tall plus she was wearing about 4 inch heels.
The two posed for photos together looking about the same height although Diaz is slouching slightly. Tom Cruise’s boots appear to have a heel on them, but his knees are at about the same height as Diaz’s. He may possibly be wearing shoe lifts. We can only speculate.

reported by the Huffington Post

Shoe lifts raise airport security alarm

By CBC News, cbc.ca, Updated: April 20, 2010 6:00 PM

A traveler who stuffed his shoes with batteries and metal plates in a bid to appear taller put security officials on high alert at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Tuesday.

Shortly before 10 a.m. ET, a man traveling to Chicago was stopped by security.

It was the unusual contents of his shoes that set off alarm bells — specifically a series of concealed metal plates and batteries.

The man was detained, taken to a nearby police station and questioned for five hours. The incident drew the interest of Peel Regional Police, the RCMP and INSET, Canada’s integrated national security enforcement team.

But instead of concealing bomb-making equipment, the man was simply trying to appear taller, police eventually determined.

“If anything, it was a crime of vanity,” CBC’s John Lancaster reported. “He used a series of batteries and plates to make himself appear taller. Essentially, they were homemade lifts.”

The man was released without charges at 3:30 p.m. ET.

He boarded an afternoon flight to Chicago to connect with a flight to China.

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Our question is whether this guy is truly short, doing a dry run for a terrorist organization or just stupid. Well we know he’s stupid; wonder whether he had height on his mind or malicious intent.

Short Dudes with Style and Confidence

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” –Thomas Jefferson

China’s Beauty Boom on Oprah.com

For most of the Western world, style in the late ’60s and early ’70s was defined by miniskirts, mod dresses and platform heels. But for China, the most populated country on the planet, these were decades devoid of style.

In 1966, China’s Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution and banned the pursuit of beauty. For 10 years, every man, woman and child was required to dress in masculine, military-style uniforms. Any display of femininity—like long hair, makeup or jewelry—was strictly forbidden. If a woman broke the rules, she faced severe punishment.

Now, there’s another revolution happening—a billion-dollar beauty boom. Lisa Ling travels 7,000 miles to Shanghai to see how China is redefining its standard of beauty.

Five years ago, Vogue magazine launched a Chinese edition. Angelica Cheung, the editor-in-chief, says it’s been a success since the first issue hit stands. “We were the first Vogue to actually make a profit in the first year,” she says.

Angelica says, in the past 10 years, women in this Communist country have started to enjoy all that the beauty industry has had to offer…and business is booming.

“Go into any store that sells cosmetics or skincare products throughout the country, and it will be packed,” Lisa says. “In fact, next to tourism, automobiles and real estate, beauty is the fourth-biggest industry in the biggest country in the world.”
Over the past decade, Lisa has traveled to China more than a dozen times, and in that time, she’s seen this beauty boom affect women’s lives dramatically. “In the early years, it was so obvious when you would see someone from the mainland because she just didn’t really have any style,” Lisa says. “It wasn’t important.”

Lisa says she used to draw crowds if she wore lipstick in China…but not anymore. “Now, when you go to China, it is so incredibly modern, and you’ll see some of the most stylish women you would see anywhere,” she says. “It’s changed remarkably in a very short period of time.”

The world will have to wait and see if this cultural shift is for better or for worse. “I think what’s happening in China is symbolic of what has happened all over the world,” Lisa says. “Is it a good thing when women are completely obsessed with enhancing their look and becoming more beautiful? It’s a hard one to say because we all sort of are. … But is it a little sad? It is, because it has changed so quickly. It’s, I think, always unfortunate to see large groups of people becoming sort of slaves to the whole machine, if you will.”
Ten years ago, cosmetic surgery was also banned in China, but today, it’s a multibillion-dollar industry.

Lisa took cameras inside Shanghai’s Ninth People’s Hospital, one of the largest in the nation, to meet men and women waiting to get nipped and tucked. In the plastic surgery waiting area, she meets a college student and a woman in her 60s. Both women are there for the same procedure—eyelid reshaping surgery.

“They both walked in, met their surgeon for the first time and, in just two hours, were on operating tables,” Lisa says.

Every year, thousands of people request this popular procedure, which reshapes the smaller Asian eyelid into a larger, more Western shape. Dr. Sun Baoshan, a Chinese plastic surgeon, says he’s seen a dramatic increase in patients over the past few years.

“Four years ago, we had only 30,000 surgeries per year here, but last year we had 40,000 cosmetic surgeries at this hospital alone,” Dr. Sun Baoshan says. “This year, it will be 50,000.”
Americans are no strangers to extreme plastic surgery, but while in Shanghai, Lisa learns about a radical new procedure that’s gaining popularity in China—leg lengthening.

In this part of the world, Lisa says height is a sign of status, and oftentimes, it’s a prerequisite for success. “Minimum height requirements are not unusual for many jobs, for admission to some colleges, even to land a date,” Lisa says.

As medical technology improves, more people are going under the knife to have this painful, controversial procedure, which can help patients grow anywhere from a few inches to a full foot.

At the Shanghai Height Increasing Specialized Institute, Lisa meets Dr. Bai Helong, a Chinese doctor who modernized the leg-lengthening procedure. He says his patients want to be taller for many reasons.

“China has 1.3 billion people, so getting a job is quite difficult,” Dr. Bai Helong says. “As a result, a short person not only experiences difficulty in getting a job, but also trouble in their marriage, love life, family, career and many other areas.”

Jessy, a 27-year-old who’s interested in undergoing the procedure, says she’s willing to take a year off work to grow a few inches. Currently, she’s 5’3”.

“I want to be 5’6” or 5’7”. Just being tall makes me feel much confidence,” she says. “I’m always jealous when I see tall girls walking around. I just want to be just like them.”
Dr. Bai’s patients go to great lengths to stand a few inches above their competition. “Pain is definitely a part of the procedure, which is both horrifying and miraculous,” Lisa says.

To lengthen the leg, holes are drilled into the leg bone and screws are inserted to stabilize an adjustable leg brace. Then, surgeons carefully saw the leg bone in half below the knee, and the braces slowly stretch the bones apart. Over time, Dr. Bai says new bone grows into the gap and increases the person’s height.

Lisa says most patients are out of commission for at least six months after the surgery, and others remain in seclusion from friends and family for a full year. At this time, the bulky braces are removed, and the new bone is hard enough to withstand normal activity.

Despite the pain and price—anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000—Lisa says patients think it’s worth the sacrifice. “If this is something that does make people feel better, far be it for us to intrude our opinions,” she says. “But it certainly is very extreme. I had never experienced anything quite like it.”

Printed from Oprah.com on Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Latest Shoe Lifts Review

The Latest Shoe Lifts Review

There is no mistaking the fact that our society has a certain respect for taller men and a certain disdain for shorter men. If you are a little on the shorter side, people look at you with a lack of respect, a little suspicion, and sometimes even a little pity. You are less likely to get a good job, less likely to make a lot of money, and certainly less likely to get the girl. So, if you have been reading any of the recent shoe lifts reviews online, then you know that you are probably missing out if you aren’t wearing some kind of shoe lifts.

A recent shoe lifts review discussed the difference between different kinds of lifts. If you don’t know what these are, they are inserts that go into your shoes and add just a little height to your stride. Call them “heighteners” as they did on Seinfeld, but they are a perfectly legitimate way to start feeling more confident and getting more respect.

You can wear your lifts in casual shoes, dress shoes, and even athletic shoes, and you can wear them all day long. They don’t hurt your stride or your feet, and in fact, many shoe lifts reviews will tell you that inserts such as these will actually help your posture and your overall health. They make you stand taller and straighter, with your head high and your shoulders back – just like mom always told you to stand!

By adding lifts to your shoes, you will see changes in yourself and changes in your life that you never imagined. It is nothing to be embarrassed about – in fact, you should be proud that you are taking charge of your own “little” problem and becoming the man that you always knew that you could be.

A Shoe Lift Insole Can Make You Appear Taller

A Shoe Lift Insole Can Make You Appear Taller

Height is an attribute that is associated with many things. Power, confidence, trust, and pride all come to mind when I think about tall people. This is a common thought that has been proven through sociological studies. If you were not given height naturally, you can make yourself appear to be taller by using shoe lift insole.

A shoe lift insole is a small piece of rubber, gel, neoprene that is placed into your shoe. It will lift your heel up so that you will appear to be taller. The amount of change is up to you. You can decide to gain a half an inch, or three inches. Whatever you decide, the shoe lift insole will be hidden by your shoe, so your height will appear to be natural.

It used to be that if you wanted to gain height you had to wear elevator shoes. These shoes worked by adding height to the bottom of the show. These elevator, or platform shoes are still in existence, but many people avoid them because they are obvious and bulky. Instead, you can use an insert, and get your height growth inside of your shoe.

When you are shopping for an insert you have to make sure of a couple of things. You need to make sure that it is the appropriate height, and that it gives the appropriate support. A model that extends the full length of the foot will typically give good support.

You can also find inserts that only cover the heel. These models are easily interchanged with any pair of shoes that you own, but they do not offer as much support.

How to Buy Height Increasing Insoles

How to Buy Height Increasing Insoles

Shoe lifts are becoming more and more popular. Why should the tall people be the only one to command the presence of a room? With inserts, you can get the confidence and pride that comes from height. If you want to buy height increasing insoles, here are a few things that you should look for.

First, you need to worry about comfort. It doesn’t matter how comfortable your shoes are, if you get uncomfortable inserts your feet will be in pain all day. If you have the chance to try your inserts make sure that you do. If you plan to buy height increasing insoles online, make sure that they have gel inserts. These will give you the best chance of getting comfortable inserts

Next you have to worry about the most important aspect, height. You can buy height increasing insoles that will add a half of an inch, to up to three inches to your height. You need to decide if you are looking for a big gain, or just to add an extra inch. You also have to be aware of the fact that if you buy large inserts, they may not work with low top shoes.

You can however, get adjustable inserts. These will allow you to add three inches when you are wearing boots, and two inches when you are wearing low tops. Adjustable insoles will be able to fit into a wider range of shoes.

You can also get half model insoles. These inserts only support the heel, but they are much more versatile then the full model design. Half models are good if you plan to wear them with many different shoes, on many different occasions. So no matter what the situation is, you can get the height that you deserve.