Children's Day|"2023 Height Status Report" is newly released! Give your child a scientific guide to growing taller

Children's Day is coming, and parents who are busy celebrating the holiday for their children may also secretly make a wish at the same time: to eat well and grow up quickly.

Striving to make their children "jump" seems to have become the same mission of every household. However, genetics aside, what factors affect a child's growth taller? Are the acquired efforts that parents let their children make scientific and effective? Are domestic parents really clear about their children's height management?

On May 29, Life Times and imported calcium brand Diqiao officially released the "2023 Height Status Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which interprets the current situation of height, height cognition and nutritional supplements, and the impact of living habits on height, aiming to help domestic parents establish scientific height management cognition, and also provide scientific guidance for the healthy growth and development of Chinese children.

It is a small indicator and a "large number of rulers"

The average height of Chinese adults ranks among the highest in the world

What is the overall average height of Chinese over the past 20 years? This finding is particularly striking.

The report shows that the average height of Chinese adults has increased significantly in the past 20 years, with men increasing from 166.7cm to 173.8cm and women from 155.1cm to 161.0cm. The international medical journal The Lancet also pointed out in a 2020 study that in the 35 years from 1985 to 2019, the height increase of Chinese men ranked first in the world, and the increase in Chinese women was the third in the world [1].

With the improvement of social material living standards, domestic medical conditions, as well as the dietary structure and nutritional supplements of Chinese people have been greatly improved, and behind the growth of Chinese height, the country's concern and action are truly manifested.

Therefore, the growth of the next generation is more focused on the attention of many people. In order to protect the future of the country, in recent years, the government has successively issued a number of important documents such as the "Healthy China Strategy 2030" planning outline, the "China Child Development Program (2021-2030)", and the "Healthy Children Action Enhancement Plan (2021-2025)", calling on the whole society to attach importance to the healthy development of adolescents and children, providing a fertile soil for children to grow into talents and grow up in the sun.

Parents also regard the matter of their children's growth as a top priority, and put forward requirements for their children's ideal height value. In 2012, the Maternal and Child Health Care Center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a special survey on the problem of "parents' awareness of the height of preschool children": through a survey of 56 kindergarten parents in 9 cities in China, it was found that 85.46% of boys' parents wanted their children to be taller than 175cm, and 64.82% of parents hoped that their daughters could grow to more than 165cm [2].

From this point of view, Chinese parents do have a lot of obsession with their children's height. But what is the level of attention and awareness of Chinese parents about the matter of children growing taller? How many points can parents score for the height management questionnaire handed over?

The fact that Chinese children grow up

Parents generally have the phenomenon of "high attention, low cognition"

Focusing on the three major content directions of "living habits", "nutritional supplement habits" and "growth awareness", the report specifically conducts research on adolescents and children in 12 target countries, including China, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the United States.

According to the report, the proportion of Chinese parents who are very concerned about their children's height ranks in the top 2, and the overall attention is as high as 78%. At the same time, although Chinese parents pay more attention to calcium supplementation, there are still the following manifestations of cognitive deficiencies:

First, nearly 67% of children's average daily intake of dairy products is less than 250ml, which is generally less than that of European and American countries with height advantages.

According to the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese School-age Children (2022)" issued by the Chinese Nutrition Society, school-age children should consume at least 300ml of liquid milk or equivalent dairy products per day [3]. After all, drinking milk is the fastest and easiest way to supplement calcium, calcium is one of the important nutrients for bone growth and height development, only by ingesting sufficient amounts can bones grow stronger and the body stronger.

Second, more than 50 percent of children go to bed later than 10 a.m.

When people sleep, the amount of growth hormone secreted is 3 times that of waking [4]. From the perspective of the biological clock, the two peaks of the highest growth hormone secretion are generally from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. This means that children who fall asleep later than 10 o'clock will find it difficult to enter a deep sleep state at 11 o'clock, thereby missing the peak period of growth hormone secretion, and height growth will also be affected.

Third, more than 60% of adolescents spend less than 5 hours of exercise per week, below the WHO recommendation of 60 minutes of exercise per day for adolescents and children [5].

A large number of studies have confirmed that children with exercise habits are generally 2-3 cm taller than children who do not exercise [6]. Reasonable exercise can promote the secretion of growth hormone, but also stimulate bones, promote the reconstruction of their microstructure, and accelerate bone growth.

From these data, it is not difficult to see that Chinese parents may pay much more attention to the concept of their children's growth than to the scientific understanding of children's height. In other words, parents have a phenomenon of "high attention and low cognition" about height management. Not only that, some individual parents even pay too much attention to some long-height remedies, but they are concerned about chaos and increase anxiety. The direction parents should really exert their efforts is to return to science.

Many studies have pointed out that children's height growth is affected by genetics, nutrition, disease, region, sleep, exercise, environment and other factors [7]. Family is an important environmental factor affecting children's height growth, and parents can take appropriate intervention actions from nutrition, sleep, exercise and other aspects in the case of correctly judging the height growth status of children.

Scientific customized children's height management plan

We recommend that you start with these four

Helping parents master more scientific height management concepts and helping Chinese children achieve a more comprehensive and healthy growth is the direction of unremitting efforts of the whole society, and it is also inseparable from the long-term companionship of the domestic health industry.

Diqiao, an imported calcium brand co-publisher of the report, has always paid attention to the healthy growth of Chinese children, and has carried out a series of public welfare activities of "China Children's Height Promotion Program" in China for seven consecutive years, and provided professional, scientific and effective height management knowledge for Chinese parents through multi-channel expert science popularization, and has helped about 1.6 million children across the country to conduct height consultation and height management experience activities so far.

With scientific understanding, it is the first step to help children grow tall scientifically, and to achieve results, the whole family needs to work together to transform cognition into action and customize a scientific and reasonable height management plan for children.

"Life Times" and Diqiao specially invited Professor Jiang Jingxiong, an expert in children's height management, Dr. Ren Gang, author of "Children's Height Management", Li Shilian, deputy chief physician of the Department of Dietary Nutrition of Beijing Third Class A Hospital, Cai Bingyang, clinical nutrition physician of Beijing Third Class A Hospital, and other experts to interpret the report and put forward Diqiao's scientific management of height methods. Let's take parents to learn together.

01

Seize the golden period of growth

In a person's life, there are three "golden growth periods" of height: childhood, school age, and adolescence. Generally speaking, women reach 95% of their final height when their bone age is 13 years old; Men reach 95% of their final height at the age of 15 [8].

Therefore, parents should try to grasp these three stages, from nutrition, exercise, sleep and other aspects to help children develop healthy living habits and fully tap their children's growth potential.

02

Eat a balanced diet

The growth and development of bones is inseparable from calcium, phosphorus, zinc and other minerals, especially to ensure the intake of protein (animal protein), carbohydrates, vitamins.

It is recommended that babies over one year old drink 500 ml of milk every day, eat 1 egg, 1 tael of meat food every day, and properly supplement calcium [9].

03

Exercise habits should be developed

Exercise helps promote the development of bones, muscles, joints and ligaments, and regular exercise before puberty has a particularly significant effect on height growth.

Children aged 3-5 have many opportunities to be active throughout the day, and it is recommended to spend at least 60 minutes outdoors every day. Children aged 6-17 should do at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity to high-intensity physical activity every day, mainly aerobic exercise, such as jogging, cycling, aerobics, etc.

04

Getting enough sleep is important

Deep sleep at night is the peak period of growth hormone secretion. On the one hand, in terms of sleep duration, middle school students should sleep 8 hours a day, primary school students sleep 9 hours, kindergarten children sleep 10 hours, and the general sleep time in infancy should reach 16~18 hours. On the other hand, in terms of falling asleep, children should develop the habit of going to bed early, maintain sleep duration, and try to ensure that they fall asleep before 10 o'clock.

Parents should help cultivate children's good sleep habits and help them fall asleep on time, such as: not eating 2 hours before going to bed; Wear light, sweat-wicking cotton pajamas to sleep; Keep children away from electronics before bedtime; Let your child develop a regular routine.

To become a talent, you must first thrive, and doing a good job of height management for children is a compulsory course for every parent, and Di Qiao acts together, scientific management and smart growth! Of course, parents should also pay attention to the fact that while refusing to blindly increase height and cultivating scientific cognition, they must pay more attention to the "growth" of children's thoughts.

Bibliography:

【1】NCDRisC. (2020). Lancet 2020 height data of Chinese adolescents and children.

[2] WANG Fuman, JIN Xi, YANG Qi, JIANG Jingxiong, FENG Ning, HOU Qichun, & YAO Yi. (2015). Analysis of parents' cognition of height in preschool children. Maternal and Child Health Care in China(21),3685.

[3] Chinese Nutrition Society. (2022).Dietary Guidelines for School-Age Children in China (2022).

[4] Pan Hui. (2019). Kyowa Experts Say Growing Taller: How Sleep Affects Height (Length).78

【5】Bull FC, Al-Ansari SS, Biddle S, et al. World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour[J]. Br J Sports Med. 2020, 54(24): 1451-1462.

[6] Pan Hui. (2019). Concord experts say grow taller: the right way to exercise can grow quickly and strongly.145.

[7] WANG Fuman, JIN Xi, YANG Qi, JIANG Jingxiong, FENG Ning, HOU Qichun, & YAO Yi. (2015). Analysis of parents' cognition of height in preschool children. China Maternal and Child Health Care (21), 3687.

[8] Life Times. (2021). Global height changes in a century: the world's people have "grown short", and Chinese have been growing taller

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/F0LsKs1cQi9wAhplFdP57g

[9] JIANG Jingxiong. (2021). Grab the annual spring season and sneak it all away. Public Health (03).88.