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Text: Uncle Luo Ying
Edited by Uncle Luo Ying
In modern society, "big tall people" are a relatively popular group.
People feel that being tall is a good thing, but also an innate advantage.
However, after half a century of studying the mysteries of height, the Anschutz School of Medicine at the University of Colorado finally revealed a startling discovery.
Studies have shown that the higher the height, the greater the risk of death.
What's going on here?
At first, the University of Colorado didn't know about the various relationships between height and longevity.
Academics in the medical profession tracked 323793 veterans, with an average height of 176cm, for analysis as participation.
随后，他们对研究对象的身体状况进行总结，并且发表一篇题为《A multi-population phenome-wide association study of genetically-predicted height in the Million Veteran Program》的医学论文。
Physicians involved in these experimental programs believe that height is associated with a number of clinical characteristics.
The data of a large number of experimental subjects also tells us that these phenomena may not be a coincidence, but that there is some kind of truth.
The higher the height, the higher the incidence of atrial fibrillation and varicose veins.
At the same time, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other diseases are also easier to find.
The paper was published in the journal PLOS Genetics in June last year and has since caused a lot of sensation.
After all, this is contrary to the basic common sense of the past few decades, the taller the healthier, so that many medical students do not believe it and have begun to imitate the experiments of the University of Colorado to verify the scientific truth.
However, these verifications take a long time, and it can take more than ten years at the earliest to produce results.
While people were getting into the discussion, the University of Colorado medical major was once again one step ahead and began to dig deeper.
It is worth mentioning that the subjects who participated in this study were basically military personnel who were in good health.
Their heights are uneven, which can restore the essential relationship between height and human life expectancy to the greatest extent.
The name of the experiment is also grandiose, "Million Veteran Program", which translates to Million Veterans Program.
At first, it was indeed intended that millions of soldiers should participate in the experiment, however, due to the obvious shortage of manpower.
After thinking about it, the students who studied this topic did not launch the collection of such a large number of experimental subjects, but reduced the scale to 323793 people.
For them, this is already an extremely large amount of work.
To ensure the rigor of the experiment, medical scientists at the University of Colorado collected people from different countries.
And the food that these people who were collected ate every day was different.
In such a decades-long experiment, it is difficult to have a way to precisely control the variables, and advanced algorithms can only be used to try to make the tracked experimental subjects converge to the same level under certain conditions.
After layers of screening, a total of 63,989 non-Hispanic blacks were collected from 235398 Hispanic whites.
As you can see from the table below, the study did not include it in PheWAS.
What's even more incredible is that the research team compared a total of 3,290 genes known to affect height.
This genetic information alone was enough to break down the student in charge of the record.
But this is what scientific research looks like, and it must be supported by a large number of experimental data in order to prove the truth behind it.
In addition, it has been associated with more than 1000 clinical features of patients of different heights.
It takes a lot of analysis before scientists dare to determine the differences between individuals.
The following graph is a comparison of the number of correlations and effect sizes between white and black height, and the experimental data is very detailed.
With these statistics done, the University of Colorado moved on to the next phase of studying the distribution of coronary heart disease at different heights.
We all know that coronary heart disease usually has many causes.
In order to understand whether these phenomena are related to height, researchers spent a long time ruling out genetics, complications or other causes, and these efforts made the final experimental results closer to the real situation.
During this period, Johns Hopkins University in the United States also did some research on intestinal cases.
Surprising to find that tall people are more likely to develop conditions such as colorectal cancer or colon polyps compared to smaller people.
Specific statistics show that for every 10 centimeters of height, the risk of developing rectal cancer increases by 14 percent.
At the same time, Johns Hopkins University also has statistics on the risk of adenoma.
It was concluded that a 10 cm increase in height was associated with a six-percent increase in the risk of developing an adenoma.
In other words, the taller the person, the greater the risk of disease.
On this basis, some people have conducted in-depth research on the relationship between life expectancy and height.
The results are basically the same as expected, and the average life expectancy of tall people is lower than that of low people.
It seems that the higher the height, the shorter the lifespan, and it's really not a joke, there is such an unbelievable truth behind it.
According to data released by the National Center for Health Research, the average height of men in the United States is 177.8 centimeters, and that of women is 169.92 centimeters.
Seeing the experimental data, many people find it difficult to accept such a reality, especially in the United States, where the average height is relatively high.
Combined with the actual situation, experts have made some explanations why the taller you are, the more likely you are to get sick.
One of the main factors is that a tall person has more cells, and we all know that all living things in nature are made up of cells.
Whether it is heavy or tall, it needs the support of cells.
However, diseases often originate from the cells themselves, and in the case of cancer, the essence is cell differentiation or individual variation.
From a probabilistic point of view, it is easy to explain that the more cells in a person's body, the greater the chance of developing lesions and cancer.
This phenomenon is manifested in the human body, which is an increase in the incidence rate.
In this way, the strange correlation between height and longevity is a normal phenomenon, in line with the basic common sense of science and mathematics.
But this is just a hypothesis, after all, people have only done large-scale experiments based on real conditions, and there is no direct evidence that the higher the height, the shorter the lifespan.
In order to understand the nature of tall people, people set up related projects as early as the last century, mainly to study the technology of heightening.
At the time, tall people were considered more attractive and appeared more confident.
In fact, after the end of the Second World War, countries around the world basically stayed away from strife and pursued social development wholeheartedly.
As living standards have improved, people around the world have been lifted out of poverty.
The intake of nutrients has created a lot of tall people.
In fact, an individual's height is also affected by genes.
Usually if a person's parents are tall, then their offspring will also inherit it.
Modern people are more concerned about food safety, especially during childhood and adolescence.
Studies have shown that adequate protein, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients can promote the development of bones and all parts of the body.
But in the course of human evolution, there have always been some special individuals.
Their pituitary gland releases lower than normal doses of growth hormone, resulting in slow bone development.
This condition is known in the medical community as dwarfism, as opposed to gigantism.
Due to the excessive release of growth hormone by the pituitary gland, the bones grow rapidly and the organs become enormous.
Robert Wadlow is the tallest person in the world on record.
He was about 8 feet 11.1 inches (272 cm) tall and was born on February 22, 1918, in Illinois, USA.
Unfortunately, Robert Waldlow's life was short.
He died on July 15, 1940, at the age of 22, from a pressure sore on his foot that caused hydrocephalus.
Some analysts say that the huge body poses a great burden on his body, leading to a series of health problems.
And gigantism itself was classified as a rare disease, and various reasons led to his premature death.
Now we already know that this is caused by a condition called hyperactive pituitary gland.
As we mentioned earlier, this disease causes the pituitary gland to over-secrete growth hormone, prompting the body to grow abnormally.
There is also a more special case, Neil Fernie Miracini, who is confirmed to be the shortest adult male in the world.
Nepalese, born on November 30, 1939, was 21.5 inches (54.6 centimeters) tall for the last time he took before his death.
On September 4, 2015, Neil Fernie Miracini passed away at the age of 75.
Despite his very short stature, his lifespan did not shorten as a result.
According to a number of overseas news media reports, he is a happy and contented person who often participates in some public activities.
Modern scientists believe that longevity involves several factors, and height is only one of them.
To live a long life, you must first have a healthy body, focusing on lifestyle, diet, genetics, environment, and mental health.
Additionally, maintaining moderate exercise is essential for cardiovascular health, bone health, and mental health.
Most healthy older adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.
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