Increased dietary taboos

Don’t blindly supplement ripening ingredients/health products in order to increase your height, don’t go overboard and completely ban snacks, which will cause your intake to be out of control, and don’t be picky about your food in order to “increase nutrition” and cause nutritional imbalance. Other so-called "drinking Coca-Cola will not make you grow taller" and "eating soy products will lead to premature puberty" are mostly rumors that were established under extreme circumstances and do not need to be taken as a standard at all.

In the past two years, the grandson of my neighbor Aunt Zhang fell into the trap of blind supplementation. At the age of 13, he was half a head shorter than the boys in his class when he first entered junior high school. He was so anxious to listen to the promotions of maternal and child stores that he bought pills from Internet celebrities, stewed beef bone marrow every day, and Zihe Che for his children to eat. Even the milk was "special milk" with various functional ingredients added to it. As a result, the child gained 22 pounds in six months. When he went to the hospital to check his bone age, he was 2 years older than his actual age. The doctor said that the risk of early closure of the epiphyseal line was very high, and he would lose at least 3-4 centimeters. Regarding this point, the opinions in different fields are actually quite consistent: the explanation from Western medicine is that most of these supplements contain estrogen-like ingredients, which will quickly increase the bone age, which is equivalent to setting the "countdown" for the child's growth in advance. It seems that the child has grown a few centimeters in the past period, but it actually overdraws the growth space later. ； The point of view of traditional Chinese medicine is more straightforward. Children's spleen and stomach are inherently tender. If you stuff them with greasy things every day, they will not be digested and accumulate in the body. On the contrary, it will affect the absorption of normal nutrients and make them less strong.

Having said this, I have to mention the other extreme that many parents are most likely to go to: they believe that the height-increasing diet must be "absolutely clean" and not even touch half a bite of snacks. The children of my distant relatives were so strict with their parents that they would confiscate the lollipops handed out at school sports events and throw away carbonated drinks. As a result, the child saved up his pocket money for half a semester and secretly bought iced Coke at the canteen. After school, he squatted on the roadside and drank a large bottle of 1.25 liters at a time. During the physical examination, the urinary calcium was twice as high as the normal value. The calcium loss was much more serious than that of a child who takes an occasional sip. In fact, the controversial point of "whether carbonated drinks affect height growth" has long been concluded. The United States Department of Agriculture has done relevant research before. Only if you consume more than three cans of sugary carbonated drinks a day will the excessive phosphorus content affect calcium deposition. Occasionally drinking half a can will not affect your height at all. On the contrary, if you over-prohibit, stimulate the child's rebellious psychology, and secretly over-ingest, you will really step into a trap.

Other parents, on the other hand, heard that calcium and protein are needed to grow taller, so they forced their children to drink milk and eat eggs every day, and did not allow them to touch other vegetables. When my cousin was a child, her mother forced her to drink 3 liters of milk every day, and she was not allowed to eat more at dinner. As a result, she became lactose intolerant and had diarrhea as soon as she drank it. Not only did she not absorb much protein, but she also rarely ate vegetables and grains, was deficient in zinc and vitamin D, and could not store calcium at all. She was half a head shorter than other children of the same age. Many fitness bloggers on the Internet will say that "high protein is the code for growing taller", but clinical data from the nutrition department has long proven that height growth requires comprehensive nutritional support: in addition to protein and calcium, zinc can help increase appetite, vitamin D can promote calcium absorption, magnesium and phosphorus are important components of bones, and even enough dietary fiber helps maintain intestinal health, which is linked to nutrient absorption. If you only eat those so-called "height-increasing foods", other nutrients cannot keep up, and no matter how much you eat, it will be in vain.

Oh, yes, there is another little pitfall that many people have not noticed: don’t always give your children late night snacks that are too late and too fatty. Many parents feel sorry for their children who are hungry after studying in the evening, so they cook a bowl of instant noodles, fry a chicken drumstick, or stuff them with a bunch of butter bread when they come back from school. In fact, if you eat too many high-fat and high-sugar foods after 9 p.m., your stomach and intestines will be working all night, making it difficult to enter deep sleep and grow. The most intense period of hormone secretion is the first two hours of deep sleep. If you don't sleep well, it will be useless no matter how much nutrition you supplement. Moreover, foods high in salt and sugar will accelerate the excretion of calcium through the urine. If you eat a late-night snack, you may not be able to replenish the calcium lost by drinking two glasses of milk.

To put it bluntly, the height-increasing diet really does not have so many harsh taboos. There is no "height-increasing killer" that cannot be touched in one bite. It is just a matter of grasping the right amount, not supplementing blindly, not being extreme, and not being partial to eclipse. If the child can eat every meal steadily, sleep soundly and move enough, he will naturally grow to the height he should grow, and he will not make the whole family nervous during meals because of a few rumors.