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Britney asked in HealthOther - Health · 8 years ago

Does playing a sport make you taller?

Been researching this topic for weeks now, here is my hypothesis:

"The jumping involved in playing basketball (as would jumping in any activity) triggers growth on the growth plate perhaps by increased blood flow to the growth plates (in the legs and spine) or some such result of the act of jumping. The act of jumping temporarily suspends the spine and legs in the air followed by a compression with the combined force of gravity and an individual's body weight. The compression perhaps increases blood flow to the non-bone segments of your body impacted by the compression-your growth plates. Increased blood flow to the growth plates may direct growth-related hormones specifically to the growth plates-where it is needed the most for height increase. The maximum effort in each stretching stimulates the cartilage to grow taller, maybe we need to do stretches with maximum effort cause the cartilage is a hard tissue."

Can any athletic sport do the same? Will the act of moving, sprinting, and stretching help you become taller? I know that it could improve your posture so i think it might aid you in becoming taller. I know a lot of people who play basketball, and most of them are very tall.

I had started to wonder on the topic as I questioned if NBA players had tall parents. LeBron James's father is 5'7" and his mother 5'5". Then comes the sudden growth spurts that many have. Michael Jordan was 5'9" or 5'11" I believe and became 6'3" in one summer, ended up becoming 6'6". Dennis Rodman was 5'6" and grew to 6'7" from his freshman year to about 22, but his sudden growth spurt was in his soph-junior year of highschool.

I'm going to try to devise some kind of experiment, I don't know what exactly yet, to test out this hypothesis. I'm going to have to jump and stretch as far as I can. Perhaps drink 3 glasses of milk a day and play basketball for 1-2 hours 5 times a week during the summer.

1 Answer

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  • Anonymous
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Yep basket ball does

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