Can you still grow taller after menarche

A child's height is determined by many factors. During childhood, growth hormone regulates bone growth. After entering puberty, sex hormones also play a certain role in children's height. If a child reaches sexual maturity too early, the bones will close and stop growing. When a girl starts menstruating, her growth rate slows down.

If a child starts menstruating before the age of 11, it is very likely to be precocious puberty. Girls develop breasts before the age of 8 and have their first menstruation before the age of 10; boys develop secondary sexual characteristics before the age of 9, accompanied by rapid physical development, which is called precocious puberty. The main consequence of precocious puberty is short stature as an adult.

So will children with precocious puberty stop growing taller after their period starts? It depends on the child's bone age.

Bone age is an important indicator for judging the developmental maturity of the human body. For a normally growing child, the bone age is basically the same as his or her life age. Adult height can be estimated by calculating the height and bone age (determined by X-rays) measured at the same time, but this method is unreliable for younger children because there are many influencing factors. It is more reliable for adolescent children.

Therefore, if you ask how much you can grow after menstruation, it depends on your bone age at that time. For example, two girls who came to see the doctor recently, one was 9 months after her menarche and her bone age was close to 14 years old; the other was 21 months after her menarche but her bone age was just over 13 years old. Obviously, the latter has much more room for growth than the former.

In addition, we can also use the parents' height to calculate the child's genetic height, and then combine it with bone age judgment to comprehensively estimate the child's growth potential. The impact of precocious puberty on height at different stages is different. If you seek medical treatment in time, some of the height loss can be recovered.

As mentioned before, normal children usually have their first menstruation more than 2 years later, and it will be difficult for them to grow taller. The same is true for children with precocious puberty. In general, the later the diagnosis of precocious puberty is, the greater the loss of height will be. Therefore, once parents discover that their child has breast development before the age of 8, it is best to seek medical attention as soon as possible, the sooner the better!

According to follow-up studies on adolescent boys and girls, if bone age develops one year earlier, the average height will decrease by 7 cm. Nowadays, many children are affected by factors such as diet and environment, and suffer from obesity, precocious puberty and early development, which causes the closure of the epiphyseal bones in some children to be greatly advanced. It is found that many girls stop growing at the age of 13 and boys at the age of 15. Director Xu Yongjian warned that if a child is found to be short, the bone age should be measured in time to find out the cause and determine a scientific, comprehensive growth promotion plan. Warning: Once the bones are closed, it will be difficult for the child to grow taller.