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Why You Should Be Taller?
 

Height is generally considered relating to social dominance, intelligence and symmetry of faces. A study conducted by University of Utah even claimed that tall male had fighting advantages. Perhaps that is why most women prefer taller men.

But do you know that taller people have health advantage over their shorter counterparts?

On June 9, 2011, researchers from the University of Tampere reported in the ‘European Heart Journal’ that short people are 50 percent more likely than tall people to die prematurely of heart disease.

Their study, which was funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Tampere University Hospital, the Aarno Koskelo Foundation, and the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, showed that women under 1.53 meters (5 feet) and men under 1.65 meters (5 foot 4 inches) are significantly more likely to get cardiovascular or coronary heart problems than women and men taller than 1.66 meters (5 foot) and 1.73 meters (5 foot 8 inches) respectively.

In order to examine the link between height and heart conditions, they went through nearly 2,000 studies on the link between shorter stature and increased coronary heart disease risk from around the world over the last 60 years, with the first study being published in 1951. However, they only focused on 52 earlier studies covering more than 3 million people that met their criteria for both comparability and high standards. The best approach they could think of was to compare the shortest group to the tallest group to highlight any differences that might emerge.

According to the findings, the likelihood for a shorter person to get heart disease is about 1.5 times higher. Shorter men and women had a 37 and 55 percent respectively higher risk of dying of any cause, and shorter men and women had a risk of 52 percent higher than other of experiencing heart attack.

They, therefore, suggested adding short stature to the list of known heart disease together with obesity, high cholesterol level and ageing. Meanwhile, they also admitted that the evidence remained contradictory.

One possible explanation is that shorter people have smaller coronary arteries that might become clogged earlier in life, especially when combined with poor nutrition or infections resulting in poor fetal or childhood growth.

While some experts agreed the results were clear that short stature is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease, the possible patho-physiological, environmental, and genetic background of this peculiar association remains unknown. Hence, they felt that more research on the potential link between height and heart disease is necessary. They also cautioned that when it comes to heart disease, there are many other risk factors to take into account like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes and obesity.

In another study published in ‘American Journal of Epidemiology’ in 1998, researchers from the Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London, examined the relation between adult height and risk of stroke and coronary heart disease in a prospective study of 7,735 men drawn from general medical practices in 24 towns in England, Wales and Scotland.

These men were followed up for an average of 16.8 years between 1978 and 1995. During the period, there were 351 major stroke events (63 fatal, 288 nonfatal) and 1,093 major coronary heart disease events (465 fatal, 628 nonfatal).

An inverse association between height and coronary heart disease was confirmed by the study. But the inverse association was only seen for fatal stroke and not for the nonfatal stroke, which suggested the height might be related to specific subtypes of stroke.

People certainly have no control over their height. In fact, it does not really matter whether one is tall or short. The important things that people should do for heart disease prevention are to adopt a healthy and balanced diet, stop smoking and maintain healthy weight.

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