“His father is 1.8 meters tall and I am 1.65 meters, why do we have a short child?”
“My child eats a lot of meals a day, but how come he doesn’t grow?”
In the consultation room, several mothers with sad faces anxiously asked the doctor why, they were worried that their children had dwarfism.
Is the child developing late or dwarfism?
When a child’s height is below the 3rd percentile of normal child height for the same age, sex, and race, or below -2 SD on average, it means that the diagnostic criteria for dwarfism are met.
So, how can you detect your child’s short stature at an early stage in daily life? Lina Zhang points out that if a child’s height is often ranked in the bottom 3 when sorted from highest to lowest in the same class or grade, parents should be alert and check whether the child’s growth is normal against the child growth curve table.
You can also judge your child’s growth rate. Normally, the growth rate of childhood (4 years old to pre-pubertal) is about 5 to 7 centimeters per year, if less than 5 centimeters, it means that the child’s growth rate is slow. If clothes from three years ago still fit the child, indirectly it can also indicate a slow growth rate.
Some parents tend to confuse late growth with dwarfism. Lina Zhang explains that the former refers to late growth (i.e., late-growing type), which is medically known as delayed somatic puberty. These children are as tall as the next person or only slightly shorter before puberty, but they initiate puberty later than their peers and are able to catch up on the height gap when puberty does come. “Most of these children who develop late will have a family history of being no more than 2 years apart before and after their bone age, despite their short height.”
Dwarfism has various causes and growth hormone should not be used indiscriminately
In Lina Zhang’s opinion, the causes of children’s short stature are complex and varied, and are related to as many as 300 diseases. The following are the most common: poor nutritional status; multiple people in the family with short height, i.e., familial dwarfism; some children younger than gestational age who do not meet the height and weight standards at birth; long-term chronic diseases (such as asthma, rhinitis, eczema, chronic diarrhea, etc.), endocrine system diseases (such as growth hormone deficiency, congenital hypothyroidism); chromosomal abnormalities and genetic abnormalities such as special syndrome; suffering from bone disease.
If parents notice a large difference in height or growth rate between their child and their peers, they should promptly take their child to a pediatric endocrinology clinic. “Height changes are a microcosm of a child’s physical health, and wherever there is a problem, it may be reflected in height.” For children diagnosed with dwarfism, she said, it is important to identify the cause and treat it according to the cause so that it does not affect height in adulthood.
Parents caught in height anxiety are not satisfied with helping their children grow taller by means of exercise plus diet, and more and more parents are taking the initiative to request growth hormone injections for their children. In this regard, Lina Zhang said that growth hormone can play a positive role in some diseases, but not all children with short stature need to use growth hormone. She stressed that growth hormone is a prescription drug used to treat diseases, not a health or beauty product, and should not be abused. It is generally indicated for indications such as growth hormone deficiency, Turner syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and idiopathic dwarfism, and growth hormone therapy can only be initiated when contraindications are excluded and when the condition truly requires its use.
Parents should not use growth hormone without authorization, but should initiate growth hormone treatment in a reasonable and scientific manner under the guidance of a doctor. Once treatment is initiated, attention should be paid to regular follow-up to evaluate the efficacy on the one hand, and monitor the side effects on the other hand, such as temporary hypothyroidism, abnormal glucose metabolism, scoliosis, etc.
Enhanced exercise and happy mood can help improve children’s height
Some children are short in height, but they do not reach dwarfism and do not need medication. In the face of parents and children who are eager to “chase height”, the following four methods can help to grow taller.
First, maintain a good nutritional status. Pay attention to the daily intake of fish, meat, eggs, milk and other staple foods.
Second, do more exercises, such as jumping rope, playing ball, pull-ups, jumping and so on. Among them, jumping rope is called the most perfect growth exercise, the reason is that it has no site requirements, but also can exercise the child’s brain, limb coordination, just spend 10 to 15 minutes a day to jump 800 to 1000 times, in the long run will be able to get good results. Parents can give their children replace comfortable sports shoes, and play music to help children adhere to the movement. But in the process of exercise, we should pay attention to the strength to avoid causing sports injuries.
Third, to ensure adequate sleep and good sleep quality. Parents should urge their children to try to fall asleep at 9:30 to 10:00 p.m. every night.
Fourth, maintain a happy mood. Tension in the family atmosphere, parental disharmony, may aggravate the child’s psychological stress, and even produce low mood and anxiety, and these bad moods may in turn lead to the child’s short.
