Height affects how people perceive their quality of life

Your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with short people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of normal height. This large, peer reviewed study, which appears in Clinical Endocrinology, shows that adult height is linked to how good a person thinks their health is. Short people judge their state of health to be significantly lower than their normal height peers do.

The data for this study came from the 2003 Health Survey for England, carried out by the UK Department of Health.

In this survey, participants filled out a health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire and a nurse measured their height. Researchers, led by Senior Health Economist Torsten Christensen at Novo Nordisk A/S in Denmark, used this data to assess the relationship between height and HRQoL.

A person’s health-related quality of life refers to their perceived physical and mental health over time. The questionnaire does not measure how good a person’s health actually is; it measures how good a person thinks their health is. The questionnaire examined five areas of well-being: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. The researchers controlled the results in the study for the effects of other well-known indicators of HRQoL such as age, gender, body weight, long-standing illness and social class. In total, this study used the results from 14 416 respondents.

People in the shortest height category (men shorter than 162 cm and women shorter than 151 cm) reported they experience significantly lower HRQoL than people of normal height. Additionally, the shorter you are, the more pronounced this effect becomes. This means that a small increase in height has a much larger positive effect on a short person than it does on a person of normal height. The results predict that people who are of short stature could increase their HRQoL by 6.1% if their height was increased by 7 cm for men and 6 cm for women. This 6.1% difference in HRQoL is equivalent to the HRQoL benefits of losing 10-15 kg for an obese person (with a BMI greater than 30).

Short height in adult life can either be due to normal development or caused by a number of diseases such as growth hormone deficiency or Turner syndrome. Treatment with growth hormone to children with these conditions can increase their final adult height by approximately 4-10 cm depending on the underlying cause. Previous studies have not clearly established the impact of this increase in height upon patients’ HRQoL. The results from this study show that any small increase to the height of short people can have a large positive impact upon how good they perceive their health to be when adult. HRQoL data combine physiological, physical and social well-being into one outcome measure. The results from this study may also be useful for health economic assessments (such as those used by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) for calculating the benefits of treatments for short stature.

Researcher Torsten Christensen said:

“We know that people who are short experience more difficulties in areas of their life such as education, employment and relationships than people of normal height. However, the relationship between height and psychosocial well-being is not well understood. Using this large and nationally representative sample of the UK population, we found shorter people report that they experience lower physical and mental well-being than taller people do. Our results also indicate that the shorter someone is, the stronger this relationship becomes. For example, an increase in height of 3 cm would have a positive impact on the health related quality of life of a short person, whereas the effect of an extra 3 cm would be negligible for a person of normal height.

Although our study does not show that short height directly causes a reduction in physical and mental health, it does indicate that short people are more likely to feel that they experience a lower health-related quality of life. However, further research is now needed to clarify the precise relationship between changes in height and health-related quality of life.”

Source: Society for Endocrinology

Related stories:

Poor teen sleep habits may raise blood pressure, lead to CVD
Teenagers who don't sleep well or long enough may have a higher risk of elevated blood pressure that could lead to cardiovascular disease later in life, researchers report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Birth during a recession raises risk of fatal cardiovascular disease at advanced age
People who suffer from cardiovascular diseases at advanced ages may have reason to suspect that the cause of their illness lies far away... around the date of their birth. A team of European researchers reports that if economic conditions at the time of birth were bad, then this leads to a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality much later in life.
REM sleep associated with overweight in children and adolescents
Short sleep time is associated with overweight in children and adolescents, a core aspect of which may be attributed to reduced REM sleep, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Thursday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
Obese patients face increased risks for infection and dislocation following revision hip surgery
Along with age and injuries, obesity is a leading risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA), a painful and disabling joint disease. While excessive weight can aggravate the toll on almost any joint, obesity has been associated with a higher prevalence of hip OA and an increase in total hip arthroplasty (THA).
Short arms and legs linked to risk of dementia
People with shorter arms and legs may be at a higher risk for developing dementia later in life compared to people with longer arms and legs, according to a study published in the May 6, 2008, bonus issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers say the association between short limbs and dementia risk may be due to poor nutrition in early life, which can affect limb growth.
Growth hormone is used to treat twice as many short boys than girls in the US and Asia
Boys are twice as likely as girls in the U.S. and Asia (mostly Japan) to receive recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) for growth hormone deficiency, illnesses that affect height, and short stature of a non-medical nature. A smaller gender difference exists in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, but in the rest of the world short boys and girls are treated at the same rate. This indicates a likely cultural bias for male height in some countries.
Study raises questions about diagnosis, medical treatment of ADHD
A new UCLA study shows that only about half of children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, exhibit the cognitive defects commonly associated with the condition.
Short birth length more than doubles risk of violent suicide attempts
Short male babies run more than double the risk of a violent suicide attempt as an adult, suggests a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

News discussion:

Medicine & Health news