Farib Khan Ms.

Fang Health Period 3 12/19/13

Is Being Tall Hazardous to Your Health? by Carrie Arnold Its always been the case where vertically talented people have more benefits

than their counterparts. Statistically speaking, they have a higher salary and are more successful at work. Generally, they are regarded more highly than those shorter than them. However, research has shown recently that shorter people are less prone to cancer and other health-related diseases. This relationship between cancer and height is not a new one because in 1975 there was a research that linked breast cancer and height. Geoffrey Kabat, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY, has research relating to this. However, he says that relating height and health variables are much more complicated than determining if height is directly correlated with a particular disease. Taller people obviously tend to weigh more than shorter people even though the BMI proportionally shouldnt be higher. Having a poor nutrition and stress stunts growth and begins to take a toll at other factors (i.e.: psychological health and variables relating to that: education, socioeconomic status and salary/wealth). Kabat was researching more in depth with the relation between height and cancer. Having to take into account of all the anomalies and different aspects, he had an increasingly large amount of research data. While having to control the data for say weight, socioeconomic status and BMI, Kabat found a significant correlation between height and cancer. For every 10 cm of height, women had 1.13 times more

likeliness to end up having cancer. He has no legitimate explanation of why as of now, but general theories relate around the fact that taller people have more growth factors, which could be a prodigal role in this. The most difficult parts of this are that height and growth are finished at an early age, but the cancer does not come around until much later in life. However, cancer is not the only chronic disease that has some sort of relationship with height, heart disease plays a role too. It has been said that men taller than 61 have a 35% lower chance of having a heart attack than those shorter than 57. According to the article, for every inch grown, a man has a 2-3% decrease in heart attack risk. Overall I learned a lot from this article and gave me some sense of place because I am most definitely not a tall person. However, this has led me to believe that there are really no factors that give a person who is taller or who is shorter an advantage at life, but do play roles in everyday and long-term health.