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Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by rvba on Sunday December 18, 2022 @04:45PM (#34043878)
When I was a kid, I always heard some Uncle claim that "rich people" bribe the doctors to give growth hormone to their children. That's why supposedly all the "rich people" children were tall (being well fed probably helps here)

Is that real that the rich, VC types give growth hormone to their children?

Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by funnymony on Sunday December 18, 2022 @05:51PM (#34044914)
Growth hormone called food
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by smrtinsert on Sunday December 18, 2022 @06:05PM (#34045182)
Or just eat average American non-organic food varieties.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by yazzku on Sunday December 18, 2022 @08:59PM (#34047321)
You will certainly grow.. along the horizontal and forward axes.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by iends on Sunday December 18, 2022 @06:40PM (#34045755)
I’m not rich by American standards but we were offered growth hormone for our son since he is trending to 5 1/2 feet.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by killingtime74 on Sunday December 18, 2022 @08:19PM (#34046943)
Did it help?
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by Hoyadonis on Sunday December 18, 2022 @06:51PM (#34045927)
I haven't heard of physical growth hormones per se, but it's definitely true of the psychological equivalent that is Adderall and related methamphetamine prescriptions for ADHD or "ADHD." It does wonders for getting kids to sit down and study, but at who-knows-what cost.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by nextos on Sunday December 18, 2022 @06:57PM (#34046019)
Good quality dairy is associated with high insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels in blood, which in turn leads to rapid cell growth. This explains why e.g. Dutch people went from being the shortest to the tallest in Europe.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by moneywoes on Sunday December 18, 2022 @07:50PM (#34046656)
Any source’s? Can I get this now as an adult?
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by nextos on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:39PM (#34048558)
Yes, but IGF-1 as an adult won't promote the kind of growth you want. It's actually something you want to keep low as it's pro-inflammatory.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by flawn on Sunday December 18, 2022 @07:51PM (#34046662)
I always thought that was more of a conspiracy that milk helps you to grow. My mum always tried to get me with that but I always didn't give a damn because I thought it's not true anyway.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by gergov on Sunday December 18, 2022 @08:41PM (#34047143)
I'm not up to date on the science, but my dad was old - born in '43 - and worked as a teacher, so he could see several generations grow up. He was tall for his generation, but by the time I was a teenager, he was tiny even compared to his teenage students. I was a head taller than him even before he started "old man shrinking".

He always pointed at food, that the generations after him had access to better stuff and more milk. The shortest member of my family is my niece who is totally anti-milk, but that's just anecdata.

So it might be some other macro-factor influencing growth, with milk being the most glaringly visible item on the table. But it does kind of make an intuitive sense, and the dutch are freakishly tall while they have some of the best dairy products in the world

Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by nextos on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:44PM (#34048593)
Not only freakishly tall, their average grew 20 cm in less than a century!

Apparently, aside from better food, natural selection also had an effect [1].

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.201...

Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by nimbleal on Sunday December 18, 2022 @09:43PM (#34047701)
There's correlation in longitudinal studies, I recall. Not sure how robust the findings are though.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by 2000UltraDeluxe on Monday December 19, 2022 @05:51AM (#34050682)
I suspect it's more about not being deficient in nutrients that milk (and especially the reinforced variety sold in many countries) happen to be rich in.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by badpun on Monday December 19, 2022 @07:43AM (#34051383)
Meaningless anecdata, but as a child and teenager I absolutely loved milk (I was drinking 1 liter of it a day in my teen years). I grew to be 190 cm (around 6 ft 3 inches), whereas both of my parents are around 1 foot shorter.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by GFischer on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @12:24PM (#34069050)
I loved milk but it didn't counteract Italian genes, I'm 5 foot 6 which is fortunately normal in my country (Uruguay) but would be short-ish in the USA.
Re:Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014) by ookblah on Sunday December 18, 2022 @09:31PM (#34047605)
anecdotally, a lot of families around me seem to give these shots to kids in S. Korea and it doesn't seem like the vast majority of them "need" it. kind of crazy to me, but just an extension of how much looks are valued culturally here.