Chinese people are the fastest growing people in the world! Have you contributed?

Earlier, the world-renowned medical journal "The Lancet" published a research result, which showed that the average height of 19-year-old Chinese men reached 175.7 cm, rising from 150th in the world to 65th, and the average height of 19-year-old women was 163.5 cm, rising from 129th to 56th, both surpassing Japan and South Korea to become the first in East Asia.

In the past 35 years, the average height of 19-year-old Chinese men has increased by nearly 9 cm, ranking first among more than 200 countries and regions. The average height of women has also increased by 6 cm, ranking third in the world.

Image from: ncdrisc Through data, we found that Chinese young people are already very close to the United States

The average height of young people (176.9 cm for boys) is very different from our stereotype that Chinese people are generally short. Even on the foreign search website Google, the search popularity of "Why are Chinese people so tall?" has exceeded "Why are Chinese people so short." Foreigners' general perception of Chinese people's height is also constantly changing.

Such results have also triggered heated discussions among many netizens. Many people have expressed that with the improvement of living conditions, each generation is taller than the previous one, and even in junior high school you can see many boys over 1.8 meters tall.

Image from Weibo

Why are young people growing taller so fast?

First of all, the rapid growth of Chinese people's height is closely related to our country's economic take-off.

Let's first look at our neighbor, Japan. Because Japan is an island country with a closed environment, small arable land area, insufficient food sources, and lack of meat and other foods containing a lot of protein, all these reasons led to the fact that Japanese people were generally short before the last century.

In order to improve the health of the people, the Japanese government proposed the "Milk Plan" to encourage Japanese people to drink a glass of milk a day. Later, it was proved that this plan was successful. While the living conditions of Japanese people were improved, people's height also increased rapidly. It also shows that dietary level and balanced nutrition are of great help to people's height growth.

Image from: hippopx

Since the 1980s, people's living standards have been greatly improved, and the continuous improvement in nutritional levels has continuously accelerated the height growth rate of generations.

On the other hand, from the perspective of biogenetics, genes also have a huge impact on human height.

Although genes cannot completely determine a person's height, they are closely related to it. It can be said that 60%-80% of a person's height is determined by innate genes, and only 20%-40% depends on acquired factors, such as natural environment, material conditions, etc.

Genes that help people save energy

We East Asians have a magical gene in our bodies that regulates our body shape based on the energy intake.

This gene is called the East Asian mutant GHRd3 gene. It was obtained through mutation in Homo sapiens, Denisovans and Neanderthals one to two million years ago. It can reduce the sensitivity of people to growth hormone in harsh environments, making their offspring shorter in stature, so as to cope with the external environment with insufficient resources.

In an environment with scarce resources, this gene expression will begin to expand, and humans will tend to consume less food to survive famine, greatly improving humans' ability to survive in harsh environments.

When resources are sufficient, the expression of this gene will decrease, increasing food intake, increasing human calorie consumption, and making the human body size larger.

It is precisely because of China's rapid development in recent decades that living resources have undergone drastic changes in a short period of time. The Chinese people have quickly transitioned from an environment with extremely scarce resources to an environment with abundant resources, resulting in a rapid decrease in the expression of the East Asian mutant GHRd3 gene, which has also directly led to the rapid growth of the height of young Chinese people.

Make the next generation taller

As individuals, although we cannot control our own genes, we can also work hard to make our children a little taller.

For example, they need to take in enough nutrition and supplement enough protein and minerals. Spring and summer are the seasons when teenagers are most likely to grow taller. Parents can seize this best opportunity to grow taller and reasonably match their children's diet.

In addition, ensuring adequate exercise, sleep, and a happy mood will promote height growth.

Image from: hippopx

In addition, scientific research has shown that sunlight is helpful for children's growth and development. We can increase children's outdoor activity time and ensure adequate sunlight.

References:

[1] The average height of 19-year-old males in China is 175.7 cm, and that of females is 163.5 cm [J]. Inside and Outside the Classroom (Primary School Smart Mathematics), 2021(Z1):31.

[2] Ding Li, Wang Linchang. Enlightenment of the school milk program implemented in South Korea and Japan to my country [J]. Agricultural Products Processing, 2006(2).

[3] Lu Yufei, Gao Xinping. Nutrition of milk and human health[J]. Everyone's Health (Mid-month Edition), 2013, 7(3): 161-162.

[4] Hu Cuntian. Children grow taller in May [J]. Kaijuanyi (Seeking Medical Advice), 2005(5):51. [5] Gao Weixin. There are tricks for babies to grow taller [J]. Enlightenment (3-7 years old), 2016(5):34-35. DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1004-4973.2016.05.020.

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Review expert: Shen Yingjian, deputy chief physician of the Nutrition Department of Hebei Yanda Hospital.

Tadpole Musical Notation original article, please indicate the source when reprinting

Editor/Xiao Xitushuo