Quote from: W on April 15, 2018, 01:05:36 PMI would say up to 5cm because I have a twin brother who is 4-5cm shorter than me that avoided gym class with a sugar & carb based diet.
What you described is not enough to stunt height that much, in my current opinion. I'm assuming you are dizygotic twins. Not monozygotic twins.
If you guys are indeed monozygotic, then, well, pardon my tone, and I'll be eating some socks.
QuoteBecause height is influenced by nutrition, particular scrutiny for confounding by cumulative nutrition is important. Diet is influenced by genetic factors, and monozygotic twins repeatedly have been shown to be similar in nutritional status (15, 16). These height-dant twins, in the view of their mothers, had similar diets as children. According to the young adult twins themselves, the most sensitive observers of between-twin differences, their food preferences, habits, and levels of obesity were nearly identical at the time of contact and are unlikely to have changed since childhood (15, 25). Thus, the available evidence suggests that the relative frequency of infections may be independently associated with adult height.
If causal, several possible mechanisms could explain the association. Infections during early childhood result in periods of catabolism, diverting calories away from growth (14).
[...]
We report that childhood infection is significantly associated with height differences in monozygotic twins, independent of genetics, socioeconomic status, parental behavior, and available indicators of nutrition. Although the relationship between childhood infections and growth has been studied extensively in developing countries, our results also suggest a relationship between childhood infections and adult height in a generally healthy, economically developed population.
Study Authors: Amie E. Hwang, Thomas M. Mack, Ann S. Hamilton, W. James Gauderman, Leslie Bernstein, Myles G. ckburn, John Zadnick, Kristin A. Rand, John L. Hopper, and Wendy Cozen.
QuoteShorter height at 6, 10, 13, and 18 years of age was more strongly associated with shorter adult height than was weight at each age. Shorter height at age 6 years was most strongly predictive of shorter adult height (odds ratio = 27.4; ratio of exposure-dant twin pairs = 89/3); 41% of the taller and 40% of the shorter twins reported that the disparity in height had appeared before age 6; 58% and 56%, respectively, indicated that it had appeared before the age of 12 years.
QuoteThe twin with more maternally reported episodes of childhood infection was approximately twice as likely to be the shorter twin (Table 2). This was evident for each measure of illness frequency and persisted after adjustment for birth weight and birth length (Table 2; Web Figure 2). There were no statistically significant differences in the odds ratios among the 5 age categories (χ2 test of heterogeneity not shown).
In a stepwise model, the within-pair difference in febrile illness frequency during the toddler years was the strongest and most significant predictor of adult height difference (data not shown).
The association between more toddler infections and shorter stature was stronger among the subset of pairs differing by more than 1 inch compared with the subset differing by just 1 inch [...]
Because most questions to mothers were related to infections, (e.g., frequency of antibiotic use and febrile illness), and since those with chronic disease had been excluded, infections probably accounted for the majority of reported illnesses. The association was strongest for infections during the toddler years, when the difference in height usually appeared, and was independent of birth length and weight. In this study of monozygotic twins, the association between illness in the early years and adult height was independent of heritable factors, childhood social class, and parental behavior.
This is from a study linked earlier in the thread.
