How Tall Are You?
People today are taller and healthier.On average,people are5cm taller aand live almost thirty years longer compared to 200 years ago.This is due to. getting better nutrition as children and having better medicine today.Well,this is what we used to think. Some experts aer now saying that there might be more to it.
Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago has studied the connection between height and health.He initially looked at records of Norwegian men who lived in the 1960s.He found some surprising results.The taller men almost always lived longer.In fact,according to the records he studied,a185cm 73-year-old man was half as likely to die as a172cm man of the same age.Fogle thought such interesting results deserved more stucy. He then looked at records closer to home.He began comparing American men born in the mid 1800s with those born in the 1920s.In both groups of men,he found the same thing.The shorter men seemed more prone to disease.They were also more likely to die younger.
Fogel connects these results with David Barker 's studies at the University of Southhampton.Barker's studies have shown alink between low birth weight and diseasesmlater in life Babies with low birth weights tend to be smaller as as adults and also more prone to illness Fogle says. Long before it is born a developing baby is very sensitive to the nutrition it gets.According to Barker the health of our organ is already determined by the time we are born.Babies who get less nutrition while growihg inside their mothers are at risk.Medical research looks at the way the heart is damaged by what people do,by what they eat or if they smoke Barker says.It turns out that isn't the key thing.The key thing is how your heart was made in the first place.