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I think questions about increasing ones height often have a whiff of an XY problem. Rarely do people want to increase their height as an end in itself, they want to increase their height as a means to advance some other end. The problem (my impression) is that the research on how to effectively increase one's height and how it causally impacts the outcome of interest are sufficiently unclear that it's efficiency in terms of accomplishing ones goals is questionable. That is, for almost any reason people care about their height (sexual success, job success, getting swole) there are almost certainly better things that could be doing with their time, in terms of ROI, than trying to increase their height. So when people ask about increasing their height other people try and infer their motivation for asking and guide them to more effective actions, given their imputed goals. Maybe you're someone whose on the 99.9th percentile of job/sexual/lifting success such that your height really is your limiting factor but I doubt that describes most people asking about it.
Good points, XY problem is exactly the term to describe what I'm talking about, I did not know about that term before. I agree the research is unclear, that's what I hope will change someday. Somewhat agree there are better things one could do with their time in most cases, well actually fully agree there are better things to do with ones time, but my point would be that height optimization doesn't have to exclude those other things necessarily.
I am arguing to build a pretty big umbrella and cover a bunch of cases, for me in particular I have definitely not maxxed out everything else in my life to the point where height is the only thing left to optimize. However, it is a pretty foundational thing, height and frame size that is, in that you can't lose it once you have it for the most part. It matters more for social success at the extremes of short stature. Also medically, larger frame size (by this I mean bone diameters, like wrist/ankle thickness) pays dividends into old age, promoting greater bone strength in a way that muscle gain alone does not. So it's a bit different from other things we can optimize, height/skeletal optimization would be a more secure investment if it pays off, although it might not pay at all. Although like you said, the research is kind of unclear on how to optimize height...my post discussed using common sense (and the few studies/info we do have) to optimize it, but yeah maybe that's not really enough to justify the effort for most people.
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