Can posture correction increase height?

To be honest first, if your epiphysis has been completely closed, posture correction will not make your bones develop again and make you taller, but it can really help you regain the height you lost due to bad posture. Most people can adjust the margin of 1-3 centimeters. If you usually have rounded shoulders, a forward head, and a particularly skewed pelvis, it is not surprising that you can even gain an extra 4 or 5 centimeters.

I met a programmer who just started working two years ago. He was 24 years old. He wrote code at his desk every day. When sitting, he always slumped his waist and stretched his neck forward. He also held his breasts when standing. His naked height was only 168. He always said that he was clearly 171 in college, and he thought it was because he had shrunk due to exhaustion from work. After adjusting for more than three months, I also noticed that he had to change his bad habit of sitting and standing. The curvature of his thoracic spine was corrected, and the forward movement of his head was also corrected. When I measured his naked height, it was exactly 171.5. On the same day, he ran out and bought the narrow jeans that he had not dared to wear before. He said that he finally no longer needed padding to increase the height of his pants.

There are always people who say that postural correction is an IQ tax. This is actually not wrong. If your posture when standing, sitting and walking is very standard, the physiological curvature of the spine is normal, the pelvis is not tilted or rotated, and there are no long or short legs, then no matter how you adjust your posture, you cannot grow an extra centimeter out of thin air. Those who boast that after the epiphysis is closed, you can grow another 7 or 8 centimeters through posture correction, they are 100% cutting leeks.

To put it bluntly, there is nothing magical about it. Our skeleton is not a stick that goes straight up and down. The spine has four natural physiological curvatures, and the pelvis is the base that connects the upper and lower parts. If you always cross your legs, slump on the sofa, brushing your mobile phone, or typing on the keyboard with your head down, these parts will deform over time, just like a tape measure that was originally straight has been bent by pressure. The total length has not changed, but the standing height has naturally shrunk. Last year, I took care of a little girl from high school who had her right leg crossed all the time. The pelvic tilt caused the difference between the long and short legs by almost 2 centimeters. After less than two months of adjustment, the high and low shoulders and long and short legs were all straightened, and the height increased by 1.8 centimeters. Her mother thought I was a liar at first, but later took her to the hospital for a X-ray. It was true that the bone alignment was back to normal. There was nothing mysterious about it.

Of course, don’t expect too much from this. This kind of “gaining height” essentially restores your original true height, and does not really make your bones grow. If your posture is already very upright and you still want to grow taller, it is better to run more, jump more and sleep more while the epiphyses are not closed. It will be more effective than anything else.