Global study confirms Dutch men and Latvian women as world's tallest

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Jul 26 2016

Dutch men and Latvian women are the tallest on the planet, according to the largest ever study of height around the world.

The research, led by scientists from Imperial College London and using data from most countries in the world, tracked height among young adult men and women between 1914 and 2014.

Among the findings, published in the journal eLife, the research revealed South Korean women and Iranian men have shown the biggest increases in height over the past 100 years. Iranian men have increased by an average of 16.5cm, and South Korean women by 20.2cm.

The height of men and women in the UK has increased by around 11cm over the past century. By comparison, the height of men and women in the USA has increased by 6cm and 5cm, while the height of Chinese men and women has increased by around 11cm and 10cm.

The research also revealed once-tall USA had declined from third tallest men and fourth tallest women in the world in 1914 to 37th and 42nd place respectively in 2014. Overall, the top ten tallest nations in 2014 for men and women were dominated by European countries, and featured no English-speaking nation. UK women improved from 57th to 38th place over a century, while men had improved slightly from 36th to 31st place.

The researchers also found that some countries have stopped growing over the past 30 to 40 years, despite showing initial increases in the beginning of the century of study. The USA was one of the first high-income countries to plateau, and other countries that have seen similar patterns include the UK, Finland, and Japan. By contrast, Spain and Italy and many countries in Latin America and East Asia are still increasing in height.

Furthermore, some countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East have even seen a decline in average height over the past 30 to 40 years.

How tall we grow is strongly influenced by nutrition and environmental factors, although an individual's genetic factors may also play a role. Children and adolescents who are better nourished and live in better environments tend to be taller, and height may even be influenced by a mother's health and nutrition during pregnancy. It has lifelong consequences for health and even education and earnings. Some research suggests people who are taller tend to live longer, gain a better education and even earn more. However, being tall may carry some health risks, as studies have linked height to a greater risk of certain cancers including ovarian and prostate.

Professor Majid Ezzati from the School of Public Health at Imperial who led the research said: "This study gives us a picture of the health of nations over the past century, and reveals the average height of some nations may even be shrinking while others continue to grow taller. This confirms we urgently need to address children and adolescents' environment and nutrition on a global scale, and ensure we're giving the world's children the best possible start in life."

He added: "Our study also shows the English-speaking world, especially the USA, is falling behind other high-income nations in Europe and Asia Pacific. Together with the poor performance of these countries in terms of obesity, this emphasises the need for more effective policies towards healthy nutrition throughout life."

Mary De Silva, Head of Population, Environment and Health at the Wellcome Trust, who co-funded the study, said: "This is a unique analysis that shows the real power of combining a hundred years of population data sources that span the globe. The most striking finding is that despite the huge increases in height seen in some countries, there is still a considerable gap between the shortest and tallest countries. More research is needed to understand the reasons for this gap and to help devise ways of reducing the disparities in health that still persist globally."

The research team, which included almost 800 scientists and was in collaboration with the World Health Organization, used data from a wide range of sources, including military conscription data, health and nutrition population surveys, and epidemiological studies. They used these to generate height information for 18-year- olds in 1914 (who were born in 1896) through to 18-year- olds in 2014 (who were born in 1996).

Among the findings the team found that:

Dutch men are the tallest on the planet, with an average height of 182.5cm. Latvian women are the tallest on the planet, with an average height of 170cm.

The top four tallest countries for men are the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia and Latvia. The top four tallest countries for women are Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic.

Men from East Timor were the smallest in the world in 2014, with an average height of 160cm. Women from Guatemala were the smallest in 2014 with an average height of 149cm.

The difference between the tallest and shortest countries in the world in 2014 was about 23cm for men - an increase of 4cm on the height gap in 1914. The height difference between the world's tallest and shortest countries for women has remained the same across the century, at about 20cm.

The height difference between men and women has on average remained largely unchanged over 100 years - the average height gap was about 11cmin 1914 and 12cmin 2014.

The average height of young men and women has decreased by as much as 5cm in the last 40 years in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Sierra Leone, Uganda and Rwanda.

Australian men in 2014 were the only non-European nationality in the top 25 tallest in the world.

In East Asia, South Korean and Chinese men and women are now taller than their Japanese counterparts.

Adult height plateaued in South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India at around 5-10 cm shorter than in East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.

The smallest adult men in 1914 were found in Laos, where the average male height was 153cm, a similar height to a well-nourished 12-year- old boy living today. In 1914 the smallest women were found in Guatemala, where the average female height was 140cm, a similar height to a well-nourished 10-year- old girl.

The nations with the tallest men in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets):

1. Netherlands (12)

2. Belgium (33)

3. Estonia (4)

4. Latvia (13)

5. Denmark (9)

6. Bosnia and Herzegovina (19)

7. Croatia (22)

8. Serbia (30)

9. Iceland (6)

10. Czech republic (24)

The nations with the tallest women in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets):

1. Latvia (28)

2. Netherlands (38)

3. Estonia (16)

4. Czech Republic (69)

5. Serbia (93)

6. Slovakia (26)

7. Denmark (11)

8. Lithuania (41)

9. Belarus (42)

10. Ukraine (43)

Source:

EuroScience Open Forum 2016 (ESOF 2016)

Posted in: Men's Health News | Medical Research News | Women's Health News | Healthcare News

Tags: Adolescents, Children, Education, Genetic, Nutrition, Obesity, Pregnancy, Prostate, Public Health, Research, X-linked

Comments (1)

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Being tall is not necessarily a good thing

Thomas Samaras says:

July 28, 2016 at 11:50 PM

The authors seem to think this increase in height is a good thing. Unfortunately much research says the opposite.

This study provides a lot of data on height in various  world populations. However, the authors ignored a huge amount of data on nutrition, height and longevity. For example the authors suggest that our longevity is related to our nutrition. This is contradicted by the World Cancer Research Fund Report (2007), which stated that industrialization and the Western diet promote greater height, weight and chronic disease. Nutrition expert Professor Popkin reported that the food system developed over the last 100 years was devastating to our health. Trowell reported that pre-Western populations were free of major Western chronic diseases until they became Westernized. Nazmi and Monteiro reported the same observation in the journal, Public Health Nutrition. Silventoinen also reported that the Western diet promotes greater height and coronary heart disease.

As far as taller people living longer, last year, news releases from Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Glasgow reported that shorter people have a longer life expectancy. Professor Bartke, Director of the SIU Aging and Longevity Research Laboratory, recently stated that considerable evidence exists that smaller humans tend to be healthier and longer lived. The International Encyclopedia of Public Health also reported that shorter people live longer. Other research has found that shorter, smaller people have lower mortalities or live longer and a few examples follow:

1. Shorter elderly Japanese men in Hawaii have lower mortality and greater longevity compared to taller elderly Japanese. (He, et al.)

2. A review of evidence from eight different types of studies showed that shorter, smaller people lived longer (Samaras, TT).

3. A study of men in a remote Sardinian village found shorter men lived longer (Salaris et al.)

4. A large study of US men and women found that shorter men had a lower all cause and CHD mortality (Shapiro et al.)

5. Based on about 18 million deaths, an examination of US ethnic mortality data found that the shortest ethnic group had the lowest mortality over the entire life cycle and the tallest the highest mortality; e.g., Asians had the lowest mortality and Blacks and Whites the highest. Latinos and Native Americans were in-between in both height and mortality (Samaras TT)

6. Okinawa has been studied extensively and has the highest percentage of centenarians. They also have exceptional life expectancy. The Okinawans are shorter than the mainland Japanese. Centenarians average about 5 feet (after adjustment for shrinkage with age0. (Chan et al.).

7. A study of thousands of retired West Point graduates found that taller graduates had a higher mortality (Mueller and Mazur)

8. A study of over 1 million Spanish males found that shorter males lived longer (Holzenberger et al.)

9. A study of deceased people in Ohio found shorter people lived longer (D. Miller).

While many mortality studies have found tall people have lower mortality, few track their subjects until death. The West Point study mentioned above did not find a trend until after 60 years of age. Waaler’s study didn’t find shorter men had a lower mortality until the age range of 70 to 85 years of age. This is to be expected since most deaths under 65 years of age are do to infections, accidents, etc.. Age related deaths become dominant after 65 years of age.

While the paper recognized that taller people have more cancer, it stated that taller people have less heart disease. This finding is an artifact because it is clear that early in 1900s, coronary heart disease was rare in the US and Europe, but we were also shorter by a few inches. Davenport also studied 1 million US WWI recruits and found tall men had more heart problems. Other studies have found taller people have higher heart disease mortality (Shapiro, Mori, Elsayed, Hameed, and Gupta). It is hard to believe that taller height is an advantage when studies have found that several short populations were entirely free of coronary heart disease and stroke; e.g., Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kalahari bushmen, Congo pygmies and Kitavans. Height range: under 5 feet to 5 feet, 6 inches.) Of course, the Japanese have for many years had one of the lowest rates of cardiovascular mortality in the developed world. The Okinawans also have a lower mortality rate than the mainland and are shorter. Poulain also reported that the shortest people in Sardinia had the lowest mortality from heart disease.

Yes, our life expectancy and height in the developed world has increased substantially during industrialization. The reasons are improved sanitation, immunization programs, higher standard of living, and huge advances in medical care and science. If you compare the developed world to the non-developed world, the developed world is certainly taller and longer lived.  However, if you look within the developed world, life expectancy is usually highest in the shorter populations: Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Andorra, San Marino, and Singapore.

Many biological factors change in undesirable ways when we get taller and increase in weight. A leading explanation is that taller bodies use up their cellular replication capacity over their life times due to the greater need to replace damaged cells; i.e.,taller bodies have more cells to wear out or get damaged by free radicals, radiation, toxins, etc. Maier et al. found that taller people had reduced ability to replace damaged cells at older ages. Smaller women also have a higher capacity for cell replacement compared to bigger men.

Anyone interested in health, nutrition and longevity should refer to:
www.humanbodysize.com

This website provides a list of almost 50 articles, book chapters and books on the ramifications of increasing height on our health, longevity, environment, resources and survival as a race (Why smaller humans are in our future, Policy Innovations, Carnegie Council, 2014).

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