Being tall undoubtedly has many benefits, but according to new research it has some downsides too.
While heart disease and cancer have previously been linked to height, until now research hadn’t been able to separate factors such as nutrition and socioeconomic status – both of which can affect a person’s height – from the equation. The new research does just that by revealing certain health conditions that are more likely to afflict longer humans.
The findings, published in PLOS Genetics, are based on taking a person’s genetically-predicted height and comparing it to their actual height to see how they link up with various potential diseases and health conditions. The data needed to do so was borrowed from the VA Million Veteran Program, which provided the team access to the health and genetic information of over 250,000 people.
Genetically-predicted height was seen to trigger health conditions associated with atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat), lumpy blood vessels (varicose veins), and peripheral neuropathy – a type of nerve damage causing weakness, numbness, and pain in the limbs and something that hasn’t before been associated with height, IFL Science reports. Tall people were found to also have an increased risk of skin and bone infections, including ulcers.
But being tall isn’t all bad after all, as it turns out. The researchers found it was also associated with a lower risk of high blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as coronary heart disease.
The research is the largest ever conducted regarding the association between height and disease. Over 1,000 conditions were included in the analyses, even though the sample had an unequal proportion of black (~50,000) and white (~200,000) people. Overall, the findings suggest that being tall may constitute a risk factor for certain health conditions and diseases in humans which have so far been overlooked.
“Using genetic methods applied to the VA Million Veteran Program, we found evidence that adult height may impact over 100 clinical traits, including several conditions associated with poor outcomes and quality of life – peripheral neuropathy, lower extremity ulcers, and chronic venous insufficiency,” study lead Sridharan Raghavan of the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center, US, said in a statement.
“We conclude that height may be an unrecognized non-modifiable risk factor for several common conditions in adults.”