4 February 2007
At What Age Do We Stop Growing?
In our body, there is a system of glands called the endocrine glands, which control growth. The endocrine glands are the thyroid in the neck, the pituitary attached to the brain, the thymus in the chest and the sex glands. The pituitary gland is the one that stimulates our bones to grow.
A child is born with a large thymus gland. As the sex glands develop, the thymus gland stops working. This is the reason that when a person has become sexually matured at about the age of 22, he stops growing. Sometimes the sex glands develop too soon and slow up the thymus glands too early. This often makes a person below average in height, because this early development makes the legs short.
This is also the reason that the people who develop too early are often thickset. It is the working of these endocrine glands that makes a human grow.