Tall Women Are Shrinking?? | Health Issues That Can Lead To Height Loss

Back pain is something a lot of tall people do with at some point in their lives. And I'm sure that if you're a tall person listening to this right now, you get it. Whether it's from sitting too long, hunched over a laptop, or let's say, cutting vegetables on a low countertop, or washing dishes and a low sink. Talking to short people, even our backs definitely go through a lot. And the thing is with tall people and also specifically tall women, the pressures, the posture issues, the everyday realities of a world that more so caters to average high people can cause more than just pain and discomfort. It can even cause height loss. Yep, tall people are shrinking. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how health conditions and hormones as well as posture can play a role in changes to our spine that can impact our height. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Good morning, everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who's tuning in today is doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast and Instagra to TikTok in Pinterest so that you could stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes and ketcha clibs of my everyday life. Also, feel free to leave me your review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. I also have a monthly newsletter, make sure you subscribe to that. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Y'all, I did a very nice thing yesterday. I was grocery shopping, and you know, I was just walking mind in my business, looking for some ketchup or whatever. And there were these two ladies, these two shorter ladies who saw me, and they stopped me in the middle of me looking for my ketchup, and they were like, excuse me, excuse me your height. And right then and there, once I heard your height, I knew where it was going. They basically asked if I could get the coconut oil on the top shelf. I mean the top shelf. It wasn't like it was hard to reach, because it was pretty accessible to them. I would say, it's just that at the coconut oil that they wanted was way further back if that even makes any sense. So you kind of have to be tall or slash have longer limbs to be able to reach that far back on the top shelf. So they basically asked me to get it, and I did. I got it for both of them, and they were like so grateful. They're like, thank you, thank you so much. And I was like, yeah, just using my superpower to help the citizens of New York City. Anyways, they're probably not listening to this episode right now, but shout out to y'all. Anyways, back to our backs, Being tall comes with a lot of aches and paints, right the back pain, the neck pain, the shoulder pain, the knee pain, the foot pain, the pain from feeling all of that pain. It really does leave you wondering does it ever end? But these especially with our necks and our shoulders and our backs, not only do they play a role in how tall we are or how tall we appear, but they actually also play a role in us losing our height. And there are a few reasons for this. So for starters, I'm just gonna rip the band aid right off and get right into it. The tall women are shrinking, y'all. I was not aware that around the time of metopause, tall women, well all women really, no matter their height, lose about an inch or two of their height. So if you're an older, tall woman and you feel like you're getting shorter, you're probably not imagining it. And this was actually brought to my attention in three instances. Number one, I will say that it seems like my mother is getting shorter. She's kindly in her fifties, and she is. She was I'm just gonna say she was five eight, but now it's really seeming like she's about five seven. But I didn't want to take that super super seriously because I'm about to be twenty four, and I stopped growing when I was twenty, so it could just be the fact that I got taller. And then on top of that, I'm like working on my posture issues and so forth, so I got slightly slightly taller and that's why she appears shorter that because I'm just I grew, and then on top of that, like I'm standing up straight, standing up better now. So I just left that alone. I was like, whatever, maybe I'm just maybe it's because I'm appearing taller, I'm taller. But then I did an interview on this podcast. I believe her name is Alexis Howard. She was the co founder of EDA Grove. And I don't know if she said it in the interview or if she told me, Like I usually have like these pre interview calls with the people that I have on this podcast kind of just to like learn more about them and so forth, to determine if they're like a good fit. I don't know if it was in that pre interview call or during the actual interview that she said that she also got shorter, like she lost like an inch and a half or something, and she brought it up that it was because of menopause. So that's when I first thought to myself. I was like, oh, so, like this is the thing, like okay, but that was a long time ago. Then recently, actually, I actually work with this lady. Her name is Mary. She is on the taller side for sure. When I first saw her, I was like period tall girl gang. Anyways, I work with this lady Mary, and we were talking about being tall, because obviously I had to bring it up because why not something to connect over. And she also said how she was like five eleven back in the day, but now she's five to nine because of menopause, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to talk about this now on the podcast, especially because this is a podcast for tall women and at some point in time in our lives, all women or born at the people who were born as women as well, I'll say that I'll include them to the people who were born as women as girls at some point in time if they're not doing any type of hormone therapy, like at some point in time, we're all gonna go through menopause. So something to bring awareness to, I guess. And I'm sharing these stories because I cannot find tall women talking about this on TikTok. I so wanted to include a clip from there of like a tall woman and just speaking about her experiences with how it feels to get shorter, especially with most of her life being on the taller side, and maybe even growing to love her height and maybe even wanting to be taller, but then inevitably we just get shorter. Maybe she went from like being average tall to short tall. I really wanted to get like a SoundBite of that, but I couldn't really find any experiences with audio in it. It's more so coming from shorter women, which is definitely a very unique and different perspective because a lot of shorter women are saying that it's already it's hard because they're already short, and they may not want to be that short, but again, inevitably they get shorter once menopause comes around. But I found one of those clips, so I'm just gonna include it here. So I've shrunk. I've felt this for the past few months, just I've felt shorter than I ever have in my life. But now I know I've legitimately shot. I started noticing this a few months ago because my husband is a kitchen hugger. So when I'm cooking or when I'm making everyone bakfast, he'll just come up behind me or in front of me, stop whatever I'm doing to give me a hug. It is very nice, but I feel like he's a giant these past few months, like I'm just such a little shrimp in his arms. So we actually tried to prove it yesterday, and we took the tape measure against the wall where we used to measure the kids as they grew up, and I used to be one hundred and sixty three centimeters. Like from the time I got my driver's license and every physical and checkup I ever did, I was one hundred and sixty three centimeters and from my American friends, that's five foot four. And when we measured me yesterday, I was one hundred and sixty centimeters. So in the past few months, I have actually shrunk three centimeters, so that's a whole inch. I'm fifty two and I am eleven months since my last period, so I'm almost in full menopause. But just to give you the gist of where I am in my hormonal life, because I think that has something to do with it. Now, this is not random. Many women shrink, literally shrink due to menopause for a variety of reasons, a big one being rapid estrogen decline, which, according to an article by my Obgyn, a women's health center, is linked to bone density loss and even osteoporosis, which can increase the risk of fractures, impacting our height, disc degeneration where the disks between our vertebrae thin out, and even muscle loss, adding to the appearance of a hunched posture and lost height. Hormonal changes play a role in not just you know our mood and so forth, or our reproductive system, but also in other parts of our body, including our bones and our spine. And you know, our spine is made up of bones, and that hormonal change can cause us to shrink because it affects our bones. And now also I want to say that this isn't just a menopause thing as well. I mean, yes, for women, menopause plays a part in it, but it's an overall aging thing as well, because as I was scrolling through Reddit and looking for experiences of tall women talking about how they notice that they've shrunk because of menopause, I've also seen some not in that forum, particular forum relating to menopause, but in general forums I have seen tall men also talking about how they feel as though they're getting shorter as they age. And that again also has a lot to do with your getting older. And you know, it's weird to say it, but your bones aren't as crisp as they are or as strong as they are. Like you know, you start, your body starts to decline after a while, is what I'm trying to say. Parts of your body, including your spine, just have a lot of wear or tear on them, and eventually, yes, you start to get a bit shorter. Again, I'm not a healthcare professional or anything. I'm just looking at research online and speaking on experiences of other tall people. But I think we can reasonably conclude that in general, as we get older, the shorter you get. I just think for women it is definitely a double whammy of aging plus the hormonal changes within menopause. Now, aging and hormones play a big role in our height, but we also have to consider literal health and back conditions. There are many articles out there claiming that tall people may be more prone to back problems, and this is so for a variety of reasons. In terms of literal back conditions like let's say scoliosis and degenerative disc disease and so forth, those can definitely play a role in our height, and those have a lot of causes like injury, maybe like a car or motorcycle accident. Genetics also have play a role in a lot of these things in directly age, et cetera. And I've also not like very often, but I've mentioned on this podcast maybe like once twice three times, that I was diagnosed with a chronic condition. I have an autoimmune disease that affects my digestive system, but also affects more than my digestive system because apparently it's also linked to a back condition that I was also diagnosed with that can cause my spine to fuse together. If I don't keep on moving and exercising and so forth, I mean, inevitably is going to happen. It's just more so slowing down the process, especially because I'm so young. Even autoimmune conditions can cause back conditions that can cause your spine to literally fuse together, or at least cause your spine to what does it compress I think that's the correct term to say it again, causing you to eventually end up appearing shorter or to actually lose some height there. So there are definitely health conditions, back conditions out there that affect our spine and basically affect how tall we can be because they affect our spine. But also I want to acknowledge the fact that posture plays a big, big role in how tall we appear. And listen, I'm sure we know the whole thing with tall people in posture, So I'm not going to get too deep into it. So I'm just going to play an example or two. Part of the reason why tall people slatch is it just takes a lot more strength, especially of course strength to hold ourselves upright in the correct position. But I'm also noticing lately I think a lot of it is automatic because I'm six foot five, which there's plenty of people taller than me, and I have to slatch down to interact with several things in my house. Can back posture really decrease your height? You might not believe it, by yes, it can, and much more than you think. This is episode one of my series Fitness Myths. Let's dive right in. When you slouch for long periods of time, your spine and pelvis will start rounding forward. But how much does this affect your height? Well? To answer this, she meets you when colleagues conducted a thirty four year study where they took a group of fifty two men and women and measured their height and spinal alignments across three decades, and the results were pretty shocking because an average participants experience a high loss of three point eight centimeters and with the majority of it linked to changes in posture, and sometimes that can be the difference between a talking and a short king, but all jokes aside. High loss is a normal physical change that happens with age. But excessive eye loss can be prevented, and it can be as simple as doing one lengthening and one strengthening exercise for your spine and one lengthening and one strengthening exercise for your pelvis. And even if you're already a seven foot two beautiful looking chat and you don't care about shrinking because size doesn't matter, at least take care of yourself for your help. That was kind of name. So the power pasture that we experience over the years can lead to and listen, I'm going to butcher these names. Please don't call me out for it. I'm just the girl with the mic talk about being tall. Poor posture can lead to keyphosis or chaiphosis, which is the excessive outward forward curving of the upper back. We also have forward head syndrome, which is misalignment where their head is kind of like two forward. There's also upper cross syndrome, also known as desk worker syndrome. Now, while these don't cause legit shrinkage like how maybe like health conditions, back conditions also aging and menopause literally cause shrinkage. They do make us appear shorter. I will say, just as an example, I also have posture issues I have. I have a lateral and interior pelvic tilt, and I also have some like grounded shoulders right, So basically I was standing slouched over and crooked my entire life. And one day when I realized that, you know, I had this poor posture, and I started working on it and standing up straight, and I even went back to the doctor. It was almost as if I grew because I'm standing with better posture, So that literally didn't cause actual shrinkage, but I did look shorter because I was not standing properly or I had a really bad posture. And I think that the great part about this is that, you know a lot of the posture issues can be reversible to some extent, where if you go to like physical therapy, you make sure you are doing certain exercises to help with your shoulders and your back and your neck and so forth, and you're stretching, and you know, you get like, what is it, a standing desk, and those I don't know what those called, but those things that you put on laptops. So it's like higher up when you're sitting at a low desk, so you're not like hunched over your laptop like that, like you're looking shit ahead or even up at that angle. You have those things, so it's really just like a lot of lifestyle changes that can help kind of reverse that and again make you appear taller. What the tall community needs is unhinged life hacks that can help us avoiding our posture with low sinks and low counters and low desks. So if you have any, let us know in the comments. I have one. It might not be unhinged, though, but because I'm tall, sometimes when I am washing dishes in a low sink or cutting vegetables on a low countertop, I do this almost split stance thing to offset the high difference. Does anybody else do that too? Another thing I've also learned, But it's like more so because of my back condition, but also partially because I'm on the taller side because I have like the space for it, I guess or like it obviously depends on how your kitchen is set up. When I'm cutting vegetables, I literally pull up a chair and I sit down in the chair. I sit down in the chair and I cut the vegetables. Absolute game changer for my neck and my back. Honestly. I also saw this TikTok of this guy, this tall guy. I think he said he was like six four. I don't remember for sure, but I think he was over six feet tall. This tall guy. He bought like one of those laptops in things I think from a store. It's meant literally for your laptop to hold out like a higher thing, a higher position, higher angle. And he literally uses it in his kitchen to like cut vegetables and like make his plate and stuff like that. And I'm like, yeah, it's stuff like that. We need to start using office supplies in areas that can help us, you know, with our posture and our neck pain and our neck troubles and shoulder and back troubles when we're dealing with lower surfaces. I'm six four, so when I'm cooking, my posture is always so bad because my kitchen is literally designed by one of the Seven Dwarfs. I'm pretty sure I've just found the best life hack for twoll people that like to cook. So I was walking around my kid the other day and I just saw this and it was in the office sections. I think it's supposed to be for like your desk or like a monitor or something, But how brilliant is that for cooking? Like now I have like an extra few inches and I don't have to cratch my back and when I'm filming it, you can see exactly what's going on the plate. I don't know if I'm being stupid, and people have been doing this for years, but I have like literal chronic back pain from standing over this kitchen counterssop all day, and I think this might have just saved my life. I mean, it can actually be higher, to be honest, that I could do with it being like like an extra foot higher, But I can't find anything like that, and it unfortunately, but get yourselves down to our ka two girls. But anyways, that's more so for a posture. But in terms of the other things like your health conditions and menopause and aging, make sure you go to your doctor, do a bone density test, even eat your calcium, eat your vitamin D, make sure you exercise, you walk, lift weights, stretch yes, stretch, sleep and hopefully we could all collectively not shrink as much. I can't even wow, Like imagine being six feet or six to one. Then one day you just wake up and you're like five eleven five times. That's crazy to me, and that's probably some people's realities. Is it your reality? Let me know in the comments. I'm gonna end the episode here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you, of course. I was always feel free to help me up on my socials. And let me know what you thought about this episode. Are you a tall woman who's currently in menopause, just start a metopause or way down the line of menopause, and you noticed overtime that you got shorter. Let me know what that was like for you. Do you have any health or back conditions that affect your back your spine and cause you to appear shorter or cause you to be shorter, or do you also have posture issues that make you look shorter actually make you shorter. Let me know in the comments, let me know in my DMS. I'm open to having conversations. I just wanted to bring light to the fact that tall people can also actually experience type loss. And until then, I will catch y'all in the next one. Good night, and goodbye,