In today’s word, many people dislike being short. Fortunately, there are many different methods for increasing your height and promoting good bone health. Many don’t realize it, but these two go hand in hand. Follow these height increasing tips and you’ll see what I mean.

Exercising is very important when growing taller, especially when you hit puberty. This is a crucial time in everyone’s life. If you don’t exercise, you risk becoming unhealthily overweight. This puts additional strain on your bones, which in turns affects your bone health later in life. Exercising to grow taller is effective. When you’re young, intense exercise releases height growth hormones, which in turn helps cause much of the growth spurts you experience.

However, do not believe any program that claims to be able to stretch or lengthen your bones through stretches after you’ve reached puberty. To understand why, you must first know how our bones grow.

When we are infants, we have over 100 more bones than we do as an adult. Many of these new bones are made of cartilage. As we grow up, this cartilage shifts and hardens to form solid adult bones. Additionally, cartilage growth plates on the ends of our longer bones are what help our bones lengthen when we grow. Once they stop growing, nothing will make them grow again. They’re done.

However, exercising as an adult can still help you look taller. It produces muscle mass and slims you down, which makes it easier to maintain the illusion that you’re taller than you really are.

Diet is also extremely important. Calcium is one of the most essential nutrients you can provide yourself—they promote strong, healthy bones. Depriving yourself of calcium results in your body using stores of its own calcium to make up for the lack—which results in your bones actually weakening as their calcium stores grow lower. Add protein, calories, amino acids, and other essential nutrients, and you have what you need to make your body strong and healthy.

Keeping your bones healthy throughout your life can actually prevent you growing even shorter when you get older. When we become elderly, our bones have a greater tendency to weaken and even shrink. By not taking care of your bones, you put yourself at risk for osteoporosis and other bone diseases.