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Asked by Einstein123jnr to Áine, Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia, Victoria on 7 Nov 2014.
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Ciarán O'Brien answered on 7 Nov 2014:
It’s essentially because as you get older, your body starts to wear out. Damage accumulates from day to day use that can’t be repaired. Muscles start to lose their strength, bones become more brittle, you can develop arthritis and other things that can change the shape of bones (like that hump/slouch you sometimes see in elderly people), or your skin starts to wrinkle up and lose its firmness. In some parts of your body the cells stop dividing as fast as they used to, and you get what’s called atrophy of the tissues and organs, as new cells don’t appear fast enough to replace the ones that die off. All of these combine to cause older people to shrink.
It can be delayed well into old age by eating healthily and staying fit, but eventually there’s only so much wear and tear the human body can take, so it starts breaking down and getting smaller.
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Lydia Bach answered on 9 Nov 2014:
Hi Einstein123jnr,
Older people often only shrink an inch more or less from how tall they were in the 20s. There are lots of different reasons for that. It is partially because the disks and joints between the bones get’s compacted and become smaller over time (a little bit like wear and tear), or because of a bone disease called osteoporosis, where the mass of the bone becomes smaller.
Not just old people shrink, even people as young as 30 can start shrinking. Given that people tend to stop growing at about 20 years, that only gives you 10 years of being as tall as you can possibly be. Or you wear plateau shoes!
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Áine Broderick answered on 10 Nov 2014:
Also, you are tallest first thing in the morning, when you get out of bed. This is because when you lie down, gravity is spread across your body evenly, when you stand up gravity is pushing on you. Also, astronauts come back taller when they were in space (no gravity).
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