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I've been reading up a bit on skeletal growth, and I wanted to make an observation about the discussion around skeletal growth that I see online.
I consistently see a negative attitude across mainstream sites like reddit towards anyone inquiring whether they have growth left, or asking about advice on how to grow more. I think this might play into Culture War because there's obviously a battle between the different "pills" on the role of male height in sexual attraction, and perhaps this battle has reached the general public. It seems commenters on these posts want to distance themselves from the "black pillers" who place extreme importance on height. They're so scared of being lumped in with the outgroup that they will avoid giving any practical advice.
Basically, it seems that commenters assume there's some motive around confidence or sexual attraction involved whenever a guy is asking about how to grow taller, and because of that assumption, they try to address the "deeper issue" instead of addressing the guy's practical concern around actually getting taller. People can have a multitude of reasons for wanting to increase not just height but frame size. Frame size governs the maximum amount of strength and muscle you'll be able to build. Average stature is probably the ideal for overall health. Then you have the idea that height can be useful (but not necessary of course) for business endeavors, etc. Commenters immediately assume that "growth/height" posts are the result of low confidence and some kind of issue with women, but overall stature (not just height) does seem to have benefits, and while nobody should beat themselves up for their stature, why not optimize it?
People consistently say that "it's mostly genetics", and while it may indeed be "mostly genetics" that explains deviations from normal height at a population level (?, because what about the theory of increasing height with current generations due to better nutrition), you have no way of knowing whether a particular person's deviation from normal height is explained mostly by genetics.
It could be that a particular individual's deviation from normal height is mostly explained by non-genetic factors. Things like low birth weight, malnutrition, hypothyroidism or other glandular conditions, and even childhood trauma can result in stunted growth. Now, these subsets of the population may not be very common, but they exist and it's not fair to tell them they wouldn't be able to significantly change their stature with the right medical treatment at the right time (perhaps involving HGH or other hormonal treatment to stimulate catch-up growth).
Also, even for people without some preexisting cause of short stature, do we really know that their parents achieved their genetic potential? What if the child has the potential for greater growth than they are experiencing? Couldn't there be a relatively safe way and time to take HGH to boost height in such a case? And aside from taking HGH, the things that optimize growth tend to be good for your overall health anyway: right sleeping habits, diet, active lifestyle, and maybe some protein supplementation. Yet most people don't even give these suggestions to people asking for help on reddit (to be charitable, a decent number of commenters on "growth" discussions do give these suggestions, but why would anyone not give these suggestions?)
Then you have all the people who say "your growth plates are closed at your age", sometimes to men who are freaking 18 years old. It does seem that many people (especially women) do not grow past 18, I certainly did not, but it doesn't seem responsible to make such a blanket statement. For most people, growth plates close at different times and often not completely until your early 20s. There's tons of research on this. Also, not that many people really "try" to get taller for a significant amount of time, at least not once they are 18. A lot of people seem to accept the "100% genetics" shtick. Do we really know what could be possible? Who are we to say that a well-timed calorie surplus and right sleeping habits/diet/exercise/stress management and relaxation in someone's late teens and early 20s, combined with some HGH and something to keep growth plates open, would not measurably change their final height, assuming the person was not optimizing these factors before? It may not always work, but who is to say it wouldn't have an effect for a given individual?
It shouldn't be taboo for someone to try to optimize their own body.
Then there's all the people who say they had crappy lifestyle habits and still grew tall, or had great lifestyle habits and had short stature. And to that I say, indeed genetics has a big role to play. Some people will be big and tall no matter almost anything, others could be small no matter what (although HGH might have some effect anyway if started at the right times?). My main point is that there's probably a subset of the population that is underachieving relative to their genetic potential, so why shouldn't those people try to reach their genetic limit? Why does that point elude so many people on mainstream sites? I have provided some reasons at the start of the post but perhaps there are others.
Now, I don't believe in giving people false expectations, so I understand if that's why people are often dismissive. But, while you should not "expect" height or other skeletal growth from any intervention, it's not right to entirely and often smugly dismiss it like so many commenters on these kinds of posts do. It really does not seem impossible. In so far as my common sense is accurate, there are things people can do to optimize growth and maybe make a difference, HGH being the most significant of those things but healthy lifestyle habits being not insignificant. Perhaps I am wrong about much of this, I am still forming my opinions on this matter but this post shows where I stand at this time.
I don't think a scientific response is what you are looking for but....
It seems from animal models that growth hormone increases growth speed but not where you end up? Not sure why you hope this is a silver bullet. People are probably dismissive because it doesn't seem to be something that is currently possible. It is of course possible there is an unknown mechanism, but that wouldn't be helpful advice, either. Most men reach their peak height by 16. I certainly wouldn't suggest anyone on an internet forum follow a medical intervention (as you are suggesting with a combination of HGH plus "something to keep the growth plates open") if that medical intervention doesn't actually exist as a testable efficacious thing.
I don't think this is culture war related contempt, like you are implying, but rather just people thinking people are asking for something unreasonable. Like if I went on a similar forum and asked what I could do to turn my eyes purple. In the future, there might be a safe way to inject pigment into the iris or similar, but for now people would tell me to get over it.
There are also plenty of known relationships between adolescent nutrition and final height. IIRC there are some studies (and a bunch of aligning personal anecdotes) that kids that do weight class sports end up stunting their height by trying to stay under a certain weight. But that's not as much "advice for getting taller" as it is counter-advice for being shorter.
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I never got around to reading up on it, but apparently you don't need to look at animal models, as trying to control human height with hormones is a thing that actually happened IRL. If you want a summary, and don't mind reading someone with an axe to grind, Mia Hughes wrote a chapter on it in the WPATH Files (it starts at the bottom of the page: "Engineering Children’s Height With Hormones").
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