'the old man bent his back and walked slowly. 'This phenomenon does exist and is quite common. In severe cases, a person's height at 80 years old will be 10-15 cm shorter than that when he is young. Why is that?
The height of a person is mainly determined by the length of the spine and lower limbs. The adult spine consists of 26 vertebrae and intervertebral discs. Most people will feel that their back is straight. In fact, from the side, the spine is not straight, but there are four physiological curves, two anterior concave and two kyphosis. After offsetting each other, they are still straight. Among the four physiological curves, the kyphosis of thoracic vertebrae and lordosis of lumbar vertebrae have great influence on height.
When people reach adulthood, with the growth of age, the joints of the whole body will undergo degenerative changes, the articular cartilage becomes thinner due to wear and degradation, and the joint space becomes narrow. As a special joint between vertebrae, intervertebral disc is no exception. Moreover, older people will have more or less osteoporosis. In severe cases, the spine (especially the thoracic vertebrae and lumbar spine) will be overloaded under the pressure of weight, which will change from a square to a wedge with a low front and a high back.
Due to osteoporosis, multiple vertebrae become wedge-shaped, thoracic kyphosis increases and lumbar lordosis decreases. Finally, the whole spine becomes short in the front and high in the back, which is reflected in the body shape as a hunchback. Hunchback shortens the relative length of the spine and makes people shorter when standing
There are other reasons for short stature, among which the most important is the shrinking and thinning of cervical, thoracic and lumbar intervertebral discs. If the average thickness of each intervertebral disc is 3-4mm, the spine will be shortened by about 10cm. In addition, the hip joint, knee joint and ankle joint space of the lower limbs are narrow, especially when the knee joint is narrowed and becomes a circular leg, the height will be further reduced.