Teen drops $2,350 on body-lengthening treatment, grows 1.4cm in 6 months. Then shrinks back two weeks later

A 16-year-old boy in China spent $2,350 on a body lengthening treatment that promised to make him taller. After six months of regular sessions, he grew just 1.4 centimeters. But his small height gain disappeared completely within two weeks of stopping the treatment.

The teenager, known by his surname Huang, got treatment from February to August at a place in Xiamen, located in Fujian province in southeastern China. His father paid 16,700 yuan for the sessions, which happened once every week or two weeks. The treatment involved stretching Huang’s legs and using medical equipment to activate his knees, with the goal of helping his bones grow.

According to SCMP, by August, Huang’s height had gone up from 165 centimeters to 166.4 centimeters. But just over 10 days after finishing the program, he had shrunk back to his original height of 165 centimeters. When Huang’s father complained to the place about the results, staff members told him that his son was too old to be corrected and gave back the full amount. The father said they should have been honest about this from the start.

Doctors say the science behind stretching treatments doesn’t work

Dr. Wu Xueyan, a doctor at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, said the treatment approach doesn’t work. He explained that while stretching can add half to one centimeter to a person’s height for a short time, this is no different from the normal height changes people have throughout the day. A person in the morning is half to one centimeter taller than themselves in the afternoon, Wu said, because body weight pushes down on the spine during the day and it relaxes at night.

Wu said that humans are not noodles and cannot be stretched longer through force. He pointed out that good ways to support natural growth include exercise, which helps boost growth hormones, along with good quality sleep. The doctor said that genetics make up about 80 percent of a person’s height, while things like sleep quality make up the remaining 20 percent.

The place claimed their treatment was meant to help a child’s knee bones grow taller. However, similar to other questionable medical practices that exploit vulnerable people, this approach has no real science behind it. During the six-month period, Huang’s father noticed that his son’s height would go down when they skipped an appointment, but the place said this was only because the treatment was not finished yet.

The case has started a lot of talk online, with many people saying that places like this take advantage of parents who worry about their children’s height. One person said that if such treatments really worked, there would be no short people. Others asked for stronger government watch over these places and better public information about the science of how children grow. The place’s name was not shared, and nobody knows if it had the right papers to do such treatments on children. Much like people who fall victim to various scams, Huang’s family learned an expensive lesson about promises that sound too good to be true.