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Without a doubt, one of the first things that people notice about you is your height. The common perception is that men who are taller are more athletic, attractive and successful.
While for women there isn’t as much pressure to be tall, in the last few years, taller women are also being perceived as more attractive than their shorter counterparts.
While some short men and even women become discontent with their height and even go up to the extent of bone lengthening surgery to increase their height, what is often overlooked is the fact that there are advantages to being vertically challenged. These are the four scientific advantages of being a short person:
1. You will live longer
A study published in the journal PLoS One revealed that the taller you are, the more prone it makes prone to faster mortality. Men with a shorter stature have a longer lifespan. This study included 8000 Japanese-American men who were followed over a span of 40 years. Following that, researchers came to the conclusion that though taller men are more prone to chronic conditions as compared to short men [1].
2. Reduced cancer risk in men and women
A 2014 study published in the Cancer Causes & Control journal found that taller men and women are at an increased risk of cancer and cancer related deaths [2]. This study included 38, 862 participants who were diagnosed with cancer. In fact several studies have found that taller women are more prone to ovarian cancer and even brea$t cancer in (tall) menopausal women, increasing their risk by 20%. On the other hand, taller men are more prone to colon, rectum, and prostate cancers.
3. Lower risk of suffering from blood clots
Here’s some more bad news for tall people, if you lead a sedentary lifestyle, you are at a higher risk of developing recurrent blood clots or venous thrombosis. A study published in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis in 2015 found that tall men between the height of 195-200 cm were at an increased risk of recurrent blood clots by at least two and a half times [3].
4. Information travels to your brain faster
Neurologist David Eagleman found that taller people tend to experience the world at a slower pace as compared to their shorter counterparts. To be more precise, taller people take at least one-tenth of a second longer to receive sensory data through their eyes, ears, tongue and skin
This is because being tall means for your brain to receive these signals, the information has to travel through longer neural pathways. Eagleman argued that for a tall person, the present is the past, by one-tenth of a second!