When the website was first beginning I had written a post listing which steroids have been discussed with the possibility of increasing height or stunting growth. The post “Grow Taller Using Steroids , Part I” has been one of the most visited posts and it seems that the effects of steroids have never been answered. Would they stimulate or inhibit height?

The answer is that it really depends on the type of steroids one decides to use. Some steroids have been shown to actually increase the growth rate in children with still open growth plates, and others accelerate the senescence of the growth plates and increase the maturity of the bones.

Something we really should be asking ourselves is this “What is the technical definition of steroids?”

It turns out that the term “steroids” refers to any type of laboratory created synthetic hormone which will have similar effects as the sex hormones aka androgens the males of our species releases in their testicles.

Note: This information is below taken from the Steroids.com website.

The definition of an anabolic steroid as defined currently in the United States under (41)(A) is that “anabolic steroid” means any drug or hormonal substance, chemically and pharmacologically related to testosterone (other than estrogens, progestins, corticosteroids, and dehydroepiandrosterone (7).

What we the general public refers to when we use the word “Steroids” are the anabolic steroids type. If we were to use the technical term for steroid found from the field of Chemistry, we would get something different which would not have the same function for the context of the subject we are talking about.

It seems that steroids are then just the synthetic version of testosterone. There has been many studies which show that for males, the hormone that makes them become “men” in the biological definition, is from the androgen testosterone which is made in the male gonads. When a young adolescent male starts going through puberty, they get both the rush of the female androgen estrogen and the male androgen testosterone. The female gonads, the ovaries also produce progesterone but that it not our talk for this post.

It is testosterone which makes males feel stronger, have bigger, thicker muscles, and have increased sexual drive and sexual stamina.

However, there is another type of hormone that is released by the human endocrine system which have similar effects towards making people feel younger, stronger, and increased sexual drive. That is the growth hormones or hGH which is released by the pituitary gland. This is what we as height increase researchers are looking into.

And for me personally, this is what I would also label as a steroid. If a company is manufacturing synthetic versions of the somatropin, I would also call it a steroid.

In my definition of the word “steroids”, it refer to lab derived versions of the Growth Hormones made by the pituitary gland and the Testosterone made by the male gonads.  

There has been many, many people who claim that steroids is bad for a kid who is still growing. Everyone seems to quote the famous horror stories of stunted growth and shrinking testicles, but from what I have researched, there has not been even 1 study which shows the direct link and harm from steroid usage and really bad negative side effects. If a person can direct me to at least 3 PubMed studies showing negative consequences of using steroids within physically mature males I would greatly appreciate it.

If “steroids” are just testosterone and gonadotropin, then why is it bad for a person?

It is bad if a teenage boy who is already having his body filled with hormones get even more. That is like turning an already horny teenage boy even crazier with sexual frustration with more testosterone. It could turn that teenage male potentially violent from sexual repression.

The thing is that I don’t study the science on how to get bigger muscles and how to increase male sexual performance, or stamina. That is for another researcher. Let’s get back to how steroids affect height.

So if steroids are just growth hormones and testosterone, how would they effect the growth process of a person with open growth plates?

As for height, the synthetic steroids for growth hormones derived from the hypothalamus-pituitary gland region of the brain like Genotropin, Somatropin, Humatrope, would actually increase the growth rate and the final height of people who take it. However, the effects may be very small. When we look at the case of Lionel Messi and how he started to take Growth Hormone injections to prevent him from becoming too small in life. The story about Messi and his height was that when he was a young kid, his parents noticed that he was much shorter and smaller than his peers. From doctors testing him, they had concluded that Messi was short statured due to what is known as Growth Hormone Deficiency. The growth plates in his body had the receptors to accept any GH that was in his system, but there was not enough being produced. If Messi did not take the injection, because his body (pituitary glands and adrenal glands) was not producing either the hGH or the IGF-1, he would have ended up much shorter than his current stature of 5′ 7″ which is still on the short side for professional soccer/futbol players. I wrote a post about the unique situation of Messi in the post “Lionel Messi Using Growth Hormone Therapy To Increase Height And Grow Taller”.

I have shown in previous posts that if a male gets too much testosterone into their system while they are still growing ie in their puberty phase, it will convert aka aromatize into the female androgen estrogen and that is what will speed up the rate at which the chondrocytes in the growth plate are being depleted. From my research, it seems that estrogen has been the real activation key on not just determining when the cartilage in the growth plates will disappear, but also when the stage of puberty will begin. This is why people tell a person who decides to use steroids that they are going to end up with stunted growth. If you get too much testosterone into the system, that just leads to more estrogen which will strip the resting zone of the chondrocytes needed for further longitudinal growth.

Clear Examples:

In this article from the LA Times in 2007 entitled “Estrogen’s history as a growth limiter” we find parents who asked physicians to inject their daughter with estrogen to limit her growth and height so that they can always take care of her.

In the post “Alpha, Above Average Testosterone Males Are More Likely To Be Taller, An Endocrine Explanation” I had shown that males who might have slightly higher rates of testosterone rate in their body than their male peers might end up being taller than them as well as more violent and dominant in behavior. However we must be careful not to get too much of the testosterone.

In the post “People Who Lack Functional Estrogen Receptors Become 7 Feet Tall?” I had referenced at least 2 cases of males who had a genetic trait where they did not have receptors in the growth plate to accept the estrogen in their system, which meant that their growth plate cartilage never completely ossified and they ended up being 6′ 8″-7’0″.

Lastly, I have cited this study many times but I will reference it again. The study “Normal bone growth requires optimal estrogen levels: negative effects of both high and low dose estrogen on the number of growth plate chondrocytes.” shows that if a person has too much or too little estrogen in their system, they are going to have stunted growth. There is an optimal level of estrogen. For most men, we go through with puberty later than females so we have on average an extra 2 years of growth before our plates ossify due to the chondrocytes running out. This suggests that having a little extra testosterone might be actually beneficial for height increase but only up a certain point. However, there are a certain portion of the male population that already has too much testosterone and taking the steroids will only lead to decreased final height.

At this point, there is no way to separate which males in a group will steroids actually stimulate height increase and which males steroids would inhibit height growth.

The point that this post is supposed to make is that there is a link between using steroids and possibly stunted growth.

However if we decided to take the other type of “steroids” (which I have defined) in terms of synthetic recombinant growth hormones aka somatropins like genotropin, humatrope, etc. it would not stunt our growth but actually increase it if one is going through the puberty phase.

In addition, there are steroid derivatives like Anavar and Letrozole which have PubMed studies backing up the theory that these aromatizing inhibiting compounds will increase the growth period and stop the chondrocytes from being used up too quickly making the final height increase.

At this point I don’t know if the human body can ever become fully saturated with too much growth hormone from taking GH injections. From the pathologies of Gigantism and Acromegaly and how they affect the human body, it would seem that the human body might not have a saturation point on at least somatropin uptake.