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Short people perceive poorer quality of life

A study has found that the height of an adult significantly affects the persons quality of life.

Washington, Oct 18 : A study has found that the height of an adult significantly affects the person's quality of life.

The study led by Senior Health Economist Torsten Christensen at Novo Nordisk A/S in Denmark, found that shorter the person, the worse is his or her physical and mental health.

"We know that people who are short experience more difficulties in areas of their life such as education, employment and relationships than people of normal height. However, the relationship between height and psychosocial well-being is not well understood," Christensen said.

"Using the study, we found shorter people report that they experience lower physical and mental well-being than taller people do," he said.

In the study a data from an earlier survey was analysed to assess the relationship between height and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL).

In the 2003 survey, a total of 14 416 participants were made to fill out a health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire and a nurse measured their height.

The questionnaire did not measure a person's health, but it measured how good a person thought their health was.

The questionnaire scrutinized five areas of well being: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain or discomfort, and anxiety or depression.

Researchers controlled the results in the study for the effects of other well-known indicators of HRQoL such as age, gender, body weight, long-standing illness and social class.

The analysis found that people in the shortest height category, i.e. men shorter than 162 cm and women shorter than 151 cm, experienced significantly lower HRQoL than people of normal height.

This implied that a small increase in height had a much larger positive effect on a short person than it did on a person of normal height.

From the findings the researchers suggested that by increasing height by 7 cm for men and 6 cm for women, people of short stature could increase their HRQoL by 6.1 percent.

The study is published in Clinical Endocrinology.

ANI