For the vast majority of people, the answer is no. By your early-to-mid twenties, the cartilage zones responsible for bone lengthening have been replaced by solid bone, and no amount of exercise, diet, or supplementation can reopen them. There are genuine exceptions and a few ways your measured height can shift by a surprisingly large margin on any given day, but the biological window for true skeletal growth is narrow, and for most adults it has closed well before age 25.
Why Bones Stop Growing
Your long bones, the femur in your thigh and the tibia in your shin especially, grow from specialized strips of cartilage near their ends called growth plates. These plates contain layers of cartilage cells that multiply, stack up, enlarge, and are eventually replaced by hard bone tissue. The process is remarkably organized: new cartilage cells form at one edge, mature cells calcify and die at the other, and bone fills in behind them, making the bone a little longer each cycle.
The system has a built-in timer. The pool of progenitor cells in the resting zone of each growth plate is finite. Over the years of childhood and adolescence, those cells are gradually used up. As they deplete, the rate of new cartilage production slows, the plate thins, and eventually cartilage is fully replaced by bone and blood vessels. Once that replacement is complete, the growth plate is said to have “fused” or “closed,” and that bone can no longer get longer.
Estrogen is the key hormone driving this shutdown, in both men and women. Rising estrogen levels during puberty accelerate the consumption of those progenitor cells, speeding up the transition from cartilage to bone until the plate seals permanently. This is why children who enter puberty earlier tend to stop growing sooner, and why rare conditions involving estrogen deficiency can leave growth plates open unusually long.
When Do Growth Plates Actually Close?
Timing varies by bone and by individual, but the general pattern is fairly consistent. In girls, most growth plates fuse between ages 14 and 16. In boys, the process typically wraps up between 16 and 18, with some plates in the spine and pelvis lingering until the early twenties. The very last plates to close are usually those in the vertebral bodies and the collarbone, which can remain partly open until about age 25 in some people.
This is where the popular claim that “you can still grow until 25” comes from. It is technically possible for a small amount of spinal growth to occur into the early twenties, but the contribution is tiny, usually less than a centimeter, and most people have already reached their final height well before that. If you measured yourself at 18 and again at 24, you’d be unlikely to notice any difference attributable to actual bone growth.
Doctors can check growth plate status with a simple X-ray of the wrist or hand, comparing the appearance of specific bones to a standard atlas. If the plates appear fused, no further longitudinal growth is expected, regardless of age. This is the same technique used to estimate skeletal maturity in children being evaluated for growth disorders.
The Exceptions That Actually Exist
A small number of people do experience meaningful height gain in their twenties, but the circumstances are specific and usually medical.
The most common scenario involves delayed puberty. Some adolescents, particularly boys, enter puberty significantly later than their peers. Because estrogen levels remain low longer, their growth plates stay open longer, and they continue growing past the typical age. In one study, boys with constitutional delay of growth who were treated with low-dose testosterone saw their growth velocity jump to about 10 cm per year, compared with 4 cm per year in an untreated control group, and their predicted adult height was not compromised by the treatment. The key point is that these individuals’ growth plates had not yet closed, so the growth was real skeletal elongation, not a trick of measurement.
A rarer exception is excess growth hormone production in adulthood, typically from a benign pituitary tumor. If the excess begins before growth plates close, it causes gigantism, with dramatically increased height. If it begins afterward, the condition is called acromegaly, which thickens bones and soft tissues (the jaw, hands, and feet enlarge) but does not add height because the long bones can no longer lengthen. The distinction makes the point clearly: once growth plates are fused, even flooding the body with growth hormone cannot make bones longer.
There are also rare genetic conditions involving the SHOX gene and other growth-related genes that alter the timing of plate closure, but these are typically identified in childhood, not discovered as a surprise in a twenty-something hoping for a late growth spurt.
Why You Measure Taller in the Morning
If you’ve ever measured yourself first thing in the morning and then again before bed, you may have noticed a real difference, sometimes close to 2 centimeters. This is not an error. It is a well-documented phenomenon driven by the intervertebral discs in your spine.
Your spine has 23 intervertebral discs, gel-filled cushions sitting between the vertebrae. When you’re upright during the day, gravity and the weight of your body compress these discs, squeezing fluid out of them. When you lie down to sleep, osmotic pressure draws fluid back in, re-inflating the discs to their full height. A study tracking this cycle in adult men found a peak-to-trough variation of about 19 mm, with the tallest measurement right after waking and the shortest around midnight. Imaging studies confirm that this fluid loss and recovery happens across the entire spine, from the neck down to the lower back.
This daily fluctuation is completely normal and has nothing to do with bone growth. It is purely a function of disc hydration. But it does mean that if you’re comparing height measurements taken at different times of day, you could easily mistake normal disc compression for a gain or loss of height. This is one reason researchers who study height changes use standardized measurement times and techniques, the variability is large enough to swamp small real changes if you’re not careful.
Can Posture Make You Measurably Taller?
Posture correction is the most realistic way for a healthy adult to gain measured height, though the gain is not new growth. It is the recovery of height that was always there but being lost to spinal curvature, muscle imbalances, or habitual slouching.
Consider how much height poor posture can cost. A person with excessive thoracic kyphosis (a pronounced forward curve of the upper back) or forward head posture is effectively shortening the vertical distance between the top of their head and the ground. The spine is a long, flexible column, and even modest increases in its curvature subtract from standing height. Conversely, reducing that curvature straightens the column and restores height.
A study on elderly participants found that a single session of acute postural exercises produced an average measured height increase of roughly 3.5 cm, with individual gains ranging from under a centimeter to over 7 cm. The effect was large enough to reclassify more than half of the participants into a lower BMI category. These were not young adults, and the results reflect how much height older people lose to postural decline. In a twenty-something with poor posture, the potential recovery would be smaller but still meaningful, perhaps a centimeter or two.
The gains from posture work are real in the sense that a stadiometer will record them, but they are not skeletal growth. Your bones have not changed length. What has changed is the alignment and spacing of those bones. If you stop doing the exercises and revert to old habits, you lose the height again. Still, for someone in their twenties who wants to maximize their measured height, consistent postural work is the most evidence-backed approach available.
Spinal Manipulation and Traction Therapies
Manual therapies like spinal traction and certain chiropractic techniques can produce a measurable, temporary increase in height by decompressing the intervertebral discs. One study found that a session of manual axial traction produced a mean height gain of about 8.6 mm. Sustained side-lying (simply lying on your side for a period) also produced a significant increase.
These effects work through the same mechanism as the morning height boost: they allow fluid to re-enter compressed discs. The height gain reverses once you resume normal upright activity and gravity starts compressing the discs again. No manual therapy has been shown to produce a lasting height increase in adults with closed growth plates. If a practitioner tells you their technique can permanently add inches, the evidence does not support that claim.
Limb-Lengthening Surgery
For adults who want permanent height gain and are willing to accept serious surgical risks, limb-lengthening surgery exists. The procedure involves deliberately cutting a bone, usually the femur or tibia, and then gradually pulling the two halves apart using an external or internal fixation device. New bone (called regenerate) fills the gap over several months. In one study using a linear rail fixation system, the mean length of new bone achieved was about 9.6 cm, though these were patients with bone defects rather than cosmetic cases.
Cosmetic limb-lengthening typically targets a more modest 5 to 8 cm of gain and involves a prolonged recovery period, often a year or more of restricted mobility. The procedure carries real risks including infection, nerve damage, uneven bone healing, and chronic pain. It also costs tens of thousands of dollars and is not covered by insurance when performed for cosmetic reasons. The surgery is growing in popularity, particularly among young men, but orthopedic surgeons generally consider it a last resort, appropriate for significant limb-length discrepancies or dwarfism rather than for someone who wishes they were a couple of inches taller.
Supplements, Stretching Routines, and Other Claims
The internet is saturated with products and programs claiming to help adults grow taller: HGH supplements, amino acid stacks, specific stretching protocols, inversion tables, “grow taller” subliminal audio tracks. None of these have credible evidence behind them for adults whose growth plates have closed.
Growth hormone supplementation in adults with normal GH levels does not reopen growth plates or cause bones to lengthen. It can increase lean mass and decrease fat mass, but the bones themselves do not get longer. Over-the-counter “HGH releasers” are even less promising, since most are amino acid blends that produce trivially small, short-lived bumps in circulating growth hormone, nowhere near the levels needed for even the soft-tissue effects seen with injectable GH.
Stretching and hanging from a bar can transiently decompress the spine, producing the same temporary height increase you get from lying down. The effect disappears within minutes to hours of resuming normal activity. Yoga and Pilates can improve posture over time, which may lead to a lasting increase in measured height as discussed earlier, but this is alignment correction, not skeletal growth.
Inversion tables work on the same principle of spinal decompression. They can provide temporary relief from back pain for some people and will make you slightly taller immediately after use, but the effect is fleeting. No study has shown that prolonged or repeated inversion leads to a permanent increase in adult height.
How Measurement Errors Create False Hope
A surprising amount of the “I grew an inch in my twenties” anecdotal evidence can be explained by measurement inconsistency. Height measurement sounds simple but is surprisingly sensitive to technique. As noted earlier, the time of day matters: you can easily be 1.5 cm shorter by mid-afternoon compared to first thing in the morning. Research on measurement technique has shown that even the protocol used, whether the person steps in and out of the stadiometer between readings or stays in place, introduces meaningful variability.
Footwear, hair volume, how firmly the headpiece is pressed down, whether the person is instructed to stand with a stretched or unstretched technique, and how much effort they put into standing tall all influence the reading. A study comparing stretched and unstretched height measurements in the same individuals found that the major loss of height during the day, about 1 cm by stretched technique, occurred in just the first three hours after waking, with maximal loss reaching about 1.4 cm by mid-afternoon.
If you were measured casually at a doctor’s office at 4 PM when you were 18, and then measured yourself carefully at 7 AM when you were 23, you could easily see a difference of a centimeter or more that has nothing to do with growth. The lesson is straightforward: if you want to track your height accurately, measure at the same time of day, using the same technique, wearing the same footwear (or none), and ideally using the same stadiometer.
The Secular Trend and Generational Height Differences
One reason people sometimes believe adults continue growing is that younger generations genuinely are taller than older ones, and it can be tempting to attribute this to individual growth continuing past adolescence. In reality, the secular trend in height is a population-level phenomenon driven primarily by improvements in nutrition and disease control during early childhood. Research indicates that the increase in height from one generation to the next occurs mainly in the first two years of life, driven by increases in leg length. Data on American women born between 1900 and 1965 showed a gain of about 1 cm per decade in peak adult height over that period.
This trend means a 25-year-old today is likely taller than a 25-year-old born 40 years ago, but it does not mean any individual 25-year-old is still growing. The height was gained in infancy and childhood, not in adulthood.
Height Loss With Age and When It Starts
While most people in their twenties are at or near their peak height, it is worth knowing that height loss begins earlier than most people expect. Studies suggest measurable shrinkage can start in the thirties or forties, driven by disc dehydration, vertebral compression, and postural changes. One longitudinal study of healthy women found only trivial decline in the fifth and sixth decades, but cross-sectional data consistently show a cumulative loss of several centimeters by old age.
For someone in their twenties, the practical takeaway is that maintaining spinal health now, through core strengthening, posture awareness, and adequate calcium and vitamin D intake, is more about preserving current height than gaining new height. The habits that keep your discs hydrated, your vertebrae strong, and your posture upright will pay dividends in the decades ahead, even if they will not make you taller than your genetic blueprint intended.
Height Dissatisfaction and Why It Matters
The question “can I still get taller?” is rarely a purely academic one. For many people, it is driven by genuine dissatisfaction with their height, and that dissatisfaction can have psychological weight. A narrative review found that height dissatisfaction is associated with lower self-esteem, body image concerns, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. This is not a trivial cosmetic preference for many individuals, it is linked to how they feel about themselves in social and romantic contexts.
The pattern of dissatisfaction is not the same for everyone. A study of Australian adults found that men overwhelmingly wished to be taller, and those who felt a gap between their actual and ideal height reported significantly greater dissatisfaction. Women showed a more complex pattern: shorter women wanted to be taller, while taller women wanted to be shorter, with both groups reporting elevated dissatisfaction compared to women content with their height. Height concerns affect both genders, though the direction and nature of the discrepancy differ.
Understanding this psychological dimension matters because it shapes how people respond to claims about height-increasing products and procedures. Someone who is deeply unhappy about their height is more vulnerable to predatory marketing for supplements, devices, or programs that have no evidence behind them. Recognizing that height is essentially fixed in adulthood, and that dissatisfaction with it is a common and understandable human experience, can help redirect energy from chasing impossible growth toward strategies that actually make a difference, like posture optimization, or toward addressing the dissatisfaction itself through psychological support.
Genetics and the Limits of Lifestyle
Height is one of the most heritable human traits, with genetic factors accounting for a large portion of the variation between individuals in well-nourished populations. Research has identified thousands of genetic variants that each contribute a small amount to final height, and a polygenic score built from these variants correlates with the magnitude and speed of growth during the adolescent growth spurt. The genetic architecture influencing how tall you grow and how fast you grow overlaps considerably, though genetics does not appear to control the timing of the growth spurt itself.
What this means practically is that if you had adequate nutrition and no serious illness during childhood and adolescence, you almost certainly reached the height your genes intended. There is no hidden genetic potential waiting to be unlocked in your twenties. The growth plate cells that could have been influenced by nutrition or hormones have already done their work and been replaced by bone. Lifestyle interventions in adulthood, no matter how disciplined, cannot restart a process that has been structurally completed at the cellular level. Growth plate chondrocytes have a finite proliferative capacity that is gradually used up, and once it is exhausted, the growth plate closes permanently.