Many parents are concerned about their child’s height and wonder if there are effective methods in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to enhance growth. The answer is, yes!
Factors Affecting Children’s Growth
Traditional Chinese medicine teaches the concept of “spring birth, summer growth, autumn harvest, and winter storage.” Spring and summer are the seasons of revival and growth. These are the golden periods for children to grow taller. Besides this, parents need to understand other factors affecting children’s growth, specifically:
- Genetic inheritance: According to reports, genetics play a significant role in determining a child’s height, accounting for around 70%. What about the remaining 30%? Let’s move on!
- Sleep: Quality, rather than quantity, is essential for growth during sleep. Ensuring good night-time sleep for children is crucial. Early sleep can enhance the child’s immunity, reduce the risk of illness, and promote growth. The “Huangdi Neijing” (an ancient Chinese medical text) records, “In the three months of summer, this is the time of abundance. The heavens and the earth interact, and everything is luxuriantly flourishing…”. It suggests that one should follow the rules of nature, get up with the sunrise, and rest with the sunset.
- Diet: According to TCM, the spleen and stomach are the source of postnatal life and biochemical transformation. Children’s food needs to be received by the stomach and transformed by the spleen to be absorbed as nutrients, promoting growth. However, it’s not about eating more, but absorbing nutrients that count! Children should eat dinner earlier and not too full, preferably before 19:00. Late, heavy meals can lead to indigestion, disturb sleep quality, and hinder growth.
- Exercise: Although exercise helps grow taller, not all types of exercise have this effect. Generally, jumping, coordination, and stretching exercises, such as basketball, swimming, rope jumping, gymnastics, running, and kicking shuttlecock, can help children grow taller. Meanwhile, some weight-bearing exercises, like weight lifting and heavy running, can negatively affect growth.
- Emotion: TCM believes that liver-wood restricts spleen-earth. In other words, frequent temper and poor emotion can affect the digestive function of the spleen and stomach. Therefore, it’s important to pay attention to children’s emotional health and help them manage negative emotions appropriately.
TCM Manipulative Therapies to Promote Children’s Height
Pediatric tuina is an external treatment method in TCM, guided by TCM basic theories, stimulating specific acupoints on children to facilitate the circulation of meridians and blood, aiming to adjust visceral function and maintain health. If you want to promote children’s height development, it’s recommended to adopt methods to supplement the spleen and kidney and regulate the liver and qi. Here are two manipulative therapies to promote children’s height in TCM:
- Supplementing Spleen Meridian
Location: On the radial side of the thumb.
Operation: Push from the fingertip to the root of the finger for 3-5 minutes.
Effects: Strengthening the spleen and stomach and assisting digestion.
- Supplementing Kidney Meridian
Location: On the palm of the little finger, from the fingertip to the root of the finger.
Operation: Push from the fingertip towards the heart for 1-10 minutes.
Effects: Supplementing the kidney and brain, strengthening muscles and bones.