A Downside To Being Tall

It increases your chances of getting cancer:

Surprisingly, one major cancer risk is your height. In fact, [George] Johnson [author of The Cancer Chronicles] notes, one large study found that “every four inches over 5 feet increased cancer risk by 16 percent.” The likely reason: If you’re tall, you have more cells in your body, and thus more opportunities to get cancer when cell division goes awry. “People who are taller had more cellular divisions to produce the taller body and therefore more chance to accumulate these mutations along the way,” says Johnson. “This is not something you can do anything about.”

Additional intriguing evidence of the height-cancer relationship comes from a group of Ecuadoran villagers who suffer from Laron syndrome, a type of dwarfism. Johnson reports that “because of a mutation involving their growth hormone receptors, the tallest men are four and a half feet and the women are six inches shorter…They hardly ever get cancer or diabetes, even though they are often obese.”