Dude, where's my height??-----Boys who smoke cannabis ‘are four inches shorter’

Boys who smoke cannabis ‘are four inches shorter’ - Telegraph
Boys who smoke cannabis before puberty could be stunting their growth by more than four inches, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that youngsters who were addicted to the drug were far shorter than their non-smoking peers.

And they also discovered that rather than being a relaxing pass time, smoking dope actually makes the body more stressed in the long term.

"Marijuana use may provoke a stress response that stimulates onset of puberty but suppresses growth rate,” said study leader Dr Syed Shakeel Raza Rizvi, of the Agriculture University Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

Scientists at the Pir Mehr Ali Shah Agriculture University Rawalpindi in Pakistan studied the levels of certain hormones involved in growth and puberty in the blood of 220 non-smoking and 217 cannabis-addicted boys.

Levels of puberty-related hormones such as testosterone and luteinising hormone (LH) were increased in the cannabis smokers. In contrast, growth hormone levels in the group were decreased.

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It was also found that non-smoking boys were on average four kilos heavier and 4.6 inches taller by the age of 20 than the dope smokers.

The researchers also looked at the effect of smoking cannabis on levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, in 10 cannabis addicts.

They found that dope smokers have significantly higher levels of cortisol than non-smokers...