I am a biological female born without ovaries. AMA

Hi there. I too have a similar issue where an endocrine disorder screwed up my bodies natural hormone production. You've kind of got some of the details wrong, figured you'd want to know more.

There is a lot of misinformation about puberty and height. A lot of people presume that growing taller = puberty, but this is not true.

The long limb bones in all people keep growing until estrogen begin to effect the cells at the plates on the ends of the bones. This slows down and eventually stops the bone growth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyseal_plate

This is why boys grow taller than girls, because their bodies make less estrogen, and thus the bones take longer to fuse. In my case I didn't start HRT until I was 22 or so... I'm 5'11", but everyone else in my family is about 5"-6" shorter than me. I would be their height had I not had this condition, or gotten HRT about a decade sooner.

If you're interested, you can actually measure for this effect. Almost all adults have a nearly 1:1 height / armspan ratio, with adult males having an armspan generally about 4 cm longer than their height, and in girls, their armspan is about 1.5 cm longer than their height.

In the case of someone growing up with hypogonadism, you end up with longer arms and legs, but the ratio gets a little off. For example, my armspan is about 12 cm longer than my height, far outside of the normal bell curve.

To test for this, just stretch your arms out with your fingers out, and measure from fingertip to fingertip. Might want to get a friend to help.

Thanks for sharing though, always glad to hear from others out there with a similar story. There's not exactly a whole lot of people I can relate with fully. :/

/r/casualiama Thread Parent