How to Grow Taller at 17: What Actually Works (And What Doesn’t)

At 17, you’re somewhere between “I’m probably done” and “there’s still a chance.” Both can be true at once, depending on your body, your sex, and a little bit of luck.

The honest answer is that height growth at 17 is still biologically possible for some teens, though the window is closing fast for most. This guide sticks to what’s actually been measured and studied, not what a supplement label wants you to believe.

Key Takeaways

• Whether you can still grow depends on whether your growth plates have fused, and that varies by person and by sex.
• Genetics accounts for roughly 60–80% of your final height, according to research on height heritability (Silventoinen, 2003).
• Sleep, protein, calcium, and vitamin D support whatever height your genes allow, but none of them override your DNA.
• Supplements, hanging routines, and stretching programs that promise inches are not supported by evidence.
• If growth has stalled and something feels off, a bone age X-ray from a doctor is the only reliable way to know where things stand.

Can You Still Grow Taller at 17?

The short answer: it depends on where you are in puberty, not on your birthday.

Height is largely controlled by growth plates, thin bands of cartilage near the ends of the long bones in your legs and arms. While they’re open, new bone tissue is still being laid down. Once they fuse and harden, that particular growth story is over.

Timing varies quite a bit by sex. Most guys have some room left through their late teens before boys stop growing, while for most girls, the plates close earlier, often before girls stop growing at a younger age than their male classmates. A 17-year-old boy statistically has better odds of still growing than a 17-year-old girl of the same age.

Growth hormone does a lot of the early lifting, but it’s testosterone and height that eventually tell the plates to seal shut, alongside estrogen in both sexes. It’s a hormonal handoff, and nobody gets to set their own timeline on it.

An X-ray of the hand and wrist is the only way to know for certain whether a person’s plates are open or closed. Everything else — height charts, family history, how tall a friend group looks — is a guess dressed up as data.

Genetics vs. Lifestyle: What Actually Sets Your Height

Here’s the part that’s a little deflating: genetics does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to how tall someone ends up. Large genetic studies have identified thousands of variants tied to height, and together they explain a meaningful chunk of the variation between people (Yengo et al., 2022). Family history matters more than most lifestyle choices, and that includes cases where short parents have tall children simply because height genes don’t always sort neatly.

That doesn’t mean lifestyle is irrelevant, just that it works within a range your DNA already set. Chronic malnutrition can push someone well below their genetic potential, while a well-fed, well-rested body tends to land closer to the top of that range.

For context, the average adult male in the U.S. stands about 5’9″ (68.9 inches) and the average adult female about 5’4″ (63.5 inches), according to the CDC’s most recent body measurement data (CDC NCHS, 2025). Those numbers shift slowly across decades, mostly tracking nutrition and public health rather than any change in the underlying gene pool.

Nutrition That Actually Supports Growth

This is where a lot of otherwise healthy 17-year-olds quietly underperform.

Growth takes raw material. Add the metabolic demands of puberty and any regular sports schedule, and plenty of teens are running a calorie and nutrient deficit without noticing.

Nutrition quality tracks with height-for-age in American children and teens, and diets heavy in soft drinks and processed food are linked to lower measurements on that scale (Kim & Keen, 2021). Protein and height growth go together for a straightforward reason: bone and muscle tissue are built from it, not just fueled by it.

Dairy specifically has its own research trail. A multi-year study following over 5,000 American girls found that those drinking more milk and dairy protein tended to grow more than those who didn’t (Wiley, 2005). Nutrition also plays a broader role as one of the most significant external factors affecting linear growth generally (Perkins et al., 2016). None of this requires a dramatic diet overhaul — vitamins for height growth mostly come down to consistency: milk with breakfast, protein with most meals, and actual sunlight now and then.

Sleep: The Growth Factor Most Teens Skip

Growth hormone isn’t released steadily throughout the day. It comes in pulses, concentrated during deep, slow-wave sleep, mostly in the first few hours after falling asleep (Nocturnal GH release study, 1989). Disrupted sleep quality has been shown to blunt that hormone release in children and teens (Shaw et al., 2023).

Most sleep guidance for teenagers lands around 8–10 hours, and most teens fall well short of that, especially with early school starts and late-night screen time pushing bedtime back. Pair that gap with the broader advice on how to grow taller, and sleep tends to be the single most fixable piece of the puzzle for a busy 17-year-old.

Exercise and Sports: What Helps and What’s Just a Good Story

Some of the exercise claims around height are mostly folklore. Hanging from a bar doesn’t stretch the spine permanently, and basketball doesn’t make anyone taller — tall people are simply more likely to end up on a basketball court. Whether basketball makes you taller is really a question of correlation being mistaken for cause.

What activity actually does is support bone density and posture, which affects how tall someone stands and carries themselves. Weight-bearing physical activity is considered one of the more modifiable factors in building peak bone mass during adolescence (Reza Nouri et al., 2010), and a recent meta-analysis found consistent improvements in bone density among adolescents who trained regularly (exercise and bone meta-analysis, 2025). Diet and physical activity together, not either alone, showed the strongest link to both bone mass and height in a large study of American adolescents (Moran et al., 2011).

A few activities worth naming specifically:

• Swimming — full-body and low-impact, and swimming and height come up together often in discussions of posture and spinal health.
• Jumping sports like volleyball — load bones in a way that supports density.
• Sprinting — high-impact running stimulates leg bone density.
• Stretching and yoga — won’t add bone length, but stretching and height claims usually come down to posture, not actual growth.

As for hanging and height exercises, decompressing the spine by hanging from a bar can add a fraction of an inch temporarily. It reverses within minutes, which is physics, not growth.

Strength training deserves a mention too, mostly because the old myth still circulates. Weight training and stunted growth has been studied directly, and supervised, age-appropriate resistance training with proper form doesn’t appear to damage growth plates in teens.

Posture: Standing at the Height You Already Have

Poor posture quietly costs people an inch or more of apparent height. Hours hunched over a phone, a desk, or a controller add up to a forward-rounded upper back over time.

Fixing posture won’t lengthen bones, but it changes how tall a person actually looks day to day. A few habits that tend to help:

• Standing with weight evenly distributed, rather than leaning on one hip
• Keeping shoulders back without forcing them
• Strengthening the core with planks or similar movements
• Setting screens at eye level to reduce the forward neck lean

None of this shows up on an X-ray. It shows up in photos and in how a person’s shoulders sit at the end of a school day.

What Doesn’t Work: Common Height Myths

The height supplement market is large, and most of what it sells doesn’t hold up.

Once growth plates have closed, no supplement changes bone length. Full stop. Products promising two or three extra inches are making a claim that current science simply doesn’t support.

“Stretching routines” advertised as adding inches run into the same problem: stretching helps flexibility and posture, which is genuinely useful, but it doesn’t lengthen bone. Framing that as guaranteed height gain is misleading at best.

Social media doesn’t help matters. Before-and-after height videos and influencer-endorsed “stacks” circulate constantly, and the placebo effect is real enough that people report feeling taller after spending money on something with no measurable effect on their skeleton.

When It’s Worth Talking to a Doctor

Some situations genuinely call for medical input rather than more research on a forum.

If someone is noticeably shorter than both parents and peers, hasn’t grown measurably in over a year, or shows other signs of a hormonal issue, a pediatric endocrinologist is the right specialist to see. They can order a bone age X-ray to check whether the growth plates are still open, using reference standards built from national growth chart data (CDC Growth Charts).

Growth hormone therapy exists and can help in cases of a diagnosed deficiency. It’s not a casual option, though — it requires ongoing medical supervision and isn’t appropriate for teens with normal hormone levels who simply want to be taller.

The Bottom Line at 17

Height gets treated as a bigger deal socially than it probably deserves, especially for teenage boys, and that pressure is real even when the underlying biology is out of anyone’s control.

If growth plates are still open, the realistic levers are the unglamorous ones: eating enough protein, calcium, and vitamin D, sleeping close to that 8–10 hour range, staying active through bone-loading activity, and fixing posture along the way. None of that is a hack. It’s just the list of things that happen to be backed by research, applied consistently, within whatever range genetics already set.

Orianna Lux, MS, RDN Medically Reviewed by Expert

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist | Pediatric Growth & Nutrition Specialist

Orianna is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with a Master's degree in Human Nutrition and over 8 years of clinical experience specializing in pediatric growth, childhood nutrition, and height development.

MS in Human Nutrition Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) Pediatric Nutrition Specialist 8+ Years Clinical Experience Evidence-Based Practice

Last updated: July 16, 2026