How to grow taller at 17

A lot of 17-year-olds check the pencil mark on the doorframe from last summer and find the gap smaller than it used to be. That slowdown is normal. By 17, most girls have finished growing and most boys are in the last stretch, so figuring out how to grow taller at 17 is really about protecting the growth you have left, not creating new growth. Genetics sets the ceiling. Sleep, food, training, and a few things you avoid decide how close you get to it, and this guide covers each one with the numbers behind it. For the broader picture across all ages, these 9 science-backed tips to grow taller are a useful starting point.

Key Takeaways

• Genetics explains roughly 80% of the differences in adult height, but poor sleep or nutrition can keep you below your genetic target.
• Growth plates are often still open at 17 in boys, and usually closed or closing in girls.
• Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and posture are the four levers you control.
• Height supplements and miracle products have no evidence of increasing final height in healthy teens.
• A doctor’s evaluation makes sense if puberty seems late or growth stopped much earlier than expected.

Can You Still Grow Taller at 17?

Yes, if your growth plates are still open, and at 17 that’s far more likely for boys than for girls. The simplest home clue is your own history: if you’ve gained height in the last 6 to 12 months, the plates are still working.

How Growth Plates Affect Height

Your long bones, like the femur and tibia, lengthen at the epiphyseal plates, thin discs of cartilage near each end of the bone. Cartilage cells multiply there, older cells harden into bone behind them, and the bone gets longer. Late in puberty, rising estrogen (in boys too, converted from testosterone) tells that cartilage to ossify completely. Once it does, you’ve reached skeletal maturity, and no food, stretch, or pill can make that bone longer. An X-ray shows the plates directly, and these signs you’ve stopped growing give a rough read at home.

Boys vs. Girls: Growth Timelines

Girls hit peak height velocity, their fastest year of growth, around age 11 to 12. Boys peak about two years later, around 13.5 to 14, and that two-year gap is why 17 looks so different depending on sex.

The row that deserves the most attention is “growth left.” A girl who got her first period at 12 has usually finished by 15 or 16, since most girls add only 1 to 3 inches after menarche. Boys are messier. A boy who started puberty at 14 can still be adding real height at 17, while a classmate who started at 11 might already be done, so the age puberty began predicts more than the age on your driver’s license. This breakdown of when boys stop growing goes deeper on late bloomers.

How Genetics Influences Height

Twin and family studies consistently attribute about 80% of height variation to genes, spread across thousands of small-effect variants rather than one “tall gene.” Pediatricians estimate a target using mid-parental height: average your parents’ heights, then add 2.5 inches for a boy or subtract 2.5 inches for a girl, with a normal range of about 4 inches either way. The remaining 20% runs through nutrition, illness, sleep, and the endocrine system, which is why short parents can still have tall children.

Nutrition That Supports Healthy Growth at 17

Food can’t reopen closed plates, but a shortfall in protein, calcium, or vitamin D during the final growth years can leave you shorter than your genes allow. Nutrition also locks in bone density: according to the NIH, about 90% of peak bone mass is built by age 18 in girls and 20 in boys.

Protein for Muscle and Bone Development

The recommended intake for ages 14 to 18 is 52 grams a day for boys and 46 grams for girls, and athletes in heavy training need more. That’s easier to hit than it sounds: a cup of Greek yogurt, two eggs, and a chicken breast already cover about 60 grams. More on protein and height growth explains how it supports the collagen framework inside bone.

Calcium and Vitamin D for Strong Bones

Teens need 1,300 mg of calcium a day, the highest requirement of any age group, plus 600 IU of vitamin D to absorb it. One cup of milk supplies about 300 mg, so you’d need roughly four dairy servings or fortified equivalents. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements lists teenage girls among the groups most likely to fall short, and vitamin D gets harder to make from sunlight once fall arrives in northern states.

Essential Vitamins and Minerals

Zinc (11 mg for boys, 9 mg for girls) supports cell division at the growth plate, and zinc deficiency is a documented cause of slowed growth. Magnesium (410 mg for boys, 360 mg for girls) is part of bone crystal structure and is one of the nutrients American teens most often under-eat. This guide to vitamins for height growth covers the rest, including vitamin K and vitamin C.

Foods That Support Healthy Growth

USDA MyPlate recommends filling half your plate with fruits and vegetables and splitting the rest between grains and protein, with dairy on the side. Active 17-year-old boys need roughly 2,800 to 3,200 calories a day under the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and undereating shows up fast during a growth phase. These foods pull the most weight:

• Greek yogurt and milk: calcium and protein in one serving.
• Eggs: complete protein plus some vitamin D.
• Salmon: about 570 IU of vitamin D in 3 ounces.
• Lean chicken: dense protein and zinc.
• Fortified cereals: easy calcium, iron, and vitamin D.
• Spinach, almonds, and sweet potatoes: magnesium, vitamin K, and vitamin A.

How Sleep Helps You Reach Your Maximum Height

Sleep is where growth hormone does most of its work, which makes it the most underrated lever on this list.

Growth Hormone Is Released During Deep Sleep

The largest pulse of growth hormone arrives in the first few hours after you fall asleep, during slow-wave (deep) sleep. REM sleep dominates later in the night and produces much less. Staying up until 2 a.m. and sleeping in doesn’t make up for it, because you shift the deep-sleep window without restoring the normal nightly pattern.

How Much Sleep Does a 17-Year-Old Need?

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 8 to 10 hours for ages 13 to 18. The CDC reports that about 7 in 10 U.S. high school students fall short on school nights. Part of that is biology: melatonin release shifts later during puberty, so the urge to stay up past 11 p.m. isn’t laziness.

Sleep Habits That Improve Recovery

A fixed wake time does more than a fixed bedtime, since it anchors your circadian rhythm and makes sleepiness arrive on schedule. Keep weekend wake-ups within about an hour of weekdays. Put phones away 30 to 60 minutes before bed, because screen light delays melatonin, and cut caffeine after early afternoon. A cool, dark room helps you reach deep sleep faster.

Best Exercises to Support Healthy Growth

Exercise doesn’t lengthen bones, but impact and load during the teen years build denser bones and a frame that carries your full height well. Federal guidelines call for 60 minutes of activity daily, with bone-strengthening work at least three days a week, and CDC survey data shows fewer than 1 in 4 high schoolers meet the daily target.

Stretching Exercises

Stretching won’t add length to bone. Tight hamstrings and hip flexors from long days of sitting tilt the pelvis and round the back, though, so a daily 10-minute routine can restore height you’re losing to slouching.

Swimming

Swimming is excellent cardio and gentle on joints. It’s non-weight-bearing, so it does little for bone density, and swimmers benefit from adding jumping or lifting on land.

Basketball and Volleyball: Myth vs. Reality

These sports don’t make players tall; tall kids get recruited into them. The jumping does help, though, because landing forces are one of the strongest signals for bone mineral density.

Strength Training for Teenagers

The American Academy of Pediatrics supports resistance training for teens when technique is taught and supervised. Growth plate injuries in the weight room come mostly from poor form and unsupervised max lifts, not from lifting itself, which this piece on whether weight training stunts growth explains in detail.

Mobility and Flexibility

Core and upper-back work (planks, rows, face pulls) keeps your posture upright during growth spurts, when bones briefly outpace muscle flexibility. Plenty of teens stand noticeably taller after a few weeks of this, which is posture, not growth, but it counts in photos.

Lifestyle Habits That Can Help You Reach Your Full Height Potential

Maintain a Healthy Body Weight

Both extremes interfere with growth. Obesity is linked to earlier puberty and earlier plate closure, while chronic undereating, common in weight-class sports and dance, delays puberty and can cut growth short. Your pediatrician tracks this with BMI-for-age percentiles rather than adult BMI cutoffs.

Reduce Chronic Stress

Persistently high cortisol suppresses growth hormone and wrecks sleep quality. Senior year, with college applications and AP exams stacking up in the fall, is exactly when this shows up.

Stay Physically Active

What tends to happen is that activity drops off when a sports season ends. Keeping some movement going year-round, even walking or pickup games, protects the bone density you built in season.

Avoid Smoking, Vaping, Alcohol, and Recreational Drugs

Nicotine narrows blood vessels, blunts appetite, and fragments sleep, all during your last growth window. The 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey found more than 1.6 million U.S. middle and high school students currently used e-cigarettes. Alcohol disrupts deep sleep and bone formation, and here’s the evidence on whether smoking stunts growth.

Common Myths About Growing Taller at 17

Do Height Supplements Work?

No supplement has been shown to increase final height in healthy teens who eat enough. The FDA doesn’t review supplements for effectiveness before they’re sold, so “clinically proven” on a label means little without a published trial behind it.

Can Hanging Increase Height?

Hanging decompresses spinal discs, which can add up to about 1 cm for a few hours. The same thing happens overnight, which is why you’re slightly taller in the morning. It fades by the afternoon.

Does Basketball Make You Taller?

Not directly, for the selection reasons above. More on whether basketball makes you taller breaks down the research.

Can Shoes or Insoles Permanently Increase Height?

Lifts add 1 to 3 inches only while you’re wearing them. Tall lifts also shift your weight forward and strain the ankles and lower back over time.

Is Human Growth Hormone Safe?

Prescription HGH is safe under an endocrinologist’s care for conditions like growth hormone deficiency, and it only adds height while plates are open. “HGH” sprays and pills sold online contain no meaningful growth hormone, and injectable HGH misused without supervision carries risks including joint pain, insulin resistance, and hip problems.

When Should You See a Doctor About Your Height?

Signs Growth May Be Delayed

Get checked if a boy has no testicular enlargement by 14, a girl has no breast development by 13 or no period by 15, or you’ve dropped across percentile lines on your growth chart. Being far below your mid-parental target is another reason.

Hormonal Conditions That Affect Height

Most short teens are healthy late bloomers with constitutional delay, and they catch up. A smaller group has an endocrine cause.

Growth Hormone Deficiency

The pituitary gland doesn’t make enough growth hormone, and growth slows well below the expected rate. It’s treatable with daily injections if caught while plates are open.

Thyroid Disorders

Hypothyroidism slows growth along with fatigue, weight gain, and feeling cold. A simple blood test catches it, and thyroid hormone replacement restores growth.

What Happens During a Growth Evaluation?

Your doctor plots your history on CDC growth charts and orders a bone age X-ray of the left hand and wrist. Blood tests usually check thyroid hormone, IGF-1, and markers for celiac disease or anemia. A bone age younger than your real age means more growth left, and unusual results lead to a pediatric endocrinologist referral.

Frequently Asked Questions About How to Grow Taller at 17

Can You Still Grow After 17?

Yes, if your plates are open, and late-maturing boys commonly grow into 18 or 19. A bone age X-ray gives the clearest answer.

Can Stretching Make You Taller?

No, not in bone length. It can recover height lost to poor posture.

What Foods Help You Grow Taller?

Foods rich in protein, calcium, vitamin D, and zinc matter most: dairy, eggs, fish, and lean meat. They support growth only while plates are open.

How Long Do Boys Keep Growing?

Most boys finish between 16 and 18. Late bloomers can grow slowly until 20 or 21.

Can Girls Grow After Age 17?

It’s uncommon but possible for girls who started puberty late. This guide on when girls stop growing covers the timeline.

Are Height Pills Worth Buying?

Only a basic multivitamin makes sense, and only if a doctor finds a real gap like low vitamin D. Paying extra for “height formula” branding buys marketing, not inches.

Does Sleeping More Make You Taller?

Getting 8 to 10 hours supports growth, but sleeping 12 adds nothing. Consistency matters more than total hours.

Final Thoughts: Focus on Reaching Your Natural Height Potential

At 17, the realistic range is from zero to a couple of inches, mostly decided by when your puberty started. The habits that protect that growth are unexciting: steady sleep, 1,300 mg of calcium, enough protein, and regular training. They’re also the habits that build the bone density you’ll rely on for decades. If puberty seems late or your growth stalled early, a pediatrician and a bone age X-ray will tell you more than any product.

About the Author

Jay Lauer

Jay Lauer is a health researcher with 15+ years specializing in bone development and growth nutrition. He holds a B.S. in Kinesiology and is a certified health coach (ACE). As lead author at HowToGrowTaller.com, Jay has published 300+ evidence-based articles, citing sources from PubMed and NIH. He regularly reviews and updates content to reflect the latest clinical research.

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