All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes

by Sue Black

Our height is made up of the length and thickness of all of the components of our body, from the skin on the soles of our feet to the skin on the top of our heads, encompassing bone heights and lengths (calcaneus, talus, tibia, femur, pelvis, sacrum, twenty-four vertebrae and skull), plus joint spaces between these bones and also the thickness of the cartilage between the bones of each joint. With age, cartilage thins and some of the joint spaces collapse. Clinical conditions such as arthritis and osteoporosis will also alter the bones and joints and reduce overall height. And believe it or not, our height varies according to the time of day: we are on average half an inch shorter by the time we go to bed than we were when we got up. We lose most of that height within three hours of rising, as our cartilages settle and compress and decrease our joint spaces.