What's wrong with being 5'9"?? (my height
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In males, most significant growth is completed in the late teens, maybe 20. The reason to wait until 25 yrs of age has more to do with maximizing your body's potential for muscle growth, not because of issues with bone length.
Div is correct: Estrogen levels are intimately linked to growth plate (physeal) closure. The following info comes from a previous thread I posted on this same topic (specifically, it related to the concept of using estrogen blockade to allow uninhibited skeletal growth) :
Both growth hormone and the sex steroids, particularly estrogen, are necessary for the normal adolescent growth spurt. This is true for both boys and girls. Estrogen appears to be the critical stimulus of the physis causing the linear growth spurt. Lower doses of estrogens, as during early puberty, stimulate growth, whereas higher doses, in later adolescence, lead to growth cessation. Once GnRH resumes its pulsatile release (which is suppressed between infancy and puberty), estrogen is stimulated from the ovaries in girls, or from the testis directly and from peripheral aromatization of testosterone in boys resulting in initial breast development in girls and rapid foot growth in both boys and girls as the first signs of the adolescent growth spurt. This initial estrogen increase stimulates further GH release. GH acts directly and indirectly through production of IGF-1 to stimulate physeal growth. The growth rate then peaks about 2 years later and then slows to cessation after another 2 years with estrogen again appearing to be the primary factor causing physeal closure.
There are indeed certain estrogen receptor deficiency states in boys that can result in continued growth. Whether or not true estrogen blockade either at the receptor level or testosterone conversion level would allow adolescents to take AAs without affecting growth is an intriguing concept, but don't hold your breath waiting for that study to get published...
Hope you found the info useful.
