My friend is convinced she is shrinking. She is shorter than she was a a year ago and none of her clothes or shoes fit her anymore. She even shrunk in bra sizes.(went from C-A) Is this even possible ? What is happening to her ?
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No. It is not possible to shrink in the manner your friend is describing.
Humans do get larger or smaller for a variety of reasons.
We gain weight, be it muscle or fat. Which increases our size.
We gain and lose fluid constantly. Thus our hands and feet would noticeably 'shrink' at times.
With clothes fitting or not fitting it is going to be largely due to fat and muscle content.
Your friend is implying that her skeletal structure is "shrinking" at a relatively rapid and consistent rate. This does not happen.
As we get older.. VERY much older (ie: over a period of a lifetime) we lose cm's/inches in height. IE: A man who is 6ft tall from the ages of 18-50 will start to get shorter as a process of age.
What occurs is the discs between the vertebra (in the spine) lose size, also known as degeneration -- and this causes the height produced from the spinal column to reduce a bit. This is slight, but over many decades it becomes pronounced.
IE: This man who was 6ft at ages 18-50, may at 70 be 5'10" -- give or take. Though he won't become any shorter than about 5'9" , and that is extreme. Three inches of height loss is quite extreme even for a geriatric.
The rest of the musculo-skeletal system does not shrink. The hands do no shrink, the bones in the feet do not shrink, and so on. Arthritic processes (again largely due to age) can manipulate their positions, but they do not become smaller.
Even osteoporotic process does not shrink bone length, it de-mineralizes bone as a whole, making it less dense.
As for breast size shrinking this can only logically be explained from fat reduction.
I'm sorry there is no other logical explanation medically.
Even so, if she is certain she is becoming smaller at any age under a geriatric variety -- she needs to see a doctor. If she is losing weight, size, fat, and muscle mass without any changes to lifestyle their very likely is a medical reason for it, that can be resolved.
I wish her all the best.
Humans do get larger or smaller for a variety of reasons.
We gain weight, be it muscle or fat. Which increases our size.
We gain and lose fluid constantly. Thus our hands and feet would noticeably 'shrink' at times.
With clothes fitting or not fitting it is going to be largely due to fat and muscle content.
Your friend is implying that her skeletal structure is "shrinking" at a relatively rapid and consistent rate. This does not happen.
As we get older.. VERY much older (ie: over a period of a lifetime) we lose cm's/inches in height. IE: A man who is 6ft tall from the ages of 18-50 will start to get shorter as a process of age.
What occurs is the discs between the vertebra (in the spine) lose size, also known as degeneration -- and this causes the height produced from the spinal column to reduce a bit. This is slight, but over many decades it becomes pronounced.
IE: This man who was 6ft at ages 18-50, may at 70 be 5'10" -- give or take. Though he won't become any shorter than about 5'9" , and that is extreme. Three inches of height loss is quite extreme even for a geriatric.
The rest of the musculo-skeletal system does not shrink. The hands do no shrink, the bones in the feet do not shrink, and so on. Arthritic processes (again largely due to age) can manipulate their positions, but they do not become smaller.
Even osteoporotic process does not shrink bone length, it de-mineralizes bone as a whole, making it less dense.
As for breast size shrinking this can only logically be explained from fat reduction.
I'm sorry there is no other logical explanation medically.
Even so, if she is certain she is becoming smaller at any age under a geriatric variety -- she needs to see a doctor. If she is losing weight, size, fat, and muscle mass without any changes to lifestyle their very likely is a medical reason for it, that can be resolved.
I wish her all the best.