Why Was Harry Potter Too Short For His Age?

By Dr. Fahad Basheer, Natural Blaze

“Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard,” but Harry had “always been small and skinny for his age.” He had a “thin face, knobbly knees” and wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose.

This is how Harry has been known to us. Harry Potter’s seven books have been translated into 73 different languages and sold over 450 million copies worldwide.

Author J.K. Rowling introduces Harry Potter in Chapter 2, as “an orphaned boy” who would be the one to defeat the powerful and devastating Dark Lord Voldemort. “Snubbed by his only remaining family, bullied by his cousin and classmates, and residing in the cupboard under the stairs, Harry is short, skinny, and totally non-threatening.”

I assume that you might not have any clue even now on what I am about to say because I have left no clues for you to understand. Perhaps you might get the message of what I wrote if you were locked between the inverted commas in the introduction of my words.

In the Science of Emotions, I wrote about the impact of human emotions on the growth and development of a child. If you have ever gone through those lines of my book you would have definitely understood the story of Harry Potter that you went through in the first paragraph of my article.

Psycho social dwarfism. Yes! It’s what the readers of my book call it. What specifically do you know about this condition? It’s a condition where your child’s growth halts when you criticize your child or when he grows in an environment that is lodged with negative strokes from parents, family and neighbors in the form of abusive words, punishing, comparing the child with others etc – the usual negatives a parent gives to his child in his daily life. And the same child gets an accelerated growth when he is taken away from that environment to a very positive environment. This is known as “catch up growth” which means he achieves the height that he was supposed to achieve for his age in a very short period of time. This will happen because the positive strokes which takes its birth from pure positive emotions like love, care, affection, encouragement have a lot to do with the “growth hormone.” And that is what the latest branches of mainstream medicine like “psychoneuroendocrinology” deals with.

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So was it is the stress and fear was that halted Harry Potter’s growth?

Harry Potter was emotionally and psychologically deprived when he entered Hogwarts. To be fair, he was probably still the most stressed bloke in the series by far, what with Voldemort, Death Eaters, basilisks, Dementors, Triwizard Tournaments and countless deaths of beloved friends. So is the same reality in our real life experiences in encountering different unexpected situations and while encountering the most beloved people who gives the most gifts of hatred!

With long-term physical or psychological stress, however, the outer portion of the adrenal glands releases a hormone called cortisol. Rat pups deprived of their mother even show significantly higher cortisol levels than pups that were not. Cortisol inhibits the secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland in the brain, which we attribute widely to the increasing height and bone mineralization as children develop into teens and adults.

Is this a fairy tale or is this a science? Yup, this is science. And that’s what the Science of Emotions explains in its chapters.

In an another experiment, Dr. Bruce Lipton in his laboratory showed some of the most stunning discoveries of our cells. He cultured a group of cells in two mediums. One of them had an abundant number of nutrients that accelerated the growth of the cell. And the other medium was collected with toxins that inhibited the growth of the cells.

He then kept the cells in the first medium that contained nutrients that supported the growth at one end of the dish. He observed that the cells traveled towards the opposite end of the dish where the nutrients was collected and kept. He noted that the cells not only migrated towards nutrients but also accelerated in growth. In the other dish which had toxins, the cells migrated away from the toxins. This was quite amazing! They not only migrated but had retarded growth.  This proved that the environment can influence our growth at cellular level.

The epigenetics research discovered that the environment could control the growth of our cells. The environment decides what the fate our cells should be on one hand. The environment can be either favorable or not favorable for the growth of cells. The environment includes Toxins, Drugs or even Neuropeptides that carry emotions. Once a Neuropeptide binds with the cell membrane receptor it will generate a reaction cascade that activates DNA in the nucleus of the cell to undergo transcription and translation to produce proteins needed for its growth. These Neuropeptides are often produced from the Limbic system of our brain.

“Psychosocial dwarfism is a condition seen in children brought up in an environment lacking positive feelings and those subjected to mental and physical abuse. Here the negative environment impacts the growth hormone negatively. It may be remembered that the Growth hormone is essential for growth of the body. It is vital for bone development, glycogenolysis in the liver, lipolysis in the adipose tissues and for synthesis of new proteins that are essential for the growth of our body. As a result of the poor environment the child’s growth rate suffers and the child does not attain the growth of other normal children of his / her age. But when this child with psychosocial dwarfism is exposed to a loving and caring environment, the growth rate is automatically accelerated without even administering the Growth hormone. This shows that negative impact on the mind has a direct impact on the total physiological development of an individual. And it also shows that positive impact on the mind has a direct impact on the total physiological development of an individual. In other words our emotions can control the Functioning of growth hormone that controls the growth of a person.”

In conclusion, by imparting positive strokes like loving, caring and affection towards our children – this can boost his growth.

Carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals are essential for the growth of a child. But these are only the raw material for the growth. But this cannot promote growth. For growth to occur Growth hormones play the most vital role in the promotion of growth. And this growth is in turn controlled and influenced by our emotions. By boosting our children with positive strokes we are indeed able to increase their growth.

Reference:
(1) The The Science of Emotions.
Dr. Fahad Basheer
Page: 30, 31 & 20

Photo credit: Eryne! via Visual hunt NB/ CC BY-ND

This article (Why Was Harry Potter Too Short For His Age?) was submitted to Natural Blaze and appears here with permission from the author.

AUTHOR BIO:

Dr. Fahad Basheer is an author, writer  and a trainer. He is a highly influential independent researcher of consciousness, mind body continuum system and its applications in medicine. He has specialized in NLP psycho therapeutics. He is the author of the book The Science of Emotions. He has published numerous articles to different magazines and Medical Journals. Follow Dr.Fahad Basheer on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.fahadbasheer/ & Twitter: https://twitter.com/FAHADBASHEER7