A 5ft6 MAN underwent several gruelling leg lengthening surgeries to add 7inches to his height.
The 21-year-old man from Germany, who’s been sharing his journey on TikTok, said his height left him feeling emasculated.
The young man’s height left him feeling emasculated
The leg lengthening surgery added 7inches to high height
“In Germany all the men are tall, so for being small was a big problem,” he in a video.
“I didn’t feel like a man – I hated it,” he added.
The young man, who calls himself @la_tremba online, travelled to cosmetic tourism hot spot Turkey in November, to go under the knife in a bid to increase his size.
Since then, he has received three cosmetic procedures which involved breaking his legs and screwing magnetic, limb lengthening nails into them.
In an emotional video, seen by over 6.8million users, the man can be seen reuniting with his family for the first time since his opertaions.
Limb-lengthening is a gradual process, designed to allow the bones and soft tissue – skin, muscles and nerves – can slowly increase in length.
Demand for cosmetic leg lengthening, also known as stature lengthening, is on the rise, particularly among young men.
Dr Shahab Mahboubian, a surgeon at the Height Lengthening Institute in California, US, said he he’s also seen 60 to 65-year-old men to come to him for the agonising privilege of long legs.
“The ‘short’ jokes keep going on and they feel inferior,” he told NBC News in April.
Cosmetic limb-lengthening is limited to private clinics and as such there is little concrete data around the number of people who get it done.
Victor Egonu, a health clinic manager in Baltimore, told The Guardian he estimated it is in the thousands every year, and rising fast.
Dr Mahboubian said he expects to perform 50 height-lengthening operations this year, more than double the 20 he did three years ago.
There is also very limited data available around the number of patients who go on to experience complications.
However, like any invasive procedure, there are known risks which include reactions to anesthesia, bleeding, and infections, particularly at the pin sites.
Not only is the operation dangerous, but it’s also expensive.
In the UK, height surgery can cost up to £50,000, while in the US the price ranges from £56,000 up to £210,000.
A survey conducted and published in 2016 by Body Logic MD looked at over 1,000 men and women in the US.
The survey asked people a series of questions regarding height, their beliefs about height and their preferences for height.
The study found that 60 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women wished to be taller.