As a teenager, Lewis hit 5ft 5in (165cm) and stopped growing. He would be almost 4in (10cm) shorter than the average British man; in fact, nine out of 10 men would be taller than him. When he plucked up the courage to go out, he wore stacked heels. He resented the way dating apps encouraged height discrimination. “You’re a great guy – you deserve to be taller,” one woman said. At one point he went on antidepressants.
I speak to Lewis the day after Rishi Sunak, who is reported to be 5ft 6in, becomes prime minister. He’s seen all the usual jokes on Twitter and elsewhere. “I believe it’s one of the last prejudices that is seen as acceptable,” Lewis says. “It’s interesting that people fixate on something you can’t change … Well, at least I thought you couldn’t.”
A couple of years ago, Lewis paid a surgeon tens of thousands of pounds to break his legs and make them longer. He knew it would be a risky, painful procedure. But he also knew that, all being well, he would come out of it about three inches (7.6cm) taller. “The day before the surgery I started to get really nervous,” says Lewis, who is British and prefers not to share his real name or any details of his surgery, including its exact cost. “But this is what I really wanted.”
Demand for cosmetic leg lengthening, also known as stature lengthening, is on the rise, particularly among young men. Thanks to technological advances, changing attitudes to cosmetic procedures, and a growing entrepreneurialism among orthopaedic surgeons, clinics all over the world are competing for patients. Yet there is also concern about this growth industry. What does it say about a society that potentially vulnerable people are lining up for major surgery? And what is motivating the surgeons who offer it?
“What’s driving it, sadly, is cash,” says Dr Dror Paley, a pioneering orthopaedic surgeon in Florida and one of world’s most experienced limb-lengthening specialists. He now gets half a dozen inquiries from new patients every day, up from one a day only five years ago. “For the first time, orthopaedic surgeons have a piece of the plastic surgery business, but that doesn’t mean it’s being done well,” he says. “In fact, patients are being preyed upon and are coming to me with horrible complications.”
The operation is a remarkable feat of medical engineering – and not for the squeamish. Techniques and devices vary. Paley’s version uses nails or rods similar to those that have long been employed to stabilise bad fractures. But when he drills out the marrow cavity and drives in the nail, he also intentionally breaks the bone in half.
The clever bit comes after the operation itself. A handheld device positioned against the leg at home creates a magnetic field. This activates a magnetic screwing mechanism inside the nail, which is telescopic. At a typical rate of a millimetre per day, spread across three or four activations of a few minutes each, the nail pulls the two sections of bone apart. The body makes new bone tissue to bridge the growing gap.
This extension process lasts several weeks and involves a period of relative immobility, sometimes necessitating time in a wheelchair, and months of physiotherapy to help the muscles adapt. Once the lengthening is complete, the nail can be removed.
Patients typically extend both femurs (thigh bones) by up to 8cm (3.1in). The pain apparently comes not from the magnetic activation, but from the overall effects of surgery and a double leg fracture. It is also possible to extend the tibias, or shin bones, by up to 5cm (2in).
Paley, who operates on around a dozen UK patients per year, charges $95,500 (£83,000) for both femurs, and up to $275,000 (£240,000) for a two-year package that extends all four leg bones for a height gain of up to 16cm (6.2in). A handful of UK surgeons offer leg-lengthening procedures, charging between £50,000 and £70,000 for both femurs. Prices can drop to around half that, depending on the device used, in “cosmetic tourism” hotspots such as Turkey and India.
A 32-year-old American, who prefers not to share his name, wanted to extend all four leg bones to go from 5ft 8in to 6ft. He tells me he paid around $50,000 at the Wanna Be Taller clinic in Istanbul – a quarter of the price he had been quoted in the US. “I worked 80-hour weeks and took out loans to pay for it,” he says.
