Too Big, Too Fast: A spotlight on Hyper-Masculine Pubertal Development syndrome

[Dystopian]

Too Big, Too Fast: A spotlight on Hyper-Masculine Pubertal Development syndrome
by Dystopian

Teenage males are getting bigger-- and fast.

Studies have shown that in the last ten years, the average height and weight of males aged between 13 to 21 years old has shot up.

Scientists have not been able to determine the cause of the sudden and dramatic changes. Some experts theorize that chemicals present in the air, food or water are behind what is being called ?Hyper-Masculine Pubertal Development? or HMPD. Others point to the increasing consumption of genetically modified foods, the use of vaccinations, climate change or even electromagnetic changes due to solar flares.

While the phenomenon has been documented all over the world, it is most pronounced in developed Western countries. In the US, it is estimated that one out of every 200 teenage males has this new condition.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that these changes are having massive effects on the lives of the teenagers, their families and society at large.

Killian Thurwood*, 17, is a senior at Westwood High School in Sarraca, Oregon. He describes himself as a shy introvert whose main interests are jazz music and writing. He is a member of his school?s drama club, and volunteers on weekends with the local animal shelter.

*Names in this article have been changed at the request of the interviewees.

Killian is also 7 feet 3 inches tall, and weighs 640 pounds. He is so large that he has to stoop to enter the school counseling room where this interview was held. His barrel-like arms are held almost perpendicular to the ground because of his back muscles, so he has to turn slightly sideways just to squeeze through the door. He seems almost too big for the tiny room.

Blushing furiously, he offers profuse apologies to this writer for no particular transgression. It seems he is sorry for simply taking up too much space. The school has provided a special, reinforced chair for Killian?s use. In fact, schools in this district are now required to upgrade all their furniture to meet revised safety requirements.

Killian barely fits into the chair. It creaks ominously under his weight. He apologies again, and jokes that he hopes this will not be the fourth chair he has broken this week. His voice is a profound bass.

It is more than a bit overwhelming to take in Killian at such close quarters. He is as broad as two grown men side by side. His head seems almost tiny compared to the column of muscle supporting it, which in turn is almost overwhelmed by corded trapezoids. Each of his arms, at well over 30 inches in circumference, are easily as large as this writer?s waist. They strain against the sleeves of his 10XL T-shirt. The front of the shirt, emblazoned with the school mascot, a bear, is stretched tight against a massive, almost vision-obscuring chest. For all that upper body mass, Killian is very lean. His waist measures only 36 inches, smaller than his thighs, which are well over 40 inches around. Killian?s calves are as larger than most other men?s thigh?s. He wears special size 23 shoes.

According to Killian, his childhood was perfectly normal. Killian?s father is a dentist. His mother helps out as the administrator at his father?s practice. He has a older sister, aged 20, and a younger brother, who has just turned nine.

Killian describes himself as a normal-sized child up to the age of 11. He was about 4 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 80 pounds. He was never very athletic, and played no sports. Then, like many other boys of that age, puberty struck. Only, for him, it struck hard.

?I felt hungry all the time. Literally every second of the day. I ate everything in sight, but I still felt hungry. I was a twelve year old boy who was eating in one meal as much as the rest of my family ate in a day,? he said.

In six months, Killian had doubled his weight to 160 pounds, and shot up ten inches in height. By the end of the year, he weighed 220 pounds, at 6 feet tall.

His parents took him to see Dr Evan Fitzpatrick, an endocrinologist at Bethany Children?s Hospital who specializes in childhood disorders. Dr Evans, who remains Killian?s physician, says that Killian did not display any abnormal signs that could explain his sudden growth.

?His growth hormones were much higher than normal, but we did a full battery of tests to rule out tumors, infections, genetic disorders; basically, anything that contribute to this sudden and extreme growth spurt. Nothing,? Dr Fitzpatrick said.

Killian continued to grow at an astounding rate. By 15, he was 7 feet tall, weighing in at 460 pounds.

His increased size brought with it a practically insatiable appetite. Killian?s mother, Joanna, 43, says that the family?s food budget ballooned over this period.

?I felt like I was cooking for an army of men, and yet all this food was being eaten by a single boy,? she said.

Killian eats about three dozen eggs and 6 pounds of meat a day, apart from his carbohydrates. This translates to 16 to 18 thousand calories. By comparison, according to FDA standards, a grown man should eat about 2,500 calories a day.

?He outgrew clothes practically every month. Soon, I was really wondering if people would mind if I just wrapped him in a large blanket and set him off to school,? Joanna quipped.

Killian said he experienced the worst kind of growing pains caused by his body developing at breakneck speed.

?There were days I simply couldn?t move because all my joints hurt so bad,? he said. ?I?d just lie in bed, and Mom would have to bring my meals to me.?

Killian?s size is highly unusual even for those undergoing HMPD, says Dr Fitzpatrick. Most of the largest patients he has seen top out at around 500 pounds.

Dr Fitzpatrick says that Killian?s weight gain is almost entirely muscle and bone mass. ?It?s amazing that there has been very little gain in fat. His body fat percentage remains below 10 percent.?

This means that Killian is strong: almost inhumanly strong. By the time he was 15, Killian could bench press over a thousand pounds with ease. Now, he can easily break the records of all strongmen and weightlifters in the history of the sports, and may well be one of the strongest men who has ever lived.

However, Dr Fitzpatrick is not recommending that Killian go down that route.

?I advise him to stay clear of strength-based activities. We have no idea whether weight lifting will cause even more development, which is something we would want to avoid. He?s big enough as it is.?

Killian says that his extreme musculature was originally just an inconvenience, but of late, he is becoming so big that flexibility is becoming an issue. He demonstrates by flexing his arm-- his bicep is so large that he can only bend his arm at a 100 degree angle.

?Stuff like brushing my teeth, bathing and even putting food in my mouth is becoming difficult because my biceps and chest muscles are so big they get in the way,? Killian explains. ?I haven?t been able to see my feet for years,? he adds, demonstrating by looking down his chest, which extends for more than a foot past his chin.

Killian?s thighs are also so overdeveloped that he has an exaggerated rolling or waddling gait. he says that he has stumbled and fallen before simply because it is increasingly difficult to swing one enormous thigh past the other.

?I look like I?m drunk all the time because of the crazy swaggering. But honestly, that?s the only way I can move. And god, the chaffing is awful,? he laughs.

Killian?s home has been renovated in order to accommodate a man of his size. Doorways are all 10 feet high and double width. Killian?s king-size bed has specially reinforced with steel struts. Even the shower stall had to be enlarged after he outgrew the normal one a year ago.

?For a month or so, I had to stand outside the shower and pull the shower-head all the way out. I just couldn?t fit into it anymore,? Killian recalls.

Dr Fitzpatrick is worried that Killian will continue to grow. Although his gains in height are slowing, Killian is continuing to put on muscle mass at a rapid rate. In the last twelve months, he gained 40 pounds. It appears that boys undergoing HMPD not only have much more intense growth phases, but also longer ones. Dr Fitzpatrick notes that it is not unusual for some boys to continuing growing at significant rates well into their early twenties. According to his estimates, Killian is like to top out at close to 8 feet tall, and over 700 pounds.

?I am very concerned about his size. Simply put, his heart may not be able to take so much mass.?

As it is, there have been reports of an increase in the risk of heart attacks among very large teenage boys. In January this year, 460 pound 16 year old died after suffering a heart attack while walking to school in his hometown in New Hampshire. His parents had reported that he had gained almost half of his body weight in just the last 12 months before his death. Doctors say, that the sudden increase in muscle mass is sometimes too much for the heart to take.

Killian has often found himself breathless from just walking short distances. Under Dr Fitzpatrick?s close supervision, he has started doing aerobic exercises to strengthen his heart and lungs, and to increase his stamina.

Dr Fitzpatrick is particularly concerned about what is called the ?second wind? syndrome. While HMPD development often slows in the late teens, some boys experience a second phase of extremely accelerated growth at around the age of 19 or so. A 20 year old man in Hubei province, China, was recently reported to have grown from 270 pounds to 580 pounds in less than nine months.

If that happens to Killian, he may end up shooting past all previous human records for size and weight.

?He would make Robert Wadlow (the tallest human being ever at 8 feet 11 inches) look like a stumpy little kid,? says Dr Fitzpatrick. ?However, nobody knows whether the human body can even take being ten or eleven feet tall. It?s not just the height. He is likely to weigh more than a ton. In short, he might become too big to move.?

There is also a social dimension to Killian?s condition. Killian says that initially, his powerful physique allowed him to join the football team, and he had made many new friends there. However, as he continued to grow, he quickly became too large and too strong to safely play against.

?I weighed more than the next three biggest players put together,? he said. ?There was no way any one of them could take me down. And if I happened to fall on anyone, well-- that?s it for him.? Opposing teams also complained that Killian had an unfair advantage, a common allegation that has recently led various sports leagues to ban HMPD players.

Killian says that he soon found it difficult to sustain friendships. ?When your leg is as large as someone else?s entire body, things are different,? he explained. ?Basically, people thought I was a freak.? Killian says that many male friends either became envious or simply afraid of him.

?I had a friend-- someone I would call a best friend-- since we were kids. We lived on the same street and played together for years. Then after this happened to me, he started treating me strangely, like I was a different person he didn?t know. We stopped talking so much. I found out later that he just couldn?t deal with my size. It was just too much for him.?

There are two other boys in Killian?s school who also have the same condition, but they are much smaller than Killian. One is about 410 pounds and the other only 340 pounds. But they are the closest thing that Killian has to friends. ?We hang out sometimes. But even I think it?s weird. When we?re standing together, we almost literally fill up the entire room. And we don?t really have much in common, except that we are all freakishly muscular.?

Killian has never had a girlfriend. He says that by the time he started becoming interested in girls, he was way past the ?normal? size. ?Girls would come up to me and ask to feel my arms, chest-- that sort of thing. They?d want me to flex my biceps or lift them up. But they weren?t interested in me as a person.?

When asked whether he is still a virgin, Killian blushes deeply. He says he has ?fooled around? a bit with some of the girls he had spoken of, particularly those with a fascination for his size. But he has never had sex with any of them. He declines to explain why.

Dr Fitzpatrick says that this is another concern for those suffering from HMPD.

?In normal pubertal development, a young boy?s penis and testicles grow larger, to their adult size. But with HMPD patients, just as with all other aspects of puberty, male genital development is enormously accelerated. To be blunt,? he says, ?the concern is that many of these boys will eventually have members much too large for conventional penetrative sex.?

Dr Fitzpatrick declines to discuss this aspect of Killian?s case in particular, but he says that penises which are ten inches or more are not uncommon. In one extreme case, a 16 year old boy had a member almost 20 inches long.

?It was simply so large, there was no way he could sustain an erection. And even if he could, simple physics dictates that there won?t be very much he can do with it, sexually speaking.?

Another concern is that boys with HMPD invariably have extremely high amounts of testosterone. Dr Fitzpatrick says that testosterone levels are directly related to testicle size. ?When you have testicles which are the size of a grown man?s fist, you are going to have testosterone at astronomical levels.? This may lead to increased aggression and libido, he says.

?Many patients say that they have extremely high sex drives. And I?m talking about urges much more powerful than that felt by the normal teenage boy, which are already pretty strong. Coupled with physical strength which is off the charts, you can see why this could be dangerous for a young man who is still trying to understand his body.?

Killian says that he is taking each day as it comes. He says that there are many things which normal people can do, but which he has grown too large for. These include going to the movies, and even eating out. Killian has flown on an airplane only once, to get to New York for his grandmother's funeral last year. He had to buy the entire row of three seats for himself. Even then, it was not an experience he enjoyed.

?Now, I?m probably just too big to fly,? he says.

However, he is hopeful for a cure. Researchers across the globe have been working hard to see if HMPD can be controlled. Initial tests on a new drug, Redelvin, has shown some promise in lab tests, but experts warn that an FDA-approved retail version is years away. That may be too long for Killian, who is worried that he might be too big to fit even in the back seat of a car.

While medical science may be slowly reach a solution, society is also adapting to this rapidly growing phenomena. In 5 years time, it is estimated that as many as one in 50 male teens will have HMPD. Even more troubling is that teens who develop the condition more recently seem to end up bigger than those who had it ten years ago. The average HMPD sufferer in 2003 grew to 6 feet 6 inches and weighed 330 pounds. Now, the average is 6 feet 10 inches and 400 pounds.

Danielle Redard, the chairperson of Mothers of Gentle Giants, a support group for women whose sons have HMPD, says that society needs to look at ways to accommodate what she calls ?the new normal size for the American man.?

?Soon, practically every other young man you see on the street is going to be a seven footer who weighs 500 pounds or more. It?s not going to be a surprise anymore.? She calls for HMPD-friendly facilities everywhere-- bigger doors and stronger chairs for a start.

?We need to think about bringing these kids-- our kids-- back into the fold, instead of treating them as if they were freaks or monsters.?

Already, sporting associations like the NFL are thinking of starting HMPD leagues, where those with the condition can compete with players of comparable size and strength.

In the long run, futurists are wondering whether the HMPD phenomena may signal the beginning of a new era in human history. Professor Alex Waltsheimmer, a expert in anthropological extrapolation at Princeton University, says, ?We are basically seeing Supermen. They are almost a race apart in terms of size and strength. Who knows what?s next??

For Killian, all he knows is that he wants to be able to do well in school and perhaps land a job as a veterinarian some day. ?Animals don?t care how big you are,? he says.

Oh, and he?s still looking for a girlfriend.

[vlad]

Really clever way of presenting the story as a news article, I liked this one a lot!

[mario2007]

I started reading this thinking it was for real. Awesome story!

[cubetz]

Fantastic! Please continue this! Would love to learn more about the disorder, maybe follow this kid as he graduates from HS and approaches that second growth milestone!

[peace4255]

This is a really fantastic story! It was a fun and different way to present muscle growth (and given how big guys grow these days, seemed oddly plausible, haha)!

Thank you for writing and sharing!

[chimera0010]

I actually enjoyed this. for once taking a different perspective that wasn't centered around a need to be the horny alpha male. But instead focuses on the negative side effects to being so big.