Why the long face? How we grow and shrink with age...

It may not be immediately obvious but over the years, some parts of our bodies get shorter, while other bits stretch and lengthen. TANITH CAREY investigates the long and the short of it all

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WHAT GETS LONGER

FEET:

Did you start off having size seven feet but now find that your shoes feel tight?

There are a few reasons for that. As the years pass our feet get longer because they flatten out under the weight of the body.

Bearing this load every day means the connective tendons and ligaments lose their stretchiness. Over time, they don't hold the 26 bones of the foot together as well, making your feet splay more - but there are other reasons you might have gone up a shoe size.

As we age, leaky veins also allow fluid to ooze into our feet and ankles, making them more swollen.

Bunions - bony lumps at the base of your big toe - can also make feet bigger over time. According to a study in the journal Foot & Ankle International last year, they can add up to 8mm to the length and 4mm to the width of your foot.

This helps explain why studies have found that people over the age of 40 can find their foot length increases by as much as 3-4mm every decade.

NOSES:

Over time, your nose gets bigger too. This is because it is made of soft flexible tissue which loses elasticity with age, making it look droopier.

One 2002 study in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, which measured the noses of 500 people, found that on average our nose length increases by 5mm between middle age and late old age.

Another reason our noses tend to look larger over the years, is because the fat pads in our cheeks start to shrink.

This makes our faces look thinner and shallower, making our nose appear to stick out more.

And there's one more part of our face that lengthens. This is the philtrum - the groove from the base of the nose to the upper lip. Research has found it lengthens from 1.8cm to just under 2cm as our faces lengthen due to gravity.

TEETH-