Do you think you stopped growing at age 16 or 18?  Yes we may have stopped growing vertically at the end of puberty but did you know that some parts of your body continue to grow after the rest of your body is fully grown?

My youngest daughter keeps commenting that my ears seem to grow longer and longer each time she observes them intently.  I didn’t believe her and did a search on whether ears grow with age and bingo, they do! It’s confirmed by the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health in this article.  And I learned something new because of my 11-year old daughter’s curiosity 🙂

Bones, stop growing after puberty and muscle and fat cells also stop dividing. But cartilage – that’s the plastic-like stuff in ears and noses – cartilage continues to grow until the day you die. Not only does cartilage grow, but the earlobes elongate from gravity. And that makes ears look even larger.

Like the nose, the ears are composed of cartilage and will continue to get bigger through your lifetime. In a study published in the December 1995 British Medical Journal, the width of participants’ ears did not increase over time, but the length did — by as much as 0.22 millimeters (0.0087 inches) a year [source: Juan].

So it’s really true. Older people do have larger noses and ears!