Introducing ‘Heightmaxxing,’ the Dangerous Trend That Has Teens Experimenting With Cancer Drugs
· Vice
Millennial boys tried hanging from monkey bars and drinking gallons of milk to get taller. Some teenage boys today have graduated to taking bladder cancer medication. We’re doing great.
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It’s called “heightmaxxing,” the latest obsession to come out of the looksmaxxing community, where young men spend an alarming amount of time worrying about their faces and bodies. According to Rolling Stone, some teenagers are experimenting with erdafitinib, sold under the brand name Balversa, a prescription drug approved for certain adults with advanced bladder cancer. Online, it’s often called “ERDA” or “Erta.”
The fascination appears to have started with a case report published online in 2024. In Vienna, two children being treated for brain tumors had grown unexpectedly fast while taking the medication, which blocks FGFR3, a receptor that helps regulate bone growth. There was a catch, though. One of the children developed enough bone pain that doctors had to reduce the dose.
Someone on Looksmax.org apparently saw that and thought it sounded promising. One forum user called a related report “the greatest hopefuel you’ll ever read.”
The extra height came with some serious complications, though. A report from FDA researchers identified five children treated with erdafitinib for brain tumors who developed skeletal growth complications. One 15-year-old grew about 5.6 inches in nine months but also developed severe spinal curvature. Three of the five children eventually needed surgery.
Erdafitinib can also cause serious eye damage. The drug’s prescribing information reports retinal complications in 22% of patients in pooled adult safety data, while 73% developed elevated phosphate levels. Those high phosphate levels can contribute to calcium deposits in soft tissue and blood vessels. It’s a medication that requires regular monitoring, even when someone’s taking it for its intended purpose.
What Is ‘Heightmaxxing’ And Why Is It So Dangerous?
Johnson & Johnson, the drug’s manufacturer, told Rolling Stone that erdafitinib has never been approved for increasing height and its safety hasn’t been established in children or teenagers.
There’s also a biological limit to all this. Once your growth plates close near the end of puberty, erdafitinib isn’t going to magically make your bones longer. For teenagers who’ve already finished growing, the risks come with no realistic prospect of getting taller.
Teenage boys have enough to feel insecure about without spending hours on forums where strangers insist being under six feet tall is some terrible genetic failure. And when you’re 16 and already worried about how you look, reading that crap every day can start to get to you.
But if you’re genuinely concerned about your growth, a pediatrician can assess it. You don’t need to experiment with cancer medication because some guy on the internet thinks another two inches will fix his life.
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