As if young girls don’t have enough to worry about as they grow toward womanhood, a study has come up with something new: Worrying may keep them from growing as tall as their less-anxious peers.

A study by New York psychiatrist Daniel Pine and other researchers indicated that girls exhibiting constant signs of anxiety during childhood turned out to be as much as 2 inches shorter than girls who were less worried. Those who exhibited anxiety were twice as likely to be no taller than 5-feet-4 as adults.

Researchers hypothesized that the production of human growth hormone may be blunted by excess worry, or anxiety, as girls grow into adulthood.