Can Cheek bone grow bigger and wider in adulthood when you gain weight?

Question

From somewhere, I might have been heard that If you gain weight even in your adulthood when your growth has been finished, Facial bones can grow because obesity causes hormone balance problems(such as Growth hormone) or metabolic abnormalities and although you lose my weight, grown facial bone don't change to its previous size so you have wider facial bones. Many Celebrities who became obese and returned to normal weight when they're in adulthood seem like their facial bone has been bigger and wider. So what I want to know is it possible that facial bones grows bigger and wider in width (espescially temporal bones besides eyes, zygomatic bones) because of hormonal or metabolic imbalance caused by obesity.

Answer 1

A quick online search indicates research findings that counter that hypothesis.

For instance, in PubMed.gov, the article "Growth hormone in obesity" in 1999 by M Scacchi et al states that growth hormone is inhibited in obesity.

From my training in Physical Anthropology, the term "robusticity" can be used to describe how muscle attachments to bone can cause mild "growth" of the bone if a particular anatomic section or part is used frequently. An example would be an individual that has a "larger" humerus because he/she works in manual labor-the larger arm muscles triggered bone growth to accommodate more muscle attachment to the bone.

So an individual that eats more could develop more muscle attachment on the mandible and/or maxilla in response to the enlarged facial muscles involved in chewing. If that individual lost weight later, the bone would not "shrink" or "regress".