While I was going through the old Giant Scientific Boards last night I stumbled upon a post which brings back a sort of urban legend or height increase myth that has been going on for a long time which I have heard about a few times, all with the same sort of story. The story is from this Source Link. I will post the forum post below

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:36 pm    Post subject: Chinese medication ‘makes’ world’s shortest woman taller Zhu suffered from a serious illness when she was one year old which stunted her growth in later years. When she was 20, she was only 79 cm tall and weighed 10 kg. In the next two months, Zhu took traditional Chinese medicine prescribed by the hospital but did not undergo surgery. After two months of treatment, Zhu reached 83 cm and gained four kilograms in weight.She have grown by 4 cm in 20s!! Thats a lot since it consist approximately 5 % of her height in 2 months time!! Just wondering, what she actually take or done to achieve that??Another Question, if our bone fused, just maintain a high level of HGH, we still can grow but maybe at a limited range?? I thought of that bcauser this shorttest girl in the world is already fully grown in order to enter the Genuiess Record…. but she grow substantially (remember, 5% of her height) http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar292005/i17.asp

I wanted to note that the link of the story doesn’t work anymore. It does seem like a very common thread that the websites which was around even 4 years ago, many have disappeared.

Analysis: What is fascinating about this story is that the claim is that she grew 4 cms in 2 month time. If we average  and extend out this rate, that means 24 cms or almost 6 inches in a year. What this seems to agree with is the stories I have heard which show that for people who suffer from some form of dwarfism, treatments that create height increase are especially effective on them. I have posted stories of people who suffered from dwarfism getting almost 16 more inches in height from limb lengthening surgery. In addition, the use of ancient Chinese practices have been talked about before as a possible way to increase height even after physical maturity. The most well known example was the Qigong Technique which Zixia had claimed to allow her to increase in height by 4 inches in her 20s. Qigong is a Chinese derived creation and she appeared in the beginning of this website to be the only other credible height increase method besides limb lengthening. The problem is that I can’t seem to be able to find the other links, sources, or citations which tell of a similar story of a person using ancient or traditional Chinese/ Oriental Medicine to increase in height even when at an older age. This is very frustrating and I would guess this type of story will only eventually end up as an urban legend or rumor whispered around by people.