I have been slowly working on the lone bones of a section of a limb of a young pig for the last few days in trying to get a good look at what exactly the growth plates look like up close. I would assume that the morphology and structure of pig’s bone is about the same as human bones.  I put up originally 3 separate videos, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, but I found that the quality of those videos and their size was bad quality and it was hard for you to see what I was actually point at or referring to. So I redid all the content, combined my commentary into 1 and uploaded a 4th  video. It is around 8 minutes long.

Note: There are also 4 pictures at the bottom of this post. I managed to also take some pictures of the actual plates and the bone ends with the plates removed. You can see that amount of definition and texture of the bones and cartilage. Apparently I have finally realized that taking videos and pictures using the 8 Megapixel iphone4s camera is still not good enough to capture the high def., high resolution shots that I was hoping for. Still working on figuring out how to get the right angles.

While I was going through the new websites today, I found an article which is giving an update on the former tallest teen female in the world Elisany da Cruz Silva. It seems that she is dating a guy who is 16 inches shorter than her. Elisany is 6′ 8″ and he is 5′ 4″.

From the DailyMail.UK, I would guess that when a girl is 6′ 8″, it would be hard for a girl like her to find a guy who is taller than her in general. The fact that she is from Salinopolis in Brazil, and only just 17, means that it probably is even harder to find a teenage guy from a nation which has the average male to be around 5′ 7.5″ means that it would be next to impossible. While most girls would choose and prefer to be with taller men, she might not have any choice in the matter.

The guy she is with is a good guy I would guess. It is clear that he likes her the way she is, while she may not be that comfortable with the entire situation.

As she states…

‘What really attracted me was his personality, the way he acts with people and the way he acts with me. 

‘The only thing that really affects us is when we hang out holding hands – it seems like he is my little brother or son. 

‘But I didn’t choose him, God did.’

From the same “Seeking Wisdom” book I alluded to in the previous post, I had figured out another important idea which I had not considered and it is due to very elementary physics principles which I forgot to consider when I originally tried to calculate what is the maximum possible height potential in humans in previous posts like “What Is The Highest Theoretical Height Of The Human Species?” and “What The Experts Really Mean When They State “Genetics Determine Height”, And Are They Right?”

The principle was over the idea of just the fact that the surface to volume area would become too much to handle the loads on it. Remember that the human body does have 3 dimensions. If we are going to increase in one direction, vertically, for the human body to follow suit and be proportional, it has to increase in the other 2 directions as well, in width, and length. This means also that the surface area will also increase. However, as stated in the 2nd post alluded to above, where I had talked about the issue of insects with exoskeletons collapsing on themselves, While the volume increases from the height increase, the surface area will increase at a slower rate since Volume is proportional to D^3 and the surface area is proportional to D^2.

If this continues, there will come a point where the surface area/volume ratio will become so small, that the thickness and strength of the animal will be compromised. We must remember that the skin always has some force exerted on it, from the inside and outside. That force over a surface is a pressure. If the surface area/ volume is too small, the pressure which is inversely dependent on the surface area can be so high that the skin can be too weak to hold the animal intact. This was the basic idea of insect collapse from their exoskeleton.

For the organism to stay alive, the main idea nature can try is to make the skin thicker, thus tougher. This would work, but the thick skin will eventually act as a cover which keeps on the heat of the mammal inside. There will be a point where the animal reaches to such a volume that the inner heat that is generated in the mammal (hot blooded) will not be able to be released enough to keep the homeostatic condition, and the heat accumulates until the animal melts from the inside.

The way that the dinosaurs can escape this contraint over thick skin causing excessive heat internally is because they were cold blooded living in a relatively hot and humid planet in their time. The heat went in a out to in direction which was what allowed them to stay alive, keep homeostasis, and not melt from the inside. If the dinosaurs were brought to a place that was cold, they would just fall down from the collapse of their system and freeze to death. In today’s animal kingdom, the biggest animals are mammals, the blue whale, but they are in the water, which at this point I would guess act as a heat sink, and they probably have a circulatory system which makes their body very efficient in removing the high amount of heat generated.

I guess I could argue that there are some animals like the elephant which is relatively large and is a mammal but they are on 4 legs. The obvious counter argument is then that the larger mammals we find in earth’s past like Wooly Mammoth was from the Ice Age and the present biggest mammal carnivore in the world the Polar bear both come from the cold arctic region. The cold climate is similar to the cold water for the Blue Whale. It acts as a medium/sink for the heat to be released or go towards. This idea would agree then with Bergmann’s Rule.

This post shows that besides the fact of gravitational force, and the loading dimensions of the organism’s anatomy and basic structure, we also have to consider the fact that the surface area/volume ratio is almost going to limit the size of a bipedal, warm blooded creature due to heat transfer and boundary permeability characteristics. The human being will never become over 100 feet tall, 50 feet tall, or even 30 feet tall. The physics will not allow their bodies to hold together. At this point, I can not calculate the actual maximum height possible, although I have tried before.

When I was traveling out of the country recently, I decided to not bring along my laptop, which has become a source of constant focus and obsession for the last 5 months ever since I got it. I realized that I had become too dependent on it and needed to take a break. So I left my laptop at home, brought an iphone along for emergencies, and instead carried two books which I had been intending on reading for at least a year now since I bought them last year. One of them was a National Bestseller “The Number: What Do You Need for the Rest of Your Life and What Will It Cost?” written by Lee Eisenberg, who was previously an editor for the magazine Esquire. The other was “Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, 3rd Edition“ by Peter Bevelin. I found that both books were very enlightening in helping gain a better perspective on life and the challenges that accompany it. While “The Number” focused mainly on how the influence of money seeps into the psyche and lifestyle choices of people  which determines whether they will ever retire in comfort, “Seeking Wisdom” was about how to learn the correct mental models in analyzing and understanding the world around us so that we can avoid unnessesary mistakes and pain in life. I am still working on finishing “The Number”.

I wanted to focus on the 2nd book, because I felt that the book was critical in helping people in learning how to think clearer and accurately in life. It was originally written to account the many thinking processes of extraordinary men but the main focus was on Omaha Billionaire Charlie Munger’s mental models, with brief points made by his extremely famous and wealthy Warren Buffett, Richard Feynman, role model Benjamin Franklin, and many other famous influential people in history. The book has helped me again take a step back from the problem and research and see it more objectively. While the book has helped me gain many insights and paradigm shifts, I have reached two major revelations from reading the book that can be applied to this endeavor.

First, I realized that the problem I am trying to find a solution to has never been defined clearly, in a way that can help researchers and scientists can accurately measure and reproduce. I think that I have already done a clear job in defining clearly what exactly is the problem from many of my previous posts. But to restate clearly again…

The Problem Defined: Find a way to increase a person’s overall height after they have achieved physical maturity (ie. All their growth plate (physis) cartilage is gone through the normal endochondral ossification process) using a method that is NOT limb lengthening surgery. A key point to add is that the method, technique, and strategy must achieve a height difference/height increase beyond just the normal height deviations we find between day (after waking up from bed) and night (before going to bed) height from intra-vertebral disk compression. If I was to be even more exact, I would say that the set point, the exact amount needed for irrefutable proof that the method works (within say 3 sigma/ standard deviations) is at least 1 cm of height increase achievement, from measuring the height at the point of tallest before the technique was implemented. 

To gain the accuracy we are looking for I would suggest applying the rules I had stated before in the previous post “$10,000 For 5 cm Height Increase Challenge!“. The rules of the post is to remove as much as possible the chance of cheating, making false or wildly exaggerated claims, measurement errors, and random deviations found from multiple measurements.

Second, and this is the point which I realized may be far more important, is that I have never defined the problem in a way that allows me to solve it, at least within in a reasonable time frame, hopefully within my lifetime. I remember the life coach Anthony Robbins from a Youtube video once talking to an audience member and after they finished describing the problem that is causing them so much anxiety and stress in their life, his first statement was to ask the rest of the audience members whether she has managed to define (or redefine) the problem in a way that can be solved. The book brought the point back into my consciousness and I realized just how critical this idea was. As a person who has been educated and trained to be an engineer, I feel rather ashamed that I forgot one of the principle ideas of being an engineer. The job of an engineer is to solve problems. However, to solve a problem we have to know that the problem can even be solvable. In higher level mathematics where everything turns into proofs and theorems, one of the key points is that ask the question “Does this problem even have a solution?”. In mathematics, this is known as the “Existence Question”. After that, the mathematicians ask “Does this problem have one specific answer, or is there more than one solution, like two solutions, imaginary solutions, or an infinite number of solutions. This is known as the “Uniqueness Question”.

So the idea is “Can this problem be solved in the way we have defined it?”. After careful thinking, I realized that it can actually be easily solved, and by a large portion of the public. The reason is because that even a reasonable stretching routine or yoga class could cause that 1 cm of increase in height. We saw in previous post like “Comparing Pilates, Alexander Technique, And Chiropractor. Which Method Gives The Most Height Increase?” there are many ways we can decompress/stretch the back/vertebrate that will lead to at least some temporary height increase. It seemed from that previous post that the Alexander Technique can lead to the most height, but the results will obviously vary for different people in different situations. This reveals that the problem is solvable so our definition of the problem must be more restrictive, with at least two more rules.

• Addition #1: The increase we gain must be at least mostly permanent, which means the increase we see should not retract and become smaller later on.
• Addition #2: The increase we gain and the method we use should hopefully be more than just using stretching & yoga, since stretching & yoga leads to height increase that is not permanent, most of the time.

The last idea that would be worth adding is over the issue of invasive-ness. The reason why most people choose not to go through with the limb & leg lengthening surgery is that it is…

1. Extremely painly, almost unbearable at times
2. Risky, from surgical complications leading to deformations, limb length discrepancies, walking gait issues, and infection
3. Very expensive, ranging around the $20,000-$100,000 for just one surgery process
4. Time intensive – it requires at least 2-3 months to get the bone distraction, another 2-3 months for bone closure, and another 6 months for healing and physical therapy. Note: if one chooses to go with the internal method, their will be at least 2 major operations, the last one requiring removal of inserted object. This will make the entire procedure be another additional 1 year. Most people say the entire process takes about 2 years for complete recovery using the traditional, external ilizarov method.
5. Leaves scars and cosmetic deformity.
6. Does not give the results people really want. While most of the emails that come to me ask for 6-12 inches of extra height, the limb lengthening can only do at maximum 7-8 cm (3 inches) for each bone, for each surgery/distraction process.

This shows that the last major thing we have to consider, and the reason why the Limb Lengthening idea is removed is from so many complications and challenges, is that the idea, method should hopefully be at best, completely NON-INVASIVE. However, I realize that if that is set as a full requirement, the problem may be far more complicated than thought.

From a personal belief, I feel that if we focus only on trying to find a completely non-invasive method, the time it would take to find a solution may not be within reasonable time frames. This is why I decided to add the last restraint, the issue of time frames. I am reasonably confident that as long as biotechnology and engineering progress, one day we will find another idea besides limb lengthening to lengthen bone, but that may be 100, even 200 years away.

From the website emails, I have been getting emails from people who wanted to express their own opinion on the subject, and they propose the idea of nano-bots to target certain body regions to regenerate all the original growth plates while at the same time removing the hard bone material. These ideas I get sometimes sounds like something from science fiction movies, so I am never sure not only whether that idea is even possible, but also when they could be applied if they did come into existence.

To shorten that time frame, I choose to define the problem in a way to look for a solution that is at least partially invasive. I am willing to go with ideas involving cutting, implanting, and injecting into bone and cartilage, as long as the procedure is relatively fast, cheap, lower pain duration/time, and has a fast heal rate. This is why I have been focusing on the idea of So to redefine the problem again in a clear, accurate way, in a way that makes the problem solvable within a reasonable time frame…

The Problem REDefined: Find a way to increase a person’s overall height after they have achieved physical maturity (ie. All their growth plate (physis) cartilage is gone through the normal endochondral ossification process). Required points…

1. The method of osteogenesis distraction/limb lengthening surgery is not used.
2. The method, technique, and strategy must achieve a height difference/height increase beyond just the normal height deviations we find between day (after waking up from bed) and night (before going to bed) height from intra-vertebral disk compression.
3. The set point, the exact amount needed for irrefutable proof that the method works (within say 3 sigma/ standard deviations) is at least 1 cm of height increase achievement, from measuring the height at the point of tallest before the technique was implemented.
4. The method should be relatively permanent, and should sustain for at least 1 years time without retracting.
5. The method should be preferably non-invasive, but can be partially invasive, but…
6. The method should be found and be achievable within a 20-30 year time frame. Best case scenario is a medical/biotechnological device, technique that will be implemented within just a decade.

One of the most common ideas that is proposed by the evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology branch is the claim that men can be separated into two major groups, the alphas and the betas. The Alphas are the bigger, more dominant, more assertive group. It seems that in a recent set of studies, we find a clear endocrine correlation. From the study “The role of sex hormones in the kinetics of chondrocytes in the growth plate. A study in the rabbit.” We find that the subject rabbits who are castrated (have sex organs removed) had lower levels of chondrocytes in their epiphyseal plates, have less chondrocyte proliferation,  and increased levels of apoptosis. From this study, we can say that there is a positive relation to the amount of male sex hormones, the endrogens, but mainly testosterone, and the height they reach.

However, we realize that in nature, an excess of anything is also not good either. From the study “Normal bone growth requires optimal estrogen levels: negative effects of both high and low dose estrogen on the number of growth plate chondrocytes.” we can clearly see that for optimal maximum height, the estrogen level in a person must be be somewhere in the middle rance. If there is too little estrogen there will just be less proliferation while if there is too much, there will be less proliferation but also an increase in chondrocyte apoptosis. This conclusion is proved from two previous studies, “Estrogen deficiency leads to decrease in chondrocyte numbers in the rabbit growth plate.” and “Effects of estrogen on growth plate senescence and epiphyseal fusion“. The other important thing to remember is that testosterone will eventually aromatize into estrogen as time continues. One of the primary ideas that bodybuilders who still have their physis throw out is to take steroids that are aromatizing inhibitors like Anavar to stop the build up of estrogen which would cause the cascade reaction effect of final closure of the plate. THis would increase the amount of time for growth.

If I integrated these studies together, I would argue that while estrogen, (and testosterone) is clearly needed for optimal height, it must be kept at only an above average level, and never taken to the extreme. Too much testosterone is know to lead to violent, aggressive behavior and tendencies, something which was socially acceptable thousands of years ago when the world was rules by force, but now that rules is no longer socially allowed. Plus, I suspect that too much testosterone would cause the earlier onset of puberty, and lead to shorter final height. This might help explain the tongue in check term “Napoleon Complex”. The Short Men complex which results in below average stature men being aggressive, and trying too hard to prove themselves, and overcompensate for everything, may actually be of an endocrine origin, where there is an extreme level of testosterone level within their system. This shows that the evolutionary biology ideas are based on biological hormonal data where the bigger male is on average more aggressive than smaller males, but there is a smaller subset of males who are small but are very aggressive who has very high levels of testosterone.

Something that I found today that is really enlightening to me was a published paper I found entitled “Temporal Analysis of Rat Growth Plates: Cessation of Growth with Age Despite Presence of a Physis“. (There is a full free text pdf in the library section as well as the to link above).

From the abstract…

Despite the continued presence of growth plates in aged rats, longitudinal growth no longer occurs. The aims of this study were to understand the reasons for the cessation of growth. We studied the growth plates of femurs and tibiae in Wistar rats aged 62–80 weeks and compared these with the corresponding growth plates from rats aged 2–16 weeks. During skeletal growth, the heights of the plates, especially that of the hypertrophic zone, reflected the rate of bone growth. During the period of decelerating growth, it was the loss of large hydrated chondrocytes that contributed most to the overall decrease in the heights of the growth plates. In the old rats we identified four categories of growth plate morphology that were not present in the growth plates of younger rats: (a) formation of a bone band parallel to the metaphyseal edge of the growth plate, which effectively sealed that edge; (b) extensive areas of acellularity, which were resistant to resorption and/or remodeling; (c) extensive remodeling and bone formation within cellular regions of the growth plate; and (d) direct bone formation by former growth plate chondrocytes. These processes, together with a loss of synchrony across the plate, would prevent further longitudinal expansion of the growth plate despite continued sporadic proliferation of chondrocytes.

This reveals something which I have always been confused and seems to resolve. The studies done by Zhang and Yokota were done on this lab MICE, NOT RATS. However, I as a laymen can’t see any difference between the anatomy and physiology of rats and mice so I would assume that the growth rate and endochondral process of rats and mice are very similar. The first sentence from the study is what really is interesting. It seems that even in aged rats, their physis/growth plates never completely disappear. However, the rats don’t grow any bigger or taller. The researchers state there are 4 reasons, bone bridges, loss of cellularity and problems with resorption of the non-organic material, non-organic bone material encroaching in on the cellular areas, and the chondrocytes turning into bone. If I was to guess, the reason why the growth plates never go away may be from the fact that the load on the cartilage of the limbs are not that high which means that the cartilage were never loaded to the point of accelerated ossification to the point where the rate of cartilage proliferation was overwhelmed by the cartilage to bone process. However, that is only my uneducated guess at this point. This means that the reason why the frequency loading was effective on the mice, even at advanced age can cause some longitudinal growth. I often imagine the dynamic loading at a lateral direction like a hand pushing on on the most sensitive region of a hard cylinder, with a hard region on the top and bottom, but the middle area, where the compression is done, is more sensitive and flexible to external stimuli.

If this is the case, that means that the entire LSJL theory based on the Yokota & Zhang studies is invalid for humans, and should not work on adults with their plates closed. On the LSJL forums there seems to be only one member who has gotten results. st.it, and I wonder whether at the age he started doing the LSJL he still had at least an epiphyseal line. I remember from my old university mechanical engineering and physics courses the application of dynamic loading in in high frequency in the form of shocks or hits done to  objects to see what would be the result. Material science says that any hard hit would cause any fractures or defects already in the material being hit to break and fracture, especially along the lines or areas where the material is the weakest. Maybe the LSJL dyanmic loading caused not epiphyseal cartilage, but closed epiphyseal lines to be split open slightly and leading to new cartilage formation. I note that for men, the age range for growth plate closure and final height age is very large. It could be that the few people who have seen the biggest results were people who still had a slight line available for fracture/distraction to allow the MSCs inside to aggregate and go through one last push in height increase. Due to how the bone remodels and get harder, the only way to possibly lead to more growth, would be to using far higher loads, at higher frequencies, using shorter time intervals, while putting a sharp edge on the most sensitive area to cause a possible horizontal fracture line inside.

One idea that I can give from my Tesla Coil building says is that each type of material in the world has it’s own specific resonance frequency. If the external piezoelectric device can be applied to the bone and it is osscilating at the right frequency, the resonance frequency of the cortical bone, it might cause the bone to shake enough to reveal it’s most weakest areas, and lead to small fractures. Then the piezoelectric material moves to the resonance frequency of the MSCs inside and get them to go through chondrogenesis. Dr. Brighton has already written up a patents which gives a hint of what it could be which is in the library section. This could work but at this point of my research, it is only a theoretical suggestion.