Recently Kazlina (also goes by Nicki on some other height increase forums) who has been a contributor to the website/blog has been able to get the book School Of Height  and send me the PDF document of the entire book. The entire PDF will be added to the “Library” section of the website under technical books. You can get the PDF by clicking HERE.

The 7 sections are supposed to go…

1. General preparation
2. Specific flexibility
3. Asymmetric exercises
4. Nutrition 
5. Pressure massage 
6. Breathing and autogenic training
7. Training aids 

The first thing I noticed was that the book was not really a book but a 7 section piece written up a Palko, an orthopedic physician. It is really short at around only 20 pages. However the content in the pages are really interesting and something which I have not seen suggested before so it is worth looking into.

From a quick first skim, I’d say that the the nutrition part is bad advice. The stretching ideas is reasonable and should be slightly effective. There are two parts which are completely new and worth talking about.

The first part is the breathing and autogenic training section. What it seems to involve is using a breathing pattern with vizualization techniques for autosuggestion. This is a method which is very similar to the hypnosis ideas I’ve found in the past as well as having a slight resemblance to the qigong method Zixia talked about.

The second section worth looking at is the pressure massage section. In it, we are seeing the use of having plastic pins or needles being stuck in the area below the patella for a short time. From only a 5 minute analysis of this idea, it is similar to Tyler’s LSJL idea since we can think of the plastic as device that is compressing down on the tibia proximal epiphysis. The sad fact is that this “doctor” seems to be using some pseudoscience theory to justify the exercise feasibility.

The section on asymmetric exercises do suggest some reasonable ideas from a quick glance. He never claims more than 2-3 cms increase in height. His advice on muscle stretching runs counter to what common sense would say but it seems reasonable after further consideration.

Conclusion: This book raises some ideas and some are actually quite similar to ideas which we have seen before which were claimed to have had good results. I am not sure if this Palko guy was a real doctor and this guide for height increase neer had many reviewers of the material. I would say that for the height increase seeker, it is probably worth looking into the flexibility and exercise ideas. The visualization and hypnosis section probably won’t give results but it won’t hurt the practitioner. I can not claim it is a scam but there has been no test subjects, testimonials, or any older references to use to make a better judgement on the book.

This post is to clear a very common height increase argument found on many other websites which say that with consistent tensile loading or stretching, one can get the human body to elongate.

I remember looking at the pages of National Geographic and seeing these females of some tribe in Southeast Asia and wondered when I was in elementary school how they managed to stretch their neck. For the average person who has not done the neccesary height increase research, the idea that one can increase one’ height from using the same basic principles as those females in the tribes who wear neck rings is plausible.

However what really happens is that the collar bone or clavicle in the frontal region of the sternum get compressed downward which creates more space for the rings to move into. If we analyze the skeletal structure of the upper body consisting of the skulls, cervical vertebrate, and the sternum we see that besides the clavicle, there is actually a large area of space between the shoulder blade and the vertebrate irregular bones which make up the neck. If we analyze the distribution of the neck rings, we note that as the rings descend down, their width and size do increase to take into account for the attachment of the vertebrate to the ribcage. Refer to skeleton pic HERE.

The coils are usually about 2-3 kgs in weight and the adult female usually has about 20 rings around their neck, although there seems to be cases where there are women with 25 rings.

From sources (source 2) we learn that the history and reason for this practiced is unknown but speculated. It was thought that maybe the females did this form of body deformation to make them unattractive for other tribes and invaders to want to marry them. From other sources it seems that not only do they have the rings to wear around their necks, they also have rings to wear on wrists and ankles and also elephant tusks which pierce the earlobe and over time stretching them out due to gravity.

The point is that the neck rings are not really stretching out the necks of the tribes women or making them taller. The clavicle bones in the front side of the body/torso gets pushed downwards. It turns out that the clavicle is one of the few long bones in the human body which is easily broken or dislocated from the other bones it is supposed to be attached to.

The metal bars pushing downwards on young woman can deform the cartilage on the sides as well as stretch out the ligaments attaching the clavicle to the sternal wall or the scapula/shoulder bone. If you manage to break past the clavicle, there is actually a large space or cavity which the rings can fall into. It creates the illusion that the women in this native tribe in Burma can stretch out their neck. However, it is just an illusion.

I remember once finding this video from YouTube where it was a documentary about the days when our former Calfornia and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger giong through his bodybuilding days. It was called Pumpin Iron. I don’t know many guys who come to this website are bodybuilders but there was a small segment from the video which I found rather interesting. It’s at the 12:30-1240 mark. This guy who Arnold is showing how to pose for competitions explains one of his main reasons for bodybuilding.

His story is that his father is really tall but he ended up on the short side so he decided that if he can’t get as tall as his father, he can get as wide as his father. In classical psychology, people would call this an overcompensation. If you can not satisfy your first or real desire, you try to get better in a path that is similar to the first. From Youtube (source link).

When I remembered that there was a thread on the Make Me Taller forums about the former Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest biceps, Greg Valentino. The thread was appropriately entitled “Greg Valentino and his Height Complex”

From the Youtube video they linked HERE, you can hear around the 1:00-1:20 time frame him stating “…I’m only 5’5”. I have small man complex. And I just said, “man, if I can’t grow taller, I’m going to grow bigger and that’s exactly what I did…””

There are some really crazy videos on YouTube of a former Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman doing extremely heavy weights and I am stupified at his width and muscularity. He is built very solidly. When you get a closer analysis on his stats, it turns out that he is either 5′ 10 (source) or 5′ 11″ (source). From the profiles of other body builders, we see that most of them are not overtly tall. However that can be explained away from just normal physics. Shorter people have an easier ability to pack on the muscle in the right places and get wider. The taller you are, the more mass you will need to add to gain the type of size, definition, and cut. When you become the #1 in the world in almost anything, there is a sense of confidence and personal identity attached to that label or prestige. It would make sense that the best bodybuilders probably don’t worry too much about their height after the years go by with success but I do wonder whether the reason some guys start to go into bodybuilding is because of the height complex.

While these are only two instances they may indicate a bigger trend or pattern which I might not have noticed before. I have never gotten into bodybuilding myself but I remember very clearly seeing many of the same people in the University Fitness Center back in college. There was a term for them, “gym rats”. Most of them were not the tallest or the smallest but the one constant was that I would see them almost everyday there, no matter how heavy their course load was. They never got very big but they did exercise a lot.

Most of these guys were caucasian guys around the 5′ 10-6′ 2″ height range so they were average in height. Back then I didn’t care about how tall I was but I did notice that the really tall guys were never the ones who worked out very intensely, or even showed up. It was very surprising to see anyone over 6′ 4″ in the gym. Thinking back on it I theorize that maybe some of these guys might have been secretly or unconsciously trying to get more muscular or big because they were trying to overcompensate for their inability to become taller.

I think this PubMed study is one of the biggest breakthroughs I have ever found on the possibility of reforming the Epiphyseal Plates. 

The articles is entitled “Thyroxine Is The Serum Factor That Regulates Morphogenesis Of Columnar Cartilage From Isolated Chondrocytes In Chemically Defined Medium” – Author: R. Tracy Ballock, & A. H. Reddit (source link) There is a full article PDF to the link above.

The first thing that I notice right away is that the primary author is Robert Ballock, who Tyler introduced me to the work in the very beginning when he directed me to the work of Zhang for the Loading Modalities and Ballock for his studies on regrowing and regenerating new growth plates.

Analysis: While I haven’t read the entire paper yet, the abstract reveals for the first time conclusive evidence that with a slight manipulation of the serum concentration in the medium, in terms of adding thyroxine, the chondrocytes developed into the stacking column architecture that is only seen in growth plates, and not any other type of hyaline, fibrocartilage, or articular cartilage. The 3-D aggregates all seem to have the columns in a certain directions which means that these chondrocyte pellets are basically small pieces of completely regenerated growth plates. Remember that the main difference between the growth plate cartilage and the other type of cartilages, even the other hyaline cartilage was the way the chondrocytes were able to align themselves on top of each other in columns.

Not only that, we see that the chondrocytes also are expressing the right type of Collagen, Type X, as well as the right level of alkaline phosphatates, which is the type you see in completely differentiated chondrocytes which means they are going through hypertrophy. The key growth regulator they found was that it was thyroxine.potentially, I would say now that you can take these newly formed “cartilage” pellets and implant them into human long bones in a thick enough defect section and the bones can theoretically lengthen due to the hypertrophic effects.

Abstract

Epiphyseal chondrocytes cultured in a medium containing 10% serum may be maintained as three dimensional aggregates and differentiate terminally into hypertrophic cells. There is an attendant expression of genes encoding type X collagen and high levels of alkaline phosphatase activity. Manipulation of the serum concentration to optimal levels of 0.1 or 0.01% in this chondrocyte pellet culture system results in formation of features of developing cartilage architecture which have been observed exclusively in growth cartilage in vivo. Cells are arranged in columns radiating out from the center of the tissue, and can be divided into distinct zones corresponding to the recognized stages of chondrocyte differentiation. Elimination of the optimal serum concentration in a chemically defined medium containing insulin eliminates the events of terminal differentiation of defined cartilage architecture. Chondrocytes continue to enlarge into hypertrophic cells and synthesize type X collagen mRNA and protein, but in the absence of the optimal serum concentration, alkaline phosphatase activity does not increase and the cells retain a random orientation. Addition of thyroxine to the chemically defined medium containing insulin and growth hormone results in dose-dependent increases in both type X collagen synthesis and alkaline phosphatase activity, and reproduces the optimal serum-induced morphogenesis of chondrocytes into a columnar pattern. These experiments demonstrate the critical role of thyroxine in cartilage morphogenesis.

I was watching this youtube video (source link) and something the MD talked about I think is really important was the mention on how at least certain growth plates close. There seems to be a direction on how the growth plates close.

He was talking about a very specific type of growth plate injury that happens a lot to young kids who get injured playing sports. It is a special type of the Type III Salter Harris Fractures known as the Tillaux Fracture. The thing is that this type of fracture doesn’t really happen in adults only kids. What I learned is from the section 7:15-8:15 section of the video so if you want to skip to that part, that’s fine too. The thing is this…

Ankle growth plates don’t close uniformly but close from a medial to lateral direction.

We know that the fibula distal end is connected to the tibia with a ligament. This means that the medial side of the growth plate closes before the lateral side. Any type of torsional load (twisting) can cause the medial section which is attached to the fibula end can snap/ break off because of the fact that one side of the growth plate is ossified and has become bone while the other side might still have some cartilage left.

I thought I could help out the regular and future readers (as well as myself) in understanding the possible ways the mesenchymal stem cells can differentiate into with a picture I found from a PubMed study. The study and article is entitled “Adult mesenchymal stem cells and cell-based tissue engineering.” (source link).

Note: For the complete article file in PDF form, click HERE.

Arthritis Res Ther. 2003;5(1):32-45. Epub 2002 Dec 11.

Adult mesenchymal stem cells and cell-based tissue engineering.

From the bottom of the source link page….

Lineage potential of adult human MSCs. MSCs are characterized by their multilineage differentiation potentials, including bone, cartilage, adipose tissue, muscle, tendon, and stroma. This figure depicts some of the in vitro culture conditions (boxed) that promote the respective differentation process into a specific lineage. Signaling pathways and/or components or events shown to be involved in lineage-specific differentiation are in italics. See text for details.

Dotted arrowheads denote potential ‘reverse’ differentiation events. bFGF, basic fibroblast growth factor; bHLH, basic helix–loop–helix; BMP, bone morphogenetic protein; Cbfa1, core binding factor alpha 1; ECM, extracellular matrix; FGF, fibroblast growth factor; GDF, growth/differentiation factor; IBMX, 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine; LRP, low-density lipoprotein receptor-related peptide; MAPK, mitogen-activated protein kinase; PDGF, platelet-derived growth factor; SMAD, vertebrate homologue of DrosophilaMothers Against Decapentaplegic (MAD); TGF-β, transforming growth factor beta; WISP, Wnt-1-inducible protein.

Analysis:

We can see that the mesenchymal stem cells are a type of multi-potent progenitor stem cell which seems to be able to differentiate into many different types of cell types. In the article we learn that the mesenchymal stem cell is one of the main ideas people have for using the stem cells in tissue engineering.

If we focus just on the bones and cartilage, we can see that the picture is very clear in listing 1. the pathway, and 2. the types of growth factors or modulating factors which will help lead the mesenchymal stem cell to its desired outcome.

1. Bone

• Pathway and cause: LRP-5/Wnt Signaling, Telomerase & Cbfa-1
• Needed growth factors: Dexamethasone, BMPs, Ascorbate, Beta-Glycerophosphate, 1-25- DihydroVitamin D3,

2. Cartilage

• Pathway and cause: Cell Adhesion, SMADs, WISP-3/Wnt Signaling, MAPK, ECM Interactions, and Sox9
• Needed growth factors: High-density pellet culture, Serum-free media, Dexamethason, Ascorbate, TGF-Betas (1 & 2), BMPs