Last night while I was doing nothing I decided to waste some time and scour YouTube for any videos that would entertain me. Along the way I somehow started to watch old Seinfeld clips again. One clip however did catch my attention and was where Kramer started to get really deep into swimming.

Apparently Kramer started off doing hundred of laps in the local YMCA or fitness club pool. He would change that to start swimming in the East River, which I would have no idea where that is since I never lived close to or in the NYC area.

In the clip below, around the 2:40-2:50 mark, he would state “…exercises every muscle in the body. It’s great for the back….Four hours in this chop (?) and I’m a full inch taller…”

Very early in the website I had written a post about the link between swimming and possible height increase with “Grow Taller By Swimming”

Interpretation

I personally can attest to the fact that from swimming, the body “feels” taller since many muscles that are not used in traditional exercises and weightlifting are used and stretched out. The bouyancy of the water does indeed help lower the amount of weight that the lower body will feel. Years ago when I was going through an obsessive period of exercising many hours of the day to gain height swimming was a huge part of the daily routine. Around 2-3 hours was spent everyday doing butterfly strokes in an olympic sized pool to increase fitness and to possibly gain height. Krammer says that 1 full inch in at least temporary height can be gained after 4 intensive hours of swimming. It is a TV show but the claim does not seem that unreasonable. We do remember that when astronauts are in space, the spine and vertebrate is mostly decompressed. At an environment like that, the vertebrate is supposed to decompress to the point that the average height increase seen is by 3% of the original height on the surface of the earth. This means that on average, the human body would increase by 2 inches. For water, the effects are not as dramatic but there can be some effect.

It has never been tested to see what would happen to the human body if it was just placed in water for a long period of time but  we do know that when dead bodies are found in the water they do become bloated and are often found floating on the surface of the water since the body has a lower density than the water. It is well known among divers and swimmers that one’s elevation underwater can be altered by the amount of air that one keeps in one’s lung. If the lungs were filled completely with air, the body will go up to the surface since the average density of the body would be less than the water.

As for the claim that swimming can lead to some height increase, we do note from previous research that the bone density of swimmer who do it extensively at least for prepubscent females

From study “Differential effects of swimming versus weight-bearing activity on bone mineral status of eumenorrheic athletes“…

“Swimmers were taller (p = 0.0001), heavier (p > 0.005), and had a greater bone-free lean mass (p < 0.001) than gymnasts and nonathletic controls. When adjusted for body surface area, there was no difference in lean mass between swimmers and gymnasts, and both were higher than controls (p < 0.01)”

The fact that the swimmers found in this study was taller could be just from the fact that in the sport of swimming, taller and longer bodies may be better at reaching long distances and can cover more surface area but it still shows that swimmers are taller. There is no evidence that would indicate that taller children in general are pushed into swimming, unlike volleyball and basketball, but the more likely result is that the taller children end up being able to reach the other end of the lane slightly faster, and that results in the being more likely to be at the collegiate and professional levels of swimming. As always there is so causality that have been able to really show that in developing children, swimming –> taller body.

It is true that the bone mineral density of swimmers is much lower than other athletes, and may even be lower than controlled groups where people don’t exercise.

From source …

“While in space, astronauts’ bodies respond to the lack of gravitational stress on the bones by decreasing their bone mass. On the other end of the spectrum, weightlifters experience an increase in bone density due to the stress of the extra weight on the bones. The more stress placed on the bones over a period of time, either through heavy weights and/or by impact, the more the body responds by increasing the bone density.

Study after study comparing swimmers with other athletes, shows swimmers to have similar bone density to couch potatoes.”

We see from many studies and sources that there seems to be a weak positive correlation between the fact that high bone mineral density in at least developing children, as long as malnutition is accounted for, seem to correlate to above average height. So the weaker the BMD, the he higher chance for a person to be above average in height. The fact that in space where gravity is near zero shows that both the body expands in height and the density drops. The effect of water should do the same thing.

From source link HERE

Note: I was unable to embedd the video due to certain YouTube restrictions.