Recently I have been getting quite a few emails from people asking me to review these grow taller/height increase supplements or products that they have found on other websites, many of them are completely new and foreign to me since I have never seen the website or product before.

So I decided that I am going to spend the next dozen or so posts looking at each and every grow taller pill or grow taller supplement that I can find across the entire internet, and this could take me a long time to finish, if ever. I know how easy it is to create a website (less than 10 minutes) and put a picture up which has no inventory or real product behind it.

Interestingly, two of the most visited posts o this website are the reviews for the Gloxi Height Enhancer at “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Gloxi Height Enhancer” and the GrowthMax Plus at “Product Review III, GrowthMax Plus”. I guess if I wanted to expand my reach and the audience of readers to this website, I should be doing more reviews on proclaimed height increase and grow taller supplements.

From the website NatureTherapy.com there is a product sold named SBL Homeopathy Rite Hite Tablets which are supposed to promote growth and make kids taller.

The description of the product in the product page is copied and pasted below…

---

Rite-Hite is a product of SBL’s research & development & is a combination of well proven drugs of homeopathy therapeutics for growth of children.

Rite-Hite is a combination of well proven drugs of homoeopathy for the growth of children. It helps to achieve the optimal balance of growth determining factors and thereby helps in promoting optimal growth.

Height of an individual is determined by many factors

• Genetic
• Hormonal balance
• Nutritional status
• General Health

Rite-hite helps to achieve the optimal balance of these factors & thereby helps in promoting height and growth to their full potential. 

Composition of SBL Rite Hite Tablets

Baryta Carbonica – 3x
Silicea – 6x
Calcarea Phosphorica – 3x
Natrum muriaticum – 3x 
In equal proportion Excipients q.s. to one tablets of 250mg.

Action of Individual Components
Baryta Carbonica : For children who are mentally and physically backward, don’t grow and develop, swollen abdomen, loss of memory. 

Silicea : For imperfect assimilation and consequent defective nutrition. Children who are slow in walking. 

Thuja Occidentalis : Acts on skin, blood, gastro-intestinal tract and brain. In exhaustion and emaciation. 

Calcarea Phosphorica : For anaemic children who have feeble digestion / adapted to children at puberty. 

Indications
For children who have imperfect assimilation, who do not grow and develop. For children who are anaemic having feeble digestion. Children with lack of concentration and poor memory. 

Contraindication / Side Effects
No known contraindication

Dosage of Rite Hite Tablets
One tablet daily for children below 13yrs. 
Two tablets daily for children above 13yrs.
or as directed by the physician.

---

Analysis & Interpretation: I have looked at the compounds Baryta Carbonica and Silicea before in posts “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Baryta Carbonica” and “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Silicea, Silicic Acid, And Silicon”. The Baryta Carbonica seems to be another name for Barium Carbonate. Barium is an alkaline earth metal element which can be found in rocks known as barite. Barium seems to be very chemically reactive so it is not found alone, but usually as barium sulfate. Baryta or Barita has been use by alchemists for centuries and it does not seem to be toxic. It seems that the Barium Carbonate is also known as whitherite, which are not soluble in water.

Silicea from the old post seems to be from silicic acid, which is a liquid form. There is the element of silicon in this liquid gel. It also have been usd since ancient times by alchemist in potions in believing to have healing properties.

As for the Calcarea Phosphorica, it is another name for Calcium Phosphate. Calcium Phosphate seems to be one of those components not just found in milk but also Plaster of Paris. Tyler would do a blog post on whether the Calcerea Phosphorica or Calcium Phosphate can have any chance of making people taller in “Adult Height Increase with Calcium Phosphate?”. He had concluded in saying that the Calcium can both be good for bone formation in terms of bone mineral density increase but might be als obad since it could make the hyaline cartilage to hard and rigid from the calcium crystals from embedding into the cartilage matrix.

As for the last compound, Natrum muriaticum, that is really just normal table salt Sodium Chloride.

If I was to be completely scientific and logical about the ingredients in this RITE HITE tablet sold as a growth promoter to kids, I would have to say that it is only effective for very young children who suffer from severe malnutrition of the important minerals in places like India. The supplement/tablets seems to be sold to an Indian/South Asian community and the homeopathic ingredients suggest that the ingredients are taken from ayurvedic references. Barium, Silicon, Calcium, and normal table salt are the ingredients. If the child is only able to eat bread and little meat, the supplement might help the still growing child to have stronger bone density but I highly doubt that it will increase even a still growing child’s growth rate. None of the compounds have ever really been put to the test under scientific studies.

If a child had a good diet with the right amount of minerals and vitamins intakes, then this homeopathic pill that is supposed to make a child grow taller would be useless. Since so many south asian kids are still very poor with so little nutrition, this pill might be able to help them at least have stronger bones, but can also stunt their height growth and even poison them.

 

 

Something that Tyler has often asked me to look into and try out myself through email is to ask about the idea of what if we apply just the right magnitude of tensile loading to cause the needed deformation we need to lengthen the leg.

This type of reasoning I have always had a lot of resistance against because of so many failed attempts before. Sky tried it in his group with LimbCenter.org and I am sure thousands (if not millions) of other crazy height increase seekers throughout human history have thought about and tried to put heavy weights on their legs to hopefully “stretch out” the bones.

I refer to the posts from before

• “Long Bone Tensile Strength, Loading Capacity, Compression Strength”
• Is Bone Distraction Or Bone Breaking Always Needed To Increase Height?
• “Sky’s Mistake, Why He Never Increased In Height”

From the first post, I had quoted the phrase…

The human femur is nearly twice as strong in compression as it is in tension; the ultimate strength is of the order of 12,000 lb./sq.in. in tension and 20,000 lb./ sq.in. in compression, and more or less the same relationship holds for oxen (Evans, 1957,chap.14).

From wikipedia….

It has relatively high compressive strength, of about 170 MPa (1800 kgf/cm²)^[4] but poor tensile strength of 104–121 MPa and very low shear stress strength (51.6 MPa),^[5] meaning it resists pushing forces well, but not pulling or torsional forces. While bone is essentially brittle, it does have a significant degree of elasticity, contributed chiefly by collagen

It is interesting to note that in multiple sources it is stated that due to the hollow nature of human bone, the overall structure of human bone is as strong as reinforced concrete for just tensile loading.

The thing to remember is that cancellous bone is 5X more ductile (malleable) than cortical bone and when surgeons decide to do the cosmetic surgery of distraction osteogenesis, they have to put a reasonably sized crack on the bone, to crack the cortical bone. The trabecular bone tissue is still left there which is not supposed to be cracked apart, which is what is being pulled apart when the screws on the external fixator are turned. I am referencing the study “Limb lengthening by callus distraction (callotasis).”

Remember that even with only cancellous bone, it still takes a bit of effort to use the screw to pull just the cancellous bone tissue apart, when the callus is being formed from the body’s natural healing properties. Apparently the medical term for where the surgeon takes a hammer and chisel and hammers on the human tibia (or other long appendage bone) until the cortical bone cracks is called “proximal submetaphyseal corticotomy“. The name itself means that the cortical bone is separated or cut open and that the cut is made somewhere below the metaphysis area, which is the middle area. The abstract above states “dynamic axial loading is instituted to promote corticalization.” The statement seems to suggest that after the distraction and lengthening is done, you put a compressive load on it to stimulate cortical bone growth.

Incidently there is an article from LiveScience.com that shows that overweight men have thicker femur bones.

The thing again is that the long bone in humans is very strong, steel-like. The 100-120 MPa when converted to US units gives a strength around 15,000-17,000 psi (Pound per Square Inch) which is  about the same and in agreement with the other sources I have found.

Calculations: If we tried to estimate just how much pounds as force would be needed to reach the maximum stress/strain which would lead to breakage on the average human leg, which is about 1.4 inches thick or 4 cms thick and have a intermedullary cavity about 2 cms thick, then the overall calculated area is

pi*2^2 – pi*1^2= 3*pi = about 9.42 cm^2 and 9.42500 (cm ^ 2) = 0.0009425 m ^ 2

if we put this into the ultimate tensile strength at 120 MPa (that is a mega-pascals) we get 113,100 newtons which converts into 25,426 pounds force.

Most compact cars themselves would not even weigh over 4,000 lbs-forces. To get around 25,000 of force pulling down or up on your cortical bone is a very high amount of force. Of course we are talking about the thickness of the longest bone in our human bodies, the femur. Maybe the tibia would be smaller. However this is a very basic physics problem. Let’s go back to the original question

Can we refine the answer to the original question a little more? would the bone in our lower limb break or stretch first?

It would seem that when bones extracted from already dead animals become dryer from the lack of blood, plasma, and water running around and through them. Dryness is usually correlated with loss of elasticity. We remember that for parts of the human to have elasticity, there must be an extracellular matrix filled with material that is elastic.

For cartilage and skin tissue, that would be collagen. For our purposes, since we are talking about Hyaline cartilage, we are looking at Type II Collagen, which is secreted by chondrocytes. We read from the first source that it is collagen that seems to give the long bones their tensile strength. Collagen fibrils arranged in lamellae results in the tensile strength of bone. Collagen has a low Youngs Modulus (stress/strain) aka (F/A)/(delL/L) , good tensile strength, and poor compressive strength. Elasticity seems to mean that the strain that is produced from the stress applied over a variation of stresses, is linear. 

So to fully answer, the question, it would seem that the long bones in our body, given the fact that the collagen is what creates it’s tensile strength, suggest that if we did load the bones up to a certain point, they will elongate first, but since the bones are “elastic”, once you let go of the load, the bones will go back to their natural length again. It seems that if you wish to really stretch out the bone to lengthen the bone, you would have to put a load on it that is beyond it’s normal stress/strain curve.

Of course the bone will eventually fracture, but there might be a certain amount of tensile loading we can put on the bone, past the point of it’s elasticity, and before the load becomes so much that the bone will fracture.

So let’s outline what the result/answer will be…

• The tensile strength from bones is from the collagen fibers in the bone, which actually make the bones “elastic”

• The long bones will elongate before they will fracture when you put steady rate of increased loading on the bones in a tensile way.

• However, once the load is let go, the bone will snap back to its original length like a rubber band.

• The bones will fracture once the load is increased over a certain point. 

• We might be able to calculate what will be the exact, most optimum load we put on the human leg, after elastic elongation, and before fracture, which can lead to real bone lengthening. 

• The load we calculate can be very high, if we are only thinking of using a gradual, steady linear increase in load on the bone. It might be more effective to do sudden jerks on the leg.

 

Something that I am sure any person who thinks a lot about height and how to grow taller eventually reaches is to wonder whether our children will end up short or tall, or hopefully wishing that our current or future children will end up to the type of stature we expect them to be at.

I know that personally, due to how obsessive I am with this endeavor, I may have some emotional difficulty if I eventually have a son who somehow doesn’t get even to the average height. I worry about this type of thing and wonder just how reasonable is it to worry already about something which hasn’t even happened yet and might be a decade into the future.

If I look at the direction and speed at which I am approaching any type of fatherhood, it is possible I will not be procreating at all in my life. I guess now that I am in another serious relationship, considering marriage, and settling down, I would not be too out of line to think about how well my future children with go through growth. Will they also worry as much about height and how tall they are as their dad?

I know that in my family, my mother, cousins, and my sisters all seem to have personal deep quirks and issues over their height, even though they would not be considered “short” by most people. It could be that I developed this strange obsession from being around my family. All I know is that every person in my family has expressed at some point their desire to be taller or regret that they are not taller than where they are now. What a strange family I am from.

So the original question is “Can We Change Our Genes And DNA So That Our Children Can Be Taller And Tall Height Becomes Hereditary Within Our Family?”

I would say that in the current genetics theory we are told, there is a small possibility we can.

In genetic engineering, the most general idea is that before the human (or any living organism) is ever even born, before even conception, when the sex cells/gametes, the male sperm and the female egg have not been integrated together to form the zygote, we can do some genetic “editing” on the dna in the individualistic cells like adding additional dna or replacing a section of the genome by clipping it and replacing the section with something slightly altered. We can use vectors to do this job. From the blog “Designed Babies” post “How a Designer Baby Can be Produced” we learn that there seems to be two types of effect when we change DNA.

You have Somatic Modification and Germline Modification. So Let’s see what these two types are…

From the website for The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, there are definitions given for the two types.

HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING: A CRITICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN TWO APPLICATIONS

1. “Somatic” genetic engineering is genetic engineering that targets the genes in specific organs and tissues of the body of a single existing person without affecting genes in their eggs or sperm. Somatic gene transfer experiments are currently undergoing clinical trials, with mixed results to date. But they may someday be effective. Diagram 5 above shows how somatic genetic engineering works.

2. “Germline” genetic engineering is genetic engineering that targets the genes in eggs, sperm, or very early embryos. The alterations affect every cell in the body of the resulting individual, and are passed on to all future generations. Germline engineering is banned in many countries but not in the U.S. Diagram 5 shows how germline genetic engineering works.

Implications For Height Increase: This post was to discuss the feasibility of being able to genetically change our children to make them taller. Obviously it is clear that of the two main ways to make people taller, the more effective approach is to do it before the child is even conceived. The effect is that all subsequent generations will also have the same traits and characteristics that you assigned to the genetic engineer.

What is interesting is that the websites and literature sort of suggest that even embryos can be altered genetically with a vector to change the DNA. I guess the key is to make sure the embryo is not too large or to far in it’s development to alter it’s DNA.

As for people who are already born, the effectiveness of genetic engineering is clearly decreased. We might wish for our 5 year old who is still growing to be even taller than what they are programmed to be and there might be a way to use somatic genetic engineering to achieve that. Somatic Engineering is still a very young area of study and there is little in this area in terms of concrete results. I know that at least a few biohackers in China and the USA who are already injecting themselves with certain types of vectors with growth factors inside to make themselves gain muscle muscle and loss weight faster.

I recently was reading the personal blog of the Professor, Researcher, and Multi-Millionaire Stephen Hsu at Information Processing and he would talk about the fact that at least one major private Chinese Research company has been trying to figure out how to engineer “genius babies”. In Hsu’s March 27th post, entitled “On the radio: NPR’s on the point” there is an audio file which you can play where he is being questioned on NPR about the details about China’s work in trying to create smarter babies. In the talk, Hsu would mention at least 4-5 times about the fact that besides intelligence, geneticists would also be trying to change other genotypes in the genome of the prenatal embryo. The first thing he brings up is the fact that height would clearly be the next big thing parents would probably secretly wish and love to change about their child.

Like I said before: Every single normal parent would want the best for their children to they would do everything they can to give the children, who might not even be born yet, every single physical advantage that money can buy.

Height would clearly be something that parents would ask to be manipulated. I would also then postulate that every single parent, if they had the chance would ask the child to be above average in height, or at least “tall” in description in comparison to other children ie the kids’s peers. However, what if then every single rich parent asks that their kid’s be tall?

The average height of boys and girls born to rich people with the money would shoot up in bamboo. Then it would turn into a sort of one-up-manship where each parent will try to make their kids at least slightly taller, maybe by 1 cm, then their friends’ or rival’s kids. After 3-4 generations, you’d have people who are programmed to be 8 feet tall. We’d look like midgets standing next to these genetically enhanced people.

So I guess the big thing we have to ask ourselves before we more further in the direction of creating “enhanced” babies is to ask what type of future do we really want to create and what are the odds that the super-humans we create in our children will turn into something ugly? Will they look at us and think that we are inferior creatures because we never got genetically enhanced?

I leave the reader with the quote from the website…

“The only situation in which germline engineering would be required over pre-implantation selection is one in which a couple would like to endow their child with genes that neither member of the couple possesses. This is the “enhancement” scenario, which we believe would lead to a dystopic human future if it were allowed”

This episode is the biggest, longest podcast episode that I’ve done so far at a little less than 50 minutes to discussion on the deep technical science behind the artcles we have found in our research.

Episode #7: Guest Tyler Comes Back To Discuss More About LSJL, Gene Expression, Periosteum Manipulation, And Much More

Me and Tyler from HeightQuest.com would delve into the subjects of…

• The recent findings of certain genes that have large roles in the regulating and determining final adult height.
• Deer Antlers and their unique epimorphic growth potential
• Further explanation of the molecular and genetic mechanisms on of the LSJL method on why it is feasible and effective
• The recent finding of the issue of periosteum stripping and transverse cutting leading to increased longitudinal growth.
• The reason why studying gene charts and expression is important for this research.
• The recent finding of the disruption of vascularity in the inter-medullary cavity in the metaphysis leads to at least temporary increased longitudinal growth
• The use of extracorporeal shockwaves (ESW) to increase periosteum thickness.
• The major growth factors that have been shown to be most important in the research
• Many more subjects that I can’t remember right now but are worth listening to.

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes and/or leave a review for the podcast!

Length of time: 50 min

Beginning of actual interview: ~ 1:15

Listen Here – (to download, right click and ‘save’)

It has been over 3 months but a few new podcast episodes have been made and will be put up very soon. From looking at the statistics of the podcasting numbers, it seems that I haven’t put up a podcast episode in over 2 months now. This episode will be the first to clear up issues that I wanted to address earlier so we won’t have to talk about them in episodes which will be dedicated more towards talking about the science.

Episode #6: Details On Updates Of The Website Operations And Concerns That Has Been Raised

For this episode I will be talking alone about details on the updates which are going on with the website, personal changes and how they will affect the evolution of the website, and projects and ideas which I want to combine with the website. A lot of comments and emails have come to the website email and they have raised a few concerns which I felt was reasonable and important enough to talk about.

There is little technical/science talk here since it is just me alone. Wait until the next episode where I will get Tyler on to talk more about the research and the breakthroughs we have been finding, if any. Some ideas will be brought up.

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes and/or leave a review for the podcast!

Length of time: 16 min

Listen Here – (to download, right click and ‘save’)

Note: I seem to remember that I might have already done a post on this diagram I have pasted below in this post before months before. Given the large number of posts I have written, my memory is not clear on which post that was. So I guess it is okay if I decided to redo an old post all over again, just so that it can be a review for me on the concepts and results.

This is one of those chart, tables, or diagrams which show that the research we have been doing is on the right track ,or at least that we are finally being good enough in our readings to know that what we have been hypothesizing is validated by other scientific works.

From the PubMed study & article “Concepts in Gene Therapy for Cartilage Repair“…

Analysis & Interpretation

I note that the growth factors in the chart are only for chondrogenesis and cartilage generation. This is good because so often when we are talking about the skeletal structure, we only are focused on the growth factors which will be best for osteogenesis, since most studies on bones and cartilage are for chronic, old age issues like osteoperosis and rheumatic arthritis, which are caused by bone mineral density decreases and cartilage degeneration. Nobody has done any research to see the research of cartilage generation from the lens towards height increase.

The chart below is rather big and complicated but the main point is that almost everything listed below has anabolic aka growth potential to make cartilage grow from at least progenitor mesenchyme cells if they are there.

So let’s go down the list.

We have seen the TGF-Betas before, type 1 and 2. Type 3 I am not familiar with.

We have the BMPs, 2, 4, and 7 which we have done extensive research on and they seem to be better at getting multipotent stem cells to differentiate into the chondrogenic lineage than the ostegenic lineage.

The CDMP stands for Cartilage Derived Morphogenic Protein. It seems that they go by a more familiar names, the Growth Differentiation Factors, and I have stated in at least two previous posts, (“Is Growth Differentiator Factor 5 GDF5 Gene The Most Influential Gene Towards Height?” and A New Proposed Theory To Increase Height And Grow Taller Using GDF-5 (Breakthrough!)) that GDF-5 has potential to be huge in our goals to become taller. As for GDF-6 and GDF-7, I did a post about the whole group of GDFs many month ago entitled “A Detailed Study And Analysis On Growth Differentiation Factors GDFs Which Influence Growth And Height” and I seem to remember that only 2 of the many GDFs had potential to be used as a growth factor for chondrogenesis.  However I will look into the reference studies listed.

We have Smad which is both the gene that creates the protein, and the protein, but I have not done any research on it yet.

The Sox9 gene was shown to be critical in the post “Why Does The Epiphyseal Cartilage Disappear But The Articular Cartilage Remain? (Breakthrough!)” which shows that for Chondromodulin Type I to work and the area of the articular cartilage to not get vascularized, we need the Sox9 gene to be turned on.

The IGF-1 is very well known by researchers to have chondrogenic effects since it seems to be able to directly effect the receptors on the surface of chondrocytes.

Everything else, like the Brachyury, mLAP1, PDGF, EGF, HGF, Comp, etc. I have never even heard of.

What might be better for me to relearn the growth factors and proteins that help in cartilage regeneration is to look at the sections the chart is broken into,

Stimulation of Chondrogenic Differentiation

• Anabolic Growth Factors
• Signal Transduction Molecules
• Transcription Factors

Stimulation of Cartilage Matrix Synthesis and/or Cell Proliferation

• Anabolic growth factors
• ECM Component
• Enzymes for GAG synthesis

Inhibition of Osteogenesis & Hypertrophy

• Growth factors – 1. Inhibiting TGF-Beta & BMP action, 2. Inhibiting terminal differentiation
• Signal Transduction Molecules

Anti-Inflammatory 

• IL-1 blockage (cytokine antagonist)
• TNF-2 inhibition (Cytokine antagonist)
• MMP inhibitory (Proteinase inhibitor)
• cytokines
• Enzymes for glucosamine derivatives (IL-1 inhibition)

Senescence Inhibition

• Inhibition of telomere erosion
• Free radical antagonist

Apoptosis Inhibition

• Caspase inhibition
• Fas-L blockage
• NO – induced apoptosis
• TNF-alpha, TRAIL inhibition

From a process point of view, we can see that multiple studies have been done to show that you can try to manipulate each stage of the cartilage or chondrocyte’s life. You can trying to inhibit apoptosis, inhibit senescence, decrease inflammation, inhibit hypertrophy and differentiation into bone cells. The more anabolic strategy is to stimulate cartilage cell division and create more of the extracellular cartilage matrix.

If we were just to look at the side of trying to make more cartilage and chondrocytes, we could just use Table 3, and use  the BMP-2,7, the TGF-Beta, GDF-5, and IGF-1 to stimulate more cartilage growth. However it is clear from the first table that we must somehow also get the other half of the process working too so that we can prevent the cells from aging or dying too quickly, as wells keeping them from going the bone cell direction in transformations.

It seems that there are at least a dozen ways that the cartilage cells get evolved to a point which makes them none functioning. Many of the proteins and cytokines I have seen before but with little research. This table is sort of an introductory way for the researchers to see which types of PubMed studies they should be look for to understand the types of molecular mechanism which control the chondrocyte.

Implications For Height Increase

The two tables below shows us that beyond just stimulation of chondrogeniic differentiation and cartilage matrix synthesis, and cell proliferation, we would have to also consider the other side, which is how to keep them from aging and dying so we have more time to manipulate the cartilage tissue to expand and multiple in the direction which we want to lengthen long bones.

---