Someone recently sent a message to me and to Tyler showing studies which seem to show that Nitric Oxide can actually be involved in inhibiting chondrogenesis. These studies puts into question many old ideas and proposed supplements that were studied by the Grow Taller Forum (currently gone) spearheaded by Hakker years ago. Back then there was a lot of research into stuff like Niacin, mTOR, CNP up-regulation, and other stuff that was believed that would work since they caused increased vascularization and blood flow.

I even wrote a post about the possibility of using Nitric Oxide to stimulate increased growth in “
Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Nitric Oxide”. Tyler wrote about it too in HeightQuest.com in the post “Be Taller with Nitric Oxide?”.

He states that the NO if it has any affect, it would be towards osteoblast increases meaning that long bone lengthening was out of the question. These posts found seem to show that NO can have the opposite affect towards people who are still growing.

POST: Nitric Oxide Actually Inhibits Chondrogenesis And May Inhibit Bone Longitudinal Growth

Study #1 – Inhibition of transforming growth factor beta production by nitric oxide-treated chondrocytes: implications for matrix synthesis.

Study #2 – Nitric oxide decreases IGF-1 receptor function in vitro; glutathione depletion enhances this effect in vivo.

Study #3 – Nitric oxide inhibits chondrocyte response to IGF-I: inhibition of IGF-IRbeta tyrosine phosphorylation.

I won’t paste the abstract below since one can just click on the links above. What I wanted to do was give a first impression analysis on the abstracts that go with the study

Analysis & Interpretation

The first study shows that there is a link between Nitric Oxide and TGF-Beta1 and Proteoglycan synthesis. The relation is inverse in nature.

Here is what seems to happen.

• Interleukin 1 Beta (IL-1Beta) that is added to articular chondrocytes creates both nitric oxide and TGF-Beta1. 
• If you block the NO production, then you indirectly cause the chondrocytes to produce more TGF-beta1 and proteoglycan.
• The thing they use to block NO is NG-monomethyl-L-arginine (L-NMA)
• L-arginine (10 mM) reversed the inhibitory effect of L-NMA on NO production
• If there is more TGF-Beta 1 production, there is more proteoglycan production.

These are the 5 main points from the 1st study’s abstract. This is extremely good evidence that Nitric Oxide is actually really a bad idea for cartilage creation or regeneration. In my opinion, anything that is inhibiting either TGF-beta production or proteoglycan production is not a good idea to make people with no growth plates grow taller.

The 2nd study has a big claim made by the researchers. “We previously showed that high concentrations of nitric oxide (NO) decrease IGF receptor tyrosine phosphorylation and response to IGF in intact chondrocytes”. The rest of the abstract just talks about the types of compounds they tried out to decrease the effect of NO in decreasing the IGF’s receptors and the IGF’s response ability. The point I would make here is that NO seems to also decrease the responsiveness of IGF-1 since their receptors are blocked.

From the 3rd study we looked at…

“…suggest that NO is responsible for part of the cartilage insensitivity to IGF-I. These studies characterize the relationship between NO and chondrocyte responses to IGF-I in vitro, and define a mechanism by which NO decreases IGF-I stimulation of chondrocyte proteoglycan synthesis.”

“…These studies show that NO is responsible for part of arthritic cartilage/chondrocyte insensitivity to anabolic actions of IGF-I; inhibition of receptor autophosphorylation is potentially responsible for this effect”

Conclusion:

NO seems to have some type of indirect ability to decrease the effectiveness of IGF-1 on chondrocytes in terms of the IGF-1 anabolic properties. They also decrease TGF-Beta production and proteoglycan synthesis. This means that the cartilage matrix can’t be formed. NO would inhibit any way for us to regenerate growth plate cartilage in adults with bone maturity. In my opinion at this point, there is absolutely no way that NO would be able to help the person with no growth plates end up taller.

I conclude by saying thank you to the contributor who shows me and Tyler the studies.