I recently found the out that the foods that are derived from soy based products seem to contain a type of compound known as isoflavone aka phytoestrogen. This phytoestrogen compound seems to have a chemical structure similar to the compound estrogen.

From a website The Vegan RD the women writer talks about the misconception that soy based products contain estrogen, when in fact they contain something that is not exactly estrogen but very similar to estrogen. She states…

“Soyfoods are unique among commonly-consumed foods because they contain large amounts of isoflavones.”

“Both isoflavones and estrogen bind to and activate estrogen receptors (ERs) on cells. Human cells have two types of these receptors–ER-alpha and ER- beta—which have different distributions in different tissues. That doesn’t matter to estrogen, which happily binds to either type, but isoflavones are more finicky. They much prefer ER-beta. It’s an important distinction, because the two types of receptors produce different—sometimes completely opposite—effects.”

“…while estrogen therapy can protect bone health in postmenopausal women.”

“In contrast, the osteoporosis drug raloxifene—which is a SERM—has estrogen-like effects on bones, but anti-estrogenic effects in breast tissue. So it helps protect bone without raising breast cancer risk.

Analysis & Interpretation:

I would assume that this women know a little more than the average person about soy based foods since she says that her husband writes about soy based products. It is true that soy based food can help with bone density increase while avoiding the increased chance for endometrial cancer and perhaps also with an increased risk of breast cancer which would be noticed from estrogen replacement therapy. Notice what she write about the Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators, SERMS.

Now, first of all I now know that some Health Websites which says that soy based foods have high estrogn levels are not really correct. They have high levels of something very similar. However an axiom which I will always say from my 1 year of research on the science of height increase is this…

Having too much estrogen flowing through a developing child’s system will stunt their longitudinal boen growth – This is why girls end up starting puberty around 2 years earlier than boys and end puberty, as well as growth plate full closure 2 years earlier than boys, which would result in girls on average being shorter than boys. Their estrogen is causing them to speed towards growth plate closure faster. 

There is so much evidence for the fact that estrogen is one of the primary causes for why we really start to experience growth plate closure. I refer to the PubMed articles…

• “Estrogen receptor-beta inhibits skeletal growth and has the capacity to mediate growth plate fusion in female mice.” – Remember again that the woman writer for the vegan website says that the isoflavones in soy only binds to estrogen receptor-beta!!

• “The role of estrogen receptor-α and its activation function-1 for growth plate closure in female mice.” – This study suggest that maybe estrogen receptor-alpha is more influential in causing the growth plates to go through fusion/closure than the beta receptors.

• “Effects of estrogen on growth plate senescence and epiphyseal fusion”

One term in her analysis of this type of “pseudo-estrogen” really jumped out at me and that was the word Raloxifene. I have seen that term Raloxifene before in my research, but it was linked to the effect where longitudinal growth would be decreased and inhibited if a person ingested or got injected with a high concentration of this element.

When I did the research on Raloxifene, the Wikipedia article on Raloxifene showed me something which I definitely recognize before in previous research. The sentence states…

“In 2006, the National Cancer Institute announced that raloxifene was as effective as tamoxifen in reducing the incidence of breast cancer in postmenopausal women at increased risk”

Raloxifene seems to be used for the same type of effect as tamoxifen. I would like to show the reader these PubMed articles I found months ago between the link of Tamoxifen and decreased long bone longitudinal growth.

“Tamoxifen impairs both longitudinal and cortical bone growth in young male rats.”

In fact, tamoxifen has been used traditionally by physicians to treat a disorder known as McCune-Albright syndrome. I have talked about the McCune-Albright syndrome before in the post “A Deeper Look Into The Multiple Pathologies Causing Gigantism Beyond Growth Hormone Excess” and it is one of the only disorders that would cause children who are still in the growing phase to develop abnormally tall stature. Most bone growth disorders lead to stunted bone growth like achondroplasia.

From the PubMed study above, it seems that tamoxifen has been used to arrest longitudinal bone growth. To validate this point even further, here are 2 other PubMed studies which say the same thing…

“Tamoxifen induces permanent growth arrest through selective induction of apoptosis in growth plate chondrocytes in cultured rat metatarsal bones.”

Tyler in HeightQuest.com wrote a post about the possibility of using Tamoxifen to actually do the reverse of what I am hypothesizing in this post, which is that Tamoxifen can increase growth in the post “Grow Tall with Tamoxifen?“. The point I think Tyler was trying to make back in 2011 when his post was written was that Tamoxifen, like the Raloxifene, and also the phytoestrogens found at such high levels in soy based products in tofu and such does indeed cause bone growth, but that bone growth in terms of increasing bone mineral density will come at the high cost of reduced longitudinal long bone growth in the epiphyseal growth plates. I completely disagree with Tyler on this point. I think Tamoxifen would result for most test subject who were given the compound stunted growth and a decreased final height.

Like the researchers have all said, osteoporosis turns out to be a very big problem for females as they get into menopause. Throughout some hormonal process which I have not researched well enough yet, it seems that the menopausal hormonal changes cause the calcium minerals to be removed from the hard cortical bones as well as the cancellous bone. This is known as calcium absorption back into the blood stream. It would turn out that East Asian females are the biggest ethnicity or group in terms of demographic who would suffer from osteoporosis and bone mineral density loss. I wrote about the height lossing effects of decreased bone density in East Asian females in a very recent post entitled “The Connection Between Bone Loss From Osteoporosis And Decreases In Height In East Asian Females”. 

The  article from The Vegan RD says the same type of thing about the bone density benefit of eating soy for increased bone density in older females so that their chance of developing osteoporosis are decreased. The website also wrote a very good, insightful article about The Amount of Soy Eaten in Various Countries in East Asia. I have not idea whether there is a difference in the phytoestrogen concentration between the fermented type of soy foods and the non-fermented types of soy foods. I can not comment on whether non-fermented or fermented soy foods would have less phytoestrogen. All I know is that at this time, at this stage in my research on height increase, I think that soy based foods with their high levels of phytoestrogen is causing people in East Asia to have stunted growth. 

When we look at all the google search results when we type in the phrase “soy estrogen” and/or “soy estrogen bone”, we find the same things been said about how the soy products like tofu would make the bones in middle ages females increase in bone density but not result in the increased in cancer seen from just using estrogen. However, I have found plenty of evidence which shows that there is an inverse relationship between bone growth in terms of increased bone mineral density increase and bone longitudinal growth where the bone actually gets longer.

In an old post where I looked at what happens to children who develop illness or any type of immunity decrease while they were growing, there was always a band of increased bone density in the long bone’s diaphyseal area when longitudinal growth rates decreased. So to generalize this major point I have found….

In developing children who are not suffering stunted growth from severe malnutrition or vitamin defiency – Increased Bone Mineral Density has a positive correlation with Decreased Long bone Longitudinal growth.

And this is what we are seeing in Raloxifene. To validate my point that Raloxifene seems to inhibit bone lengthening while children are still growing, I refer to the PubMed studies below…

• An estrogen receptor basis for raloxifene action in bone.
• Raloxifene acts as an estrogen agonist on the rabbit growth plate.

Some lay people can argue that the results we find from these PubMed articles that show experiments done on lab rats, mice, or rabbits can not be applied in the same way as humans. I disagree with these people. Biologists and geneticists have been performing on small mammals like rodents for decades whatever biological hypothesis they want to test. I think that most of the effects seen in the mammals we do in the lab can indeed be translated to the human in medical clinics.

Implications For Height Increase

This is the first time I think any amateur researcher in auxology has been able to link the reason why vegetarians and asian ethnicities have been historically and traditionally been shorter than other ethnicities to diet reasons. It is because the vegan or east asian person have been eating soy derived foods.

For the Asian Person…

 

The soy derived foods would include tofu, any tofu derivatives, and maybe even the famous soy sauce that has made Asian Cuisine so popular. While the salty, tangy sauce of soy sauce from China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan has been great to the taste buds, they may not be very good for the person who is still growing.

I note that on average, it does seem like people whose ethnic background is primarily of East Asian decent are on the average shorter than other groups and ethnicities around, at least from what I have seen in the American school landscape. Sure, there are always outliers and anomalies but the trend seems to be still around. I am proposing that maybe one of the main reasons why this is so is because of the traditional Asian diet which resolves a lot around Soy Foods.

I wrote a post a while back entitled “Breastfeeding Babies Has Given Clear Proof That All Children Have The Same Potential For Growth Regardless Of Genetic Or Ethnicity (Important)” suggesting that from what we find in the growth patterns and growth charts of babies around the world whose mothers choose to not use the formula to feed them until much later, the growth patterns (amount of inches grown per year over time) were very similar for almost all countries. This would imply the idea that there may not be any “race” who end up taller or shorter than another. The traditional stereotypes of Asians being shorter than their Caucasian counterparts may be due more to their familie’s eating habits and eating choices (ie. tofu, soy sauce) than to “racial genetics”, if there is even such a thing.

For the Vegan/ Vegetarian…

From american nutrition theory, we know that the human body needs protein to survive. The thing is that when we look at the demographics of people who choose to voluntarily become vegetarians, the majority are females. (At least, there seem to be much more females who are at least vocal about their choice in choosing to become vegetarian.) So how does the vegetarian get their protein source? The main way for the non-vegan vegetarian is to go for eggs and fish, which seems to be okay. I wrote in the past about the effects on growth and height in the developing child who eats a vegan or vegetarian diet in the post “Does Eating A Vegetarian Or Vegan Diet Lead To A Shorter Height?”

At that time of the writing of the post above, I was still on the fence about whether it is true that vegetarians, but especially vegans turn out shorter than if they just ate meat. However, the vegan who is choosing not to consume anything that is coming from an animal will not even eat egg, milk, or fish. They have limited their protein source to just the nuts, the beans, and the legumes.

Now, I am starting to change my opinions a little and lean towards the side in believing that vegans especially are probably inhibiting their growth at least little (2-3 cms maybe) of the final height from choosing not to eat anything that is derived from animals. If the vegan is choosing to eat soy based foods as a primary source of protein, then I am almost positive that they are probably inhibiting their growth at least a little from the high phytoestrogen levels.

Now, there are some beans which I have found which may be good for increased height and growth like the Mucana Pruriens (Velvet beans) which has L-Dopa or Levadopa, which is somehow similar in effect and origin as the growth hormones. I did a post about the possibility of eating velvet beans aka Mucana Pruriens to grow taller in the post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Eating Mucuna Pruriens Or Velvet Bean”. These beans, which can be used as a protein source for vegetarians, but especially vegans, can possible stimulate increase growth since they can stimulate the pituitary gland in some way which I don’t know how top produce slightly higher rates of human growth hormone (HGH) release than average.

However, if the vegan turns to soy based foods for the primary protein source, while they are still growing, then they risk the possibility that from eating the soy foods they have stunted growth.

Conclusions

I would like to conclude this epic post with this PubMed study which shows how strong the link is between estrogen and growth

“Estrogen Resistance Caused by a Mutation in the Estrogen-Receptor Gene in a Man”

This article (along with two other cases or PubMed articles in the database as well as previous posts on this website) shows what happens to a person when they somehow have a slight genetic defect where they have no estrogen receptors that work in the chondrocyte in the resting zone of their growth plate. The man who was over 6′ 8″ experience growth up to his 30s with growth plates still open.

Note what the results section say in the link….

“The patient was tall (204 cm [80.3 in.]) and had incomplete epiphyseal closure, with a history of continued linear growth into adulthood despite otherwise normal pubertal development. He was normally masculinized…”

When I was reading over the article “Diurnal variation in stature: is stretching the answer?” which I cited as the main source in the recent post “How Much More Height Can Be Gain From Stretching For Morning, After Waking Up Height? (Important)” there was a small section that got me interested which is where an auxologist who was measuring children suggested that there might be a way for children at least to push themselves up (ie stretching) so that they get get to their maximum height.

In that article, the point the researchers were making was that for a physician or anyone measuring a child to get the real height measurement, the child should not be trying to force themselves to stretch out to the maximum since the real height is the mean aka average measured value.

The section I am talking about is below…

A stretching technique did become widely adopted about 20 years ago, however, after Whitehouse et alsuggested that ‘gentle upward pressure on the mastoid processes’ could minimise the eVects of diurnal variation.11 Indeed, these authors claim to have shown that, using this technique, loss in stature between morning and afternoon, though not entirely eliminated, can be reduced to a maximum of 0.46 cm.

This section in the article seems to suggest that we can stretch our body out to upwards of even more than 0.25 inches just from a simple act of pushing at a part of our skull bone. The area of the skull is something known as the Mastoid Process. I wanted to see just where this mastoid process is so I googled it and the Wikipedia article on this bump in the skull was the first thing that popped up.

The Mastoid Process is talked about in Wikipedia If we use our hands and fingers to feel it out, it would be located about 1 cm behind where our lower earlobe would be, called the lobule.

Refer to the picture to the right, where the highlight square is focusing on.  

So the method is to give a firm, constant, upward pressure on the mastoid process to increase our measured height.

The article had said that this method wouldn’t work, but I might have to disagree due to what I have seen from my own experiences.

Theory

If we view the skull as an irregular bone that is attached to the upper most cervical vertebrate bone by a diarthrosis/synovial joint which can only move in 1 main direction (I am purposely neglecting the fact that the head can swivel side to side for this example to simplify the diagram so I can make a point), from up to down, then we can say that the head is like the femur where there is an imaginary axis line that passes through the lateral sides of the head where the center of the head turning would be. Note: I am currently using Anatomical terms of location for convenience and standardization purposes. If we are pushing on the mastoid process, we are effectively turning the head downwards, towards the rostral-ventral direction, but just a little.

This means that what Whitehead is really doing when he tells auxologists who do the measurements and apply upward pressure to the children’s head is to turn the head downward ventrally, while at the same time pulling at the dorsal side of the need up.

This idea was something that I had proposed many months ago in a post. I noticed this phenomena where my measured height would increase by around 1/4th of an inch almost by turing the head down and puffing up the back neck area, from watching how my height would change when I turned my head which was shave at that time (years ago).

I talked about this idea in a very old post “Grow Taller By Head Tilting”

Example 

I would like to refer to the side view profile of the NBA player Kobe Bryant to see a good example of what I am talking about.

Most groups and tribes of people have hair that is not shaved short enough to be able to remove the measure error attributed to hair, but for the African American community, the males there prefer the really close shave for a hair fashion style which works foe them.

Let’s look at Kobe Bryants head shape. From the side view, we can see that his head is not a completely round circle from the side. There are certain part of his skull which bulge out slightly. That area is the back skull area, which is more pronounced. Kobe has a thin nose, high cheek bones, and angular features for his eyes. His face is teardrop shaped, and his forehead is not pronounced. I would say that he is a handsome man. It is the back, upper area of his head that I wanted to focus on.

If Kobe was to have his height measured at the position you see him in that wallpaper, then he would not be as tall than if he turned his head downwards and pushed the pack of his skull using the back neck muscles. The different for Kobe can be as much as 1.5 cms, but it would be noticeable since the head is shaved.

For most people, their forehead like Kobe’s (who just happend to have it more visible due to his shaved head) is not as pronounced as the back of their head. If you are trying to make sure you get the highest measured value for height, the pushing of the mastoid process might work, but only if you make sure the result is to turn the head downward and lift the bigger, thicker back of the head up for measurement.

Note: This post is a little more controversial than some posts due to the fact that I am doing a very systematic analysis on the skull features of a rather famous, well known athlete. I have nothing against the guy but using a picture I found from Google Images.

Recently someone named Yashar from the country of Turkey contacted me through the website email naturalheightgrowth@gmail.com and inquired about whether the Grow Taller 4 Idiots book that is well marketed around the internet would really work in helping him become taller. I said that is probably wouldn’t but the nice thing he did do was sent a copy of the book PDF to me to look at through email. I looked inside to see whether there was any changes and I noted that there seems to be a few more pages to this edition he gave me than the one that is listed in the Free Stuff and The Library sections.

It seems that this new edition of Grow Taller 4 Idiots is around 103 pages long, while the old copy one that I have uploaded for download is around 89 pages. I have took the liberty of clipping the table of contents page of both versions so that you can see the difference.

I guess this copy is the one that quite a few people have been emailing me about when they referring to something called “Exercise Routine Program” of the Grow Taller 4 Idiots book. For a long time I had no idea what they were talking about and only said “no” when they asked me whether I had it.

Quick Analysis

The obvious difference between the two PDFs is that this copy I’ve seen is longer, and the chapters have changed in name. I have gone gone through the 2nd version in detail but I would assume that the content from the old book was never removed, but pictures for the exercise routine was added in.

Now there is 3 chapters dedicated to exercises, which is definitely what so many people emailing me have been asking for. Well now I have what they want, so it will be free to download.

In terms of whether this new, improved version is going to help anyone actually grow taller, I highly doubt it. Just take a look at my recent review, which is more like a personal bashing, of the product which I have always claimed was a scam at “The Book Title For Grow Taller E Book “Grow Taller 4 Idiots” Directly Tells You It Is A Lie”

• You can get the old copy of the Grow Taller 4 Idiots PDF book by clicking HERE.

• You can get the new, slightly longer copy of the Grow Taller 4 Idiots PDF book by  clicking HERE.

For all future visitors to the website, you will be able to download the PDF from the Free Stuff or The Library section.

There is an old Grow Taller Program which I have not gotten to until now which I wanted to only briefly talk about in a short interview post. This product is called Grow Taller Dynamics, a Grow Taller Faster Program from the website www.growtallerdynamics.com.

It would be very easy to dismiss this program as another grow taller scam but I have tried to be reasonable and open to all ideas. The thing I am looking for is scientific evidence that their ideas would work.

 

From the home page of the website, we learn that the creator of this system is a Dr. Philip Miller….“I’m Dr. Philip Miller, a health researcher, natural remedies expert and a doctor by profession with a specialization in neurosurgery.”

Me: I am not sure if this guy is real or not, or that picture of this guy is a standard template pic used in all these grow taller internet scams.

“It’s a scientific fact that the spine accounts for about 35% of our current height. This means that, fixing postural or spinal problems can result to a substantial increase in your height from 2 to 6 inches.

I have read that astronauts in space wil have their vertebrate disks decompressed leading to an increase of 3% of their original body height. That is around 2 inches for most people between the height of 5 and 6 feet tall. His claim of anything more than 2 inches will be impossible for anyone else who is less than 8 feet tall since 3% of 8 feet tall (96 inches) will still be slightly less than 3 inches. 2 inches is the maximum that is really possible for normal vertebrate disk decompression in most people.

Further on…

Grow Taller Dynamics will teach you like I taught my daughter the step-by-step procedure of correcting excessive curvatures of the spine that are genetically inherited or occur to daily habits, thus increasing your height.”

This type of procedure if done with extreme dedication and effort might result in at maximum 1 inch or slight more after many months of work. 2 inches is impossible for most people (without severe spinal curvature like scoliosis) to achieve. And also, we know that the stretching which will most likely give the person a few millimeters of increase will be lost if the exercise routines are not done without stopping.

Other claims that is made by this guy is that his daughter who supposedly stopped growing grew 4 inches within the first 6 weeks of implementing this program and grew another 2 inches later.

The entire Grow Taller Dynamics Program is around $37 dollars. It is supposed to have been reduced from the original price of $97. There is supposed to be a 60 day Risk Free 100% Money Back Guarantee. If you buy this program, they might answer your questions on the contact page with an order number but I highly doubt these people will ever talk to a buyer ever again. The entire program seems to be another PDF file. So another E-Product. The entire thing is just 1 long sales page. I can only find a 2nd product ordering page.

Analysis: 

What this Dr. Miller is saying is only partially true. Spinal curvature and vertebrate curvature can cause some reasonable amount of height reduction. There are already any ways using ordinary stretching and yoga positions to decrease the spinal curvature and regain some height reduction.

 

 

I recently have found more evidence that a very old post I did may have more validity than I thought back then when I wrote about it. That old post is “The Connection Between Colostrum, Growth, and Height”. it seemed that Tyler would also immediately write about the possibility that Colostrum would work when he posted something similar “Increase longitudinal bone growth with Colostrum?”

Now there is this article I found written in 2009 entitled “Colostrum Functions Like Human Growth Hormone to Reverse the Aging Process”. The article is probably written for the page to gain traffic and get ad clicks but it is still rather informative. I wrote the old article about colostrum and its potential to help people grow taller when the website was still rather new but now I am a little better informed on what is going on. 

Tyler mentioned back in that post that we should figure out what type of cytokines are in the colostrum and whether the growth factor that get ingested make it to the blood stream or does the stomach just break down growth factors and they never manage to get to the areas where growth happens.

From the article above…

Research has shown that colostrum is the one supplement that can bring help to everyone that uses it, largely because of its ability to perform many of the functions of human growth hormone (HGH) in the body.

The colostrum also has some anti-inflammatory effects on intestiinal epithelial cells.

While human mothers produce a small amount of colostrum, cows produce approximately nine gallons during the first thirty-six hours after giving birth. Colostrum is produced by almost all mammals, and is not species specific…

This means that supplementing with colostrum provides many of the benefits of HGH without the high cost or need for daily injections. It is IGF-1 that is responsible for many of the benefits provided by colostrum. Studies indicating that bovine colostrum supplementation can increase levels of IGF-1 in the body date back to 1998.

Growth factors from colostrum:

IGF-1 is a truncated form of IGF that is 10 times more potent than IGF-2 in stimulating hypertrophy and cell regeneration. It is present in bovine colostrum. (International Journal of Cellular Biology, 1996)

Fibroblast growth factor, IGF-1 and epithelial growth factor are all important mitogens for healing the skin. They are all found in bovine colostrum. (Journal of Surgery Research, 1995)

Analysis & Interpretation:

It is not a good idea to believe everything you read from the internet but this article seems to have been written by someone who knew what they were talking about. If the facts are real, then we can say that colostrum seem to have very similar properties and effects as human growth hormon, HGH. IGF-1 is also found inside colostrum.

That initial bit of cream that mammal mothers produce after they give birth to babies seem to be colostrum and this has many anti-bacterial, anti-viral properties making sure the baby is well fed and protected when it is first born. This compound seem to be extremely good for humans and for protection from pathogens and illness which stunt growth for developing children.

If I was to suggest maybe a supplement to take for people who are still growing, getting real colostrum supplements is something that I would consider to use.

Something that I found today while I was reading over an old PDF I had downloaded and put in a big folder was lecture notes from a Upper Class (or even Graduate School) university Biology course from a California State University.

The Lecture notes were entitled “Chapter 10: Postnatal Growth of Fins and Limbs through Endochondral ossification Cornelia E. Farnum Review by Susan Lujan”

The link for the website if you check the URL seems to be from a Biology 680 course (and lecture #4) by a Dr. Stuart S. Sumida from the Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB)

In the lecture notes, in the section that talks about growth strategies, there is a small part where notes on indeterminate is talked about. Now, I have looked at the idea of indeterminate growth before in previous posts and noted that some animal families or orders have this property where they never stop growing in size, in length, height, weight, and size. These included the usual suspects like fish, reptiles, amphibians, etc. However there was a part where I did not expect which is where the notes seem to suggest that the cartilage in elephants may not completely go away suggesting that elephants may experience a form of indeterminate growth…

I wanted to do more research to see whether this claim that the growth plates of elephants never close true or not. So I googled the term “elephant epiphyses” to see what would appear.

Source #1: From the article “How Elephants Grow: Heterochrony and the Calibration of Developmental Stages in Some Living and Fossil Species” – V. Louise Roth Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology -Vol. 4, No. 1 (Sep., 1984), pp. 126-145 – Published by: The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

• It states that “In elephants, ontogeny is prolonged and the period of growth is lengthy.”
• Also, in the abstract, “limb bones that complete epiphyseal fusion late in ontogeny also grow more in absolute terms”

Source #2: From a PDF by a person named Gary Haynes in the Anthropology Department in the University of Nevada, Reno entitled “One way to understand mammoths: lessons from actualistic studies of modern elephants”

• Bottom left part of Page 83: Most fractures were created by elephants trampling on elements partly buried in the surface sediments or lying atop the ground. In a few cases, spotted hyenas had first gnawed off an epiphysis, especially common with bones from elephants whose epiphyses had not fused to the shafts at the time of their death.

Source #3: From the book “Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior and the Fossil Record” (Low-ball): Gary Haynes” : Page 350:

 

---

These sources show that maybe the reason elephants get so big is because they have epiphyseal cartilage that don’t fused together even at advanged age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a 4th source, “The Wild Elephant and the Method of Capturing and Taming it in Ceylon”

(Low-ball): Sir James Emerson Tennent – Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon The epiphyses were still distinct Page 125 of 295

• The researcher seems to find mammoths that at the age of around 30 years old still had distinct, and rather well kept growth plates. This made the researcher suspect that the ancient mammoths could live to be up to 150 years or even more (300 years old).

“The only attempt which I know of to establish a period historically or physiologically is that of FLEURENS, who has advanced an ingenious theory on the subject in his treatise “_De la Longevite Humaine_.” He assumes the sum total of life in all animals to be equivalent to five times the number of years requisite to perfect their growth and development;–and he adopts as evidence of the period at which growth ceases, the final consolidation of the bones with their _epiphyses_; which in the young consist of cartilages; but in the adult become uniformly osseous and solid. So long as the epiphyses are distinct from the bones, the growth of the animal is proceeding, but it ceases so soon as the consolidation is complete. In man, according to FLEURENS, this consummation takes place at 20 years of age, in the horse at 5, in the dog at 2; so that conformably to this theory the respective normal age for each would be 100 years for man, 25 for the horse, and 10 for a dog. As a datum for his conclusion, FLEURENS cites the instance of one young elephant in which, at 26 years old, the epiphyses were still distinct, whereas in another, which died at 31, they were firm and adherent. Hence he draws the inference that the period of completed solidification is thirty years, and consequently that the normal age of the elephant is _one hundred and fifty_.[3]”

Implications For Height Increase:

There is some evidence like these stories and scientific article which suggest that even though the elephant is the biggest, heaviest animal on land, it still somehow manages to keep the growth plates in its legs around for decades.

Not only that, it seems that there ie vertebrate growth plates which don’t fuse until the 5th or 6th decade of the elephants life meaning that while their shoulder height might have stopped growing keeping their “height” stable, they are still growing anterior and posteriorly into a longer animal.

The evidence for mammoths, compared to the elephants of today is even more astonishing. Some paleontologists are stating from the resources that maybe the mammoths that are found may never stop growing since their bones don’t fuse in the growth plate area.

The evidence shows many times over that the elephants may still be able to grow their bones in terms of volume even into advanced age.

What we see here is something which I didn’t think was possible, especially with such a large in weight land mammal like an elephant. However it makes sense that elephants should have unfused growth plates for so long since they do end up growing to become almost the tallest animals on land.

I had previously believed that the tissue of cartilage would not be strong enough to be able to withstand even the compressive load from the weight of a 200 lb adult human male. The cartilage would not be thick enough or strong enough to hold up that much weight without it being compressed and squeezed to the point where it disappears. This felt like common sense.

The example with the elephant, which is probably the heaviest land animal on earth really makes me rethink about what the cartilage tissue is capable of handling. The biggest elephant ever shot was around 26,000 lbs and 14 feet tall. The mammoths from the ice ages were even bigger.

I guess maybe it might be important to rethink about just strong and durable growth plates really are from the example of how long elephants manage to keep growing.

What is inside the elephant’s DNA that allows them to grow in the vertebrate even in the 6th decade of their life? That is something that the height increase researcher would be interested in knowing.