Now this post will be one of the more controversial ones because some people might interpret the message of this post to imply that I want to do some type of eugenic manipulation on human beings to create ‘super-humans’. I am not, since there is no evidence that we can even do that type of thing, from at least the research I have found.
Instead of using some type of stem cell like genetic manipulation on the embryo of an offspring to make sure that they are going to be much more than what they were genetically programmed to be, I suggest that we as parents, or as future parents consider that it might be smart to consider the idea of changing the environment of where our sons or daughters live to make sure that they get a much better chance of growing to their maximum level.
At this point, I am not sure how I feel about the application of genetic “gattaca like” manipulation to create children who probably would one day look down at us for being so ‘below average’ and having to settle with bodies that are so small and limited. I don’t want to be the cause of creating a generation of super-mutant humans who will think that just because their genetic parents decided to pay for them to have the best physical attributes, that would imply that by default of their existence they are better than all of their predecessors.
What I would suggest that we might consider of doing as parents or future parents who want the best for our children, and probably will implement are a series of steps to ensure that my child gets the best chance to be as vertically advantaged as possible.
I once stated that for most humans, the two most important qualities that are most prized by almost all cultures are…
- Raw Intelligence in terms of High IQ
- Having above average height, specifically being at least 2 standard deviation above the ‘average’ height of a large group
I have always believed that if a person has extremely high IQ and is well endowed in stature, they would already have 95% of all the attributes that are needed to reach success to unlimited levels. Where others would have to struggle like crazy to get and achieve, it would come easier to them and they would be able to influences others just by their mere presence.
In terms of what I am saying, I am saying that beyond the emotional and mental qualities for success, we must always start with the biological anthropomorphic measurements and attributes first, and have all of the genetic and biological advantages.
Now these days the first quality is already being researched and trying to be implemented by many organizations and companies.
In one of my earliest posts of this website that had absolutely nothing to do with height or height increase, I had talked about how it might be possible to increase one’s cognitive function and focus from taking a nootropic, which is a type of pill that helps a person get more focus, and help them get things done quicker. The post was “How To Become Smarter By Using Provigil And Piracetam“. This post was the first of many posts where I talked about the importance of not just being bigger in stature, but also being smarter to be able to compete in this modern world.
The pill that is supposed to make a person ‘smarter’ was called Provigil. Another name for it is Modafinil. Other types of nootropics include Modalert, Piracetam, and more. I personally know at least a few people who are entrepreneurs and own large companies who have started to take Provigil/Modafinil to improve their concentration and working ability so that success will be more likely to occur. The desire to improve our brain function has already been implemented by the people who are willing to try to hack their own bodies to find out how to optimize and maximize for productively and efficiency.
Some companies in China are already trying to create smarter babies. I wrote about what these companies are doing in the post “China Is Most Likely Trying To Engineer Taller Humans Currently As Well As Geniuses (Important!)“. BGI Shenzhen has had a lot of press and stories written about their bold move in trying to sequence the genes of 2 thousand of the smartest humans in the world to find the alleles that would determine , and possibly lead, to humans that are just innately intelligent. The Huffington Post wrote a piece on this issue “Is China Really Engineering Baby Geniuses?“
So the main point with this first part is to show that beyond us trying to figure out a way to make our bodies bigger, in giving ourselves a competitive advantage over other people, there is also considerable amounts of effort to also increase our brains to make use as smart as possible.
So if the reader is willing to actually take the steps to make their children bigger, these are the ideas that I have thought of and proposed to help make our children taller.
Step #1: Relocation for Healthcare Benefits
Moving ourselves to countries & societies which have amazingly good healthcare systems. When we look at the average height of people in Canada compared to the USA, we see that Canadians are actually taller than Americans. Back in 2010 the website Phys.Org published a paper showing that Canadians are actually taller entitled Canadians lead longer, healthier lives than Americans. This phenomena where countries which have better health care seem to have taller adults seem to be true for also places like Northern Europe (In countries like the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark) , where the people there have some of the best healthcare system.
Better healthcare often means that the mother after going through labor and giving birth have more time to stay at the hospital or at home to raise the baby during the critical few months after birth. They are given better quality of healthcare by nurses, doctors, and therapists all there to advise on how to best raise the baby during the period of life when the person is most vulnerable.
Since the human body grows the most during the 1st year, by as much as 1 feet on average, that first year of growth is the most important. Any type of infection can actually decrease the immunity in the baby’s body.
Course of action: Moving to Canada, Switzerland, Norway for the healthcare benefits.
Step #2: Relocation for more personal freedoms and expressions
There is also a small correlation seen between countries which give a lot of personal freedom to the individual and their height. The best example would be in The Netherlands. The capital, Holland has been known for almost 30 years now for it’s extremely liberal policy on many topics which almost all other countries in the world forbade, like prostitution, marijuana usage, and drug usage. I may be completely wrong but I suspect that the relaxed, more liberal nature of the Dutch societies views on topics which are considered taboo in most conservative countries means that the individual does not have to repress their desires.
It seems that countries which have happier citizens on average tend to have taller people. (Of course there are some clear examples where this idea is challenged. I note that people in Thailand are very happy and always smiling but they are not the tallest ethnic group in the world, but the issue on body size is also heavily correlated with relative position of the country to the equator of the earth. )
Course of action: Moving to Netherlands, Belgium, or Norway for the higher quality of life.
Note: Anecdotal evidence ad stories suggest that children who are born and raised in suburbs, not the rural or urban communities end up the tallest of the three groups. This could be from a sort of goldilocks-zone idea, where they are not completely socially isolate from people, but also not in an environment where it is not so overly crowded like in a city.
Step #3: Breastfeeding the baby for a much longer duration
Most parenting books on babies say that one should start weaning the baby off of the mother’s breastmilk within 1 year, and then you start to transfer the move to formula. My personal research on the compounds Colostrum and Casein Phosphopeptide suggest that babies would get the anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral nutrition that these two compounds
Nature tends to have a good idea on what is the optimum food for humans, and the mother’s breast milk is probably the best type of food for the growing baby, and formula is something which I theorize not good for the baby.
Studies I have found showed that babies who started to use formula earlier did grow bigger, but only in terms of weight. Compared to babies who were still on breastmilk, the formula consuming baby was fatter but not taller. In fact, babies who consume formula earlier are probably more likely to start puberty earlier in life, resulting in a final adult height that is slightly lower.
Course of action: Continue to raise the baby on breast milk until age 2.
Step #4: Having A Diet Of Lean Meat and Vegetables with less emphasize on Simple Carbohydrates
I admit that I am a little biased on this issue since I have been a follower of the Paleo diet ideology. There are only a small collection of evidence in showing that paleolithic humans, who did only hunting and gathering, who lived on before the advent of agriculture and farming, were actually much taller than their neolithic relatives. Dave Asprey from the Bulletproof Executive Podcast has stated that it seems that the onset of Cavities and Periodontal Disease seems to be caused by the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates. One can actually reverse cavities and heal them up using Fats and Vitamin K2 intake.
If the the development of agriculture, which meant that humans can finally settle down in one place, and grow the grains/carbohydrates which makes most of human kind’s diet today, like rice, wheat, corn, and rye, really did mean that there is a drop in the overall human race’s height, then by the reverse logic, humans should be able to increase the average height of a population their more consumption of proteins like meat and less on simple carbohydrates.
Course of action: Don’t allow your child to become vegetarians, for growth reasons. When they are adults, they can choose to not eat Betsy the cow, but while they are still growing, do allow that lifestyle choice.
Step #5: Getting more milk derivative products into the diet
I had looked at the relationship between milk consumption, calcium, growth, and final adult height in previous posts. The post The Real Correlation Between Milk, Calcium, Bone Growth, And Height forced me to analyze whether the correlation was real or not. There seems to be a weak correlation but it is there. People who get more consumption of milk derivative products like cheese and yogurt tend to be at least a fraction of an inch taller than the people who consume milk products at the average level. It is not much but it is there.
In addition, we do find that people who are Lactose Intolerant tend to be slightly shorter than people who don’t suffer from lactose intolerance.
Course of action: Drink more milk and start to develop a habit of enjoying the taste of cheese
Step #6: Getting accurate exercise, but more specifically aerobic and some bone loading
Exercise like a quick intense sprint of 100 meters does indeed cause a release of extra HGH into the child’s system right afterwards, mostly for tissue healing and anabolic processes. That is the aerobic part.
It turns out that children who get some exercise do end up slightly taller than their peers who don’t exercise. The extra amount of loading on the bones does seem to cause the ossification of the growth plates to occur much faster.
Studies looking at the bone density of swimmers and soccer players compared to their more lethargic peers suggest that children who are swimmers have lower bone density and soccer players have higher bone density.
However, the correlation between bone density and adult height for children who are still growing seem to be inverse, but it is a very weak correlation. I am theorizing that children who are swimmers do end slightly taller as adults than children who play soccer. The child soccer player does have higher bone density but as adults, they tend to be slightly shorter. (Note that this is a personal observation, but not based on scientific studies).
Course of action: Get your child into a sport, which has some potential for bone loading, to stimulate endochondral ossification to be faster, but you don’t want to load the bones too much. Football and Soccer are not recommended because the amount of loading is higher than optimum. Swimming is recommended.
Step #6: Always getting the adolescent to sleep around 9-10 PM, so they wake up in syne with the morning light
If we assume that the human species is derived from primates and apes, then we can logically reach the conclusion that millions of years ago our ape ancestors as day time creatures went to sleep when the sun went down and woke up when the sun rose back up around 8-10 hours later.
Our most instinctual natural sleeping patterns are supposed to be in sync with the rise and fall of the sun. There are enough studies which show that the time when children get the highest levels of HGH influx into their body system is during the night time, when they are in deep sleep. It is during deep sleep that the natural growth hormones go through their body the most.
To have the optimum sleep, I propose that we get our child to go to sleep early, and wake up early.
I personally know for a fact that the best sleeps I ever have had in my life was in the outdoors when camping where there was no artificial light available so I had to go to sleep when the sun went down and there was no more light. Waking up afterwards with the rising of the sun seems to refresh the brain to crystal clarity. I think this is what our brains have been naturally conditioned by millions of years to prefer. This is why I think that having a sleeping pattern that is in sync with the sunlight progression leads to better, deeper, longer sleeps which result in more GH being pumped into the body, resulting in slightly better growth.
In addition, it turns out that height increase almost exclusively happens when people are sleeping, not when they are standing up during the day when they are awake.
Note: Most of the growth spurts that are noted from anecdotal stories suggest that growth spurts happen most often during the summer time, not during the normal Sept – May American school year. This is why you get the phenomena where you notice that a previously short male from that past school year seemed to have sprouted up like a bamboo after you see them in the next school year on the first day of school in August or September, which was only a 2-3 month difference.
Course of action: Get your child to develop a good habit of having deep, non-troubling sleep. Get them to bed earlier around 9-10 PM so that they can get up with the sun, which usually rises up around 5-6 AM, since our reptilian brain has been evolutionarily evolved to rise and rest with the sunlight progression.
Step #7: Avoid Smoking
The stunted growth effects of smoking is not as bad as some people might make one think, but the effect is real. People who start to smoke a lot as children do end up on average a fraction of an inch shorter than their non-smoking peers. It is only a fraction of 1 inch but that is enough of a positive correlation in showing the stunted growth effects of habitual smoking as children.
So these are the 7 steps and ideas I currently have on how one can raise their child to make sure that their growth is optimized so they can grow to their maximum height.