Monthly Archives: May 2014

Next steps for proving LSJL

In my last LSJL progress update, the conclusion most people seemed to feel was that people tended to agree that the right index finger was indeed longer than the left index finger but that they weren’t positive that it was due to LSJL and that it wasn’t due to my right index finger being naturally longer than the other.

So here’s some things I’m going to try going further.  I’m going to continue to clamp my right index finger to try to increase the difference from the left index finger.  I’ve also been clamping my left thumb to see if I can get a difference there and there does seem to be a progression.

But this does not increase height which has a lot of social value.  For ankle clamping, I was clamping between the tibia and the talus.  Well, I realized that my talus grew bigger.  What if the calcaneus grew bigger than the whole body would be elevated higher increasing height in a manner akin to high heels or shoe lifts.

 

feet bones

The bone above the calcaneus is the talus(which has grown bigger and may in fact contribute to some of my height gains).  Getting enough force on the calcaneus to induce bone growth is easier as it doesn’t necessarily need to grow by the growth plate as there are no constraining factors on appositional bone growth like the joint does for the long bones.

I’ve done a few clamping sessions aiming for clamping the point between the talus and calcaneus and things seems to be going well.  It’s not as smooth as clamping the fingers as the bones are oddly shaped but I seem to be generating pressure and mechanical strain on the calcaneus.

I think showing calcaneus growth will be a way to inspire people to believe that growing taller is possible and it will also increase the height measurement too.  I’m still working on growing the legs evidence just points to that growth will be slow until a better clamp is developed that can generate more pressure.

An Extremely Cheap Alternative Source Of Glucosamine Sulphate Instead Of Buying The Supplement Pills

An Extremely Cheap Alternative Source Of Glucosamine Sulphate Instead Of Buying The Supplement Pills

Going along the same lines as the previous post, which I showed how a person can get a very cheap alternative source to Calcium instead of spending $20 to buy the supplement pills from their local GNC, I wanted to give the readers a very cheap and almost stupidly obviously way to get Glucosamine Sulphate into their system. If you are a regular reader of the website, you already realize that I had been able to definitively prove that orally consuming about 1500 mg of Glucosamine Sulphate daily was shown in a real scientific double blind placebo randomized case study to indeed increase height (minimally though) in a group of subjects who had fully closed growth plates.

It is so obvious that I forgot to write it down for you guys to read.

The cost is nearly free. The source comes from a often thrown away piece of food type, just like the source from the previous post.

So what is it?  – The shells on Shrimp & Crab

Lets me ask the readers this question. When was the last time you ate shrimp with the shell on? When I think back to the number of times I would eat a shrimp with the shell still on, it would be very small. Almost all recipes from all the cultures (Japanese food, Mexican Food, Italian Food, Chinese Food, Greek Food) have the shrimp’s shell removed. Even if the chef (or your mother) cooked the shrimp with the shell own, you most likely peeled off the shell before you ate it, right? I am betting that very few people have preferred to eat the shrimp with the shell on. We treat the shell like the shell of a nut. You are trying to get the meat at the middle, and forgetfully disgard the outer shell, which you think doesn’t have any uses for.

In this file on Glucosamine Sulphate written up by the National Institute of Health, we find that the main way the supplement companies can get the glucosamine is from the shells on crabs and shrimp. The compound is known as Chitin.

Now, glucosamine is a naturally occurring compound in our own bodies, and can even be synthesized in the lab, but it seems the majority of the Glucosamine that is sold in our local GNC is taken from the shells of caught fisherman’s nets filled with shrimp, crab, and other shellfish. The shellfish is taken to some shellfish cannery and when the shellfish has their shell removed, the shells are taken somewhere else to be processed into the supplement pills you find at your local drug store.

(I can give a personal example, which could just be coincidence. I experienced my greatest growth spurt of 5 inches over a summer during the same summer I obsessively went crabbing with my parents and would eat crabs multiple times a week, which did include the internal shells)

I am going to assume that most people have enough money to buy at least a lb of shrimp. They may not know how to cook it, but most people reading this probably have the financial resources to get this extremely overlooked source of chitin derived Glucosamine.

The next time you cook shellfish, like shrimp, don’t throw away the shells. Eat them too, and you probably would notice a few mms of increase in height over a few months even as an adult. For children, the height increasing effects might be much bigger, since they still have cartilage to work with. There have been no studies showing the height and growth effects of eating shellfish’s shells on children, but I would guess that there would be some type of positive effect.

An Extremely Cheap Alternative To Calcium Supplement Pills For Increased Bone Mineral Density

An Extremely Cheap Alternative To Calcium Supplement Pills For Increased Bone Mineral Density

In my own life, sometimes interesting facts appear out of nowhere and this little tip on a very common source for calcium might make some people rethink about how they dispose of food leftover products, which they never think of except to throw into the trash without thinking.

For the longest time, the milk companies have been advertising to young kids and parents that they need to be drinking milk to grow taller and more robust with their “got milk?” commercials claiming the benefits of calcium as an important height increase natural drink.

I agree that milk is important, but the real active ingredients is probably the colostrum and casein found in the female mother’s milk from the breast for her new born babies. Human milk has been proven to be critical in the growth of children, but cow derived milk has always been suspicious. There has been almost no studies linking drinking cow milk to increased growth rate. There was maybe two studies done back in the 1930s or 1950s when a group of young malnourished boys were experimented on, but in today’s age, when very few people in the developed countries are actually really malnourished, the height increasing claims of cow derived milk is slightly questionable.

As for human breast milk, I had written before looking at the possible beneficial effects of increased duration in breastfeeding to give the developing toddlers a slightly greater growth pattern in their younger developing years. I have found studies which show that babies who are given formula instead of continuing to drink breast milk do grow slightly faster for the first 6 months of the experiment, but their weight grew at a much higher level, suggesting using formula too quickly can increase the likelihood of the young kid developing diabetes later in life. After maybe 2 years, the breast milk feed toddlers ended up catching up to about the same height as the ones taking the formula, but much thinner. The study was never extrapolated to adulthood but I am willing to bet that the kids who had been fed breast milk slightly longer by 6 months had a less chance of developing illnesses and grew taller as an adult.

Of course, the main component promoted in the milk commercials is calcium, which is supposed to make your body stronger. At this point, I am not even sure there is enough evidence to show that Calcium has even a strong positive effect towards growth, but more likely a minimal positive effect. If it is really calcium that parents worry about, how about trying this trick to get the calcium

Here is the tip: Instead of throwing away the egg shells into the garbage, why not just crush the egg shells into powder form and put them in the beverage of the growing child?

Some people might raise the fact that the shells might contain some forms of bacteria which might compromise the digestive system of the child, but you can remove that part by putting the shells into a boiling pot of water for 10 seconds to kill the bacteria.

If we look into the composition of what egg shells (Wikipedia article) it is made of about 95% Calcium Carbonate, which is the same type of crystal used to make shellfish shells (like scallops). Did you know that one of the main ways the supplement industry gets its calcium supplement pills is to crush fossilized coral reef matter (ie shell fish, crab shells, scallops shells, etc.)? 

So why get some large corporation to take a ship to the coral reef to crush up dead sea life calcium when you have a crushed egg shell right in front of you which you can buy for $2 from the local supermarket?

Then we read over the sources on what types of calcium crystals are needed to prevent osteoporosis and bone loss (Refer to the WebMD article on treating Osteoporosis with Calcium Supplements). They are mainly Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Citrate. Like all supplements, the hard pill version is the hardest for the body to break down, dissolve, and get to the right organs. Going with the gummy type of supplement would be faster. The powder version would be the fastest. That is why this proposed alternative is so much easier. You would get to the powder form already, from a product which you usually throw into the garbage. You would obviously need a mortar and pestle to grind the shells.

If we just dipped the shells into hot water for a few seconds, killing harmful microbes, crushed our egg shells into powder form, and put them into our kids’s orange juice, the calcium carbonate crystals would be an additional boost to their bone’s health. Citrate seems to be a supplement which is not recommended to be taken with food, but Carbonate is. The recommended dosage is about 500 mg of calcium at one shot, since the body can absorb only so much calcium at a time. So you pretty much just need around 1-2 crushed egg shells and that would be enough to do the trick for a daily dosage of calcium needed.

That is perfect since the only time you ever have broken egg shells left over is when you are breaking the shell and using the yolk and whites inside to make some egg derived food. Just add the crushed shell powder inside any food (preferbaly liquid like protein shake or something similar) and you would barely notice or taste the grainy nature of the shell.

Note: A very old post we wrote about is dealing with a compound called Baryta Carbonica which is believed by many people from India to help kids grow taller. It is one of our most popular posts but the kids who want to buy the pills from us (which we don’t sell) don’t realize that the Baryta Carbonica is just Calcium Carbonate (there isn’t any Citrate component in those India Hemeopathic pills sold as growth pills to poor kids in India). Our website ranks at the top of almost all the search engine results for the term “Baryta Carbonia”. Those kids in India already have it within their households, as long as their parents can afford chicken eggs. If Calcium did indeed have a high level of positive effect on height growth in developing kids (which we don’t believe it does, only minimally), this information is probably critical in preventing stunted growth in maybe 100s of Millions young kids in India over the years! Imagine millions and millions of young kids in India and around the world who don’t get enough to eat, becoming malnourished, and not wishing to suffer the effects of stunted growth. A crushed egg shell could be the solution to some of their growth worries at least.

It is also good for the environment, saving up on space in land waste sites. From the Wikipedia article, they say that “The US food industry generates 150,000 tones of shell waste a year“. Combine that with the amount of chickens and chicken eggs eaten by China, India, and all the other large populous countries around the world, finding alternative uses to the chicken egg, like helping one’s kid possibly grow slightly taller from getting extra calcium supplementation would be a much better alternative. I am sure that some kids in North Korea would also find this information vital, since the kids there have extremely stunted growth due to severe vitamin and mineral deficiency.

Here are some other ways egg shells have been used traditionally by people

  • For a long time, some people have gotten into the habit of putting crushed egg shells into their coffees, which is supposedly would make the coffee less bitter.
  • My cousin when she was younger had a pet snail. She would crush egg shells to feed to snail, which might have helped the snail keep it shell really hard.
  • The shells often act as an antacid, so swallowing the powder can potentially stop acid reflux, heartburn, and indigestion problems. (Turns out Calcium Barbonate is just like the active ingredient in TUMS, a base, which reacts and mitigates the effects of the Hydrochloric Acid in the stomach, which can cause ulcers.)
  • The powder egg shell can be used as a facial mask to whiten skin. I’ve seen this practice done in the East Asian countries and heard about it from families of South Asian ethnicities as well.
  • It can be put under your plants in the garden acting as a fertilizer. We know that Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium are the big three components used, but Calcium is important too.
  • The crystal form of the egg shell can be used as an abrasive in home made toothpaste (You should add it with baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and some other stuff) & scrubbing agents.

Final Note: We do fully realize that this extremely cheap alternative to the traditional calcium supplement pills does not have the VItamin D with it. Vitamin D is a necessary mineral to let the body absorb the calcium into the blood properly.

Shin Splints Induces Shear Stress Fracture Of Tibia Periosteum – Can It Induce Pseudoepiphyseal Cartilage Tissue Generation?

Shin Splints Induces Shear Stress Fracture Of Tibia Periosteum – Can it Induce Pseudoepiphyseal Cartilage Tissue Generation?

Shin SplintsA recent message given to the website email made me look into an idea which has been explored already at least a dozen times by Tyler and Sky before him. The idea of purposefully inducing stress microfractures to make the bones weaker in some areas for stretching is an attractive (but superficial) idea which has caused multiple height increase enthusiasts in the past decade to put themselves through intense pain to get results.

This message given to us really brought some old ideas back out so that they can be looked at again. It shows that maybe the old ideas can be combined with the new ideas that we have found to make it work.

Shear Stress Facture

(Note: I am fully aware that some of the messages we get from the readers may be completely fake or just a joke to make us do extra research but I will humor most of them. As long as an idea is some what reasonable, I will be willing to put in a few hours to do some extra research to see how valid an idea would be. Spam is something I don’t consider, but some messages have ideas that are quite interesting. The readers and the people who message us sometimes gives really interesting new ideas and perspectives which we never considered.)

I messaged him and he gave a couple of follow-up messages.

Facture Of Tibia Periosteum

2 Inches of Increase

The messages are small but the key facts are…

This guy started doing the LSJL routine when he was 20, achieve a full inch of height growth within 1 month, grew 1/2 an inch in the 2nd month, and the gains decreased until he had reached a full 2inches of height increase. He is now 21 and he is reasonably sure that his growth plates were fused. He had noticed no growth since the age of 15 but after he started doing the routines he started to notice results almost immediately.

The ankle weights he is using is around 17 lbs and the spots he would squeeze would be the tibia and the femur. The duration of the clamping would be over 30 minutes. After he started to notice no more gains in height after maybe the 3-4 months, he increased the clamping and the ankle weights but there has been no results so far.

We note early on that this guy claimed that he increased his height by over 2 inches using a combination of LSJL with ankle weights. That would be already an interesting message, but his other note about how runners suffer a high level of shin fractures started to make me wonder about something else.

He said that shin splints are caused by true stress fractures. That seems to be true. His claim that CT scans of tibia on runner’s legs may be slightly off. I believe he meant to say X-Ray. If it is indeed CT, then it might be much more serious than I believed. CT scans look into the body through a series of cross sectional slices allowing for images of tissue across a planar section of the body to be seen. X-Rays can only show you the outline of the bones and other hard tissues (ie tumors and cysts). So when the doctors took their radiological images of the leg, it was revealed that the stress fractures in the tibia of runners was where the bone density was low! That is a key point. 

When medical researchers tried to figure out what was the cause for runners to develop fractures in the tibia, they concluded that the stress fractures came from when the bones were BENT, so it seems that the way to get fractures is to laterally load the bone.

He has been taking Calcium, VItamin D, SAM-e, Iodine, and Astralagus, but I am not sure they are worth it unless one is suffering from very low bone density. I suggest no need to get those supplements unless you are trying to get some other type of use from them.

This claim about just putting weight to the side of a bone to create stress fractures, which would be areas of lower bone density started to get me wondering. I had to do some reading on what the Medical Literature actually said about Shin Splint, or more accurately Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (Wikipedia Article).

Tibial Stress FractureWhat I found may be a huge key to the next step in our research. I looked for pictures to see what it would look like in an X-Ray or CT and what I found was almost a pseudoepiphyseal cartilage like tissue developing, at least from a radiological perspective to my amateur researcher untrained eye.

Do you see the picture to the right? It looks like a horizontal cut across the bone. It is called a Tibial Stress Fracture, aka from Shear Stress causing a slight bend in the bone. The fracture however, does NOT cut through the entire bone, but slices through the periosteum layer. That was something which I proposed in the Youtube video Chisel & Hammer Method I uploaded about a year ago which had a huge response. That was my first attempt at altering the LSJL method to have a greater chance of success. I had written about it in the post “The Chisel And Hammer Supplement Technique Explained Through Video“. Both Tyler and me had found from at least 2 old studies done in the late 19 century and early 20th century by a couple of surgeons that if you removed the periosteum by peeling a layer off, the long bones seemed to grow faster longitudinally. I wrote about it in the post “A New Proposed Height Increase And Grow Taller Method From Periosteum Removal (Breakthrough)” and  “An Alternative Explanation On Why The LSJL May Actually Help People With Closed Growth Plate Increase Height And Grow Taller (Big Breakthrough!)” and he wrote about in the post “Periosteal Stripping“. The study was called “A PROCEDURE FOR STIMULATION OF LONGITUDINAL GROWTH OF BONE An Experimental Study“

So instead of using a hammer and chisel to damage the layer of cambium stem-like cells in the inner layer of periosteum, it has been induced from just running and the bending of the lower leg by runners.

So what this guy has done was a slight variation to the LSJL technique, which is to induce horizontal fractures from loading ankle weights while having his legs elevated. He combines the ankle weights with LSJL.

In a recent post I had manage to almost confirm and proved that LSJL does indeed work, since the subchondral layer below the articular cartilage is thin enough where if you squeezed from the sides (or in the angular area, which is where I believe should be the actual area) microfractures on the surface of the subchondral bone layer would develop, pushing the progenitor mesenchymal stem cells out of from the inside of the epiphysis/long bone head bulb into the bottom layer of the articular cartilage, turning the cels into chondrocytes, which then go into columnar formation (which is already visible in the articular cartilage), and then depositing on the bottom elevating the cartilage upwards, thus increasing a person’s height. You can read that post entitled “Cyclic Mechanical Shear Compression Induces Progenitor Mesenchymal Stem Cells Towards Chondrogenesis – Breakthrough!“.

So we have a few things we can go off of right now.

  1. LSJL does seem to work, but it is minimal. 
  2. Runners sometimes develop shin splints.
  3. Those shin splints are actually shear/lateral stress fracture.
  4. The X-Ray on the fracture shows an area of low bone density, which is what we want.
  5. Stress fracture means at least the periosteum has been cut, which a couple of studies show helps long bones grow longer faster.

This person who used to be a runner and often got stress fractures gained two inches in height, using a combination of ankle weights used to bend their tibia/fibula and LSJL. Another person recently came forward to say that they got half a cm from using ankle weights, but their technique was to use the ankle weights until it became unbearably painful for them.

Stress Fracture of the TibiaIf we looked at the picture, it almost looks like the stress fracture is like a new epiphyseal cartilage layer, but it doesn’t go completely through the bone.

It scratches the bone enough to cut through one layer. I don’t think that a shin splint would ever be as much as also cracking the cortical bone layer, because that would require real medical treatment with splints used to hold the bones into place.

PseudoepiphysealI had written before about a very similar idea, that maybe there might be a slight causal nature (not just correlative) between people who play basketball and a slightly increased height growth rate. The nature of basketball means a lot of short bursts of running, following by jumping, which I had theorized caused microfractures in the developing person’s epiphyseal area. If their cartilage was about to be ossified, a fracture along the epiphyseal cartilage would keep that area un-ossified for a little bit longer, giving people who played basketball from an early age maybe 1-2 more months of growing time. Before, I wrote an old post Available Here which I said that there was no relations between basketball playing and the kid becoming slightly taller than their peers, but I reversed that idea after I started to really looking into how jumping over and over again in say a basketball (or even volleyball) type of athletics could cause the growth plates and cartilage like tissue to stay un-ossified for slightly longer.

So here is what I think is a huge leap forward in the research. We reveal another key to the research.

shin_splintsLSJL works at a very small scale, but it can be enhanced if you can cut through the periosteum. That can be done through shin splints. This former runner, who has a history of getting horizontal fractures seems to be the person who has gotten the most results ever from LSJL, and I theorize the reason is because they have had a few horizontal fractures, like in the pictures.

So it is a combination of not just 1, or even 2 critical points, but 3 key points.

  • Key Point #1: The loading area for the clamps needs to be in the angular area.
  • Key Point #2: You need to create stress fractures, like I had suggest in the Chisel and Hammer Method. It might be safer to do that by doing a lot of running, like cross-country. Stress fractures decrease bone density across a slice of area in the bone.
  • Key Point #3: Use Ankle Weights along with LSJL. So far, in recent months, two people have come forward saying that they have gotten results using ankle weights.

The induced horizontal fractures suggest that maybe even the cortical bone layer is weakened, as the X-rays showed a dramatic drop in bone density in that area.

Bones don’t actually heal but require either the bone marrow liquid or the periosteum inner cambium layer of stem cells to seep into the fractured area to turn into a fibrocartilage type pre-bone tissue, before converting into bone tissue.

If the shin splints are large enough in the right location of the metaphyseal-epiphyseal area, you can temporarily form a fibrocartilage half-layer across the tibia bone, and using LSJL, you can get the progenitor cells in the fibrocartilage in the filled fracture gap to turn completely chondrogenic, creating a temporary micro-growth plate, which you can expand and stretch out. That is how I believe this runner has been able to get more results than anyone else has from LSJL!

Here is what you as the reader should take away.

Doing just one routine or technique is not enough, but at least two different techniques at the same time. Thinking back on this idea, with 20/20 perspective it actually makes a lot of sense.

The idea of putting weight on your lower legs to stress fractures on your tibia is scary, but long distance running seem to cause them regularly so you don’t need to be cracking your own leg’s bones just yet. After running, do LSJL to get the fractures induced filled with progenitor cells which will differentiate into chondrocytes.

Put on the ankle weights (upwards of 20 lbs) to stretch out the fractures after running. After 4-6 months, one is most likely going to see results, around maybe 1-2 cms at most. (You can get a pair of rather cheap ankle weights Available Here)

How Tall Is Kevin Durant’s True Height Compared To Anthony Davis’s Height?

How Tall Is Kevin Durant’s True Height Compared To Anthony Davis’s Height?

I’ve said this before but I used to be a huge basketball fanatic when I was younger. Practicing 5 hours a day outdoors in the summer when I was a freshman in high school, I wanted to make it to the Varsity team. I was a great shooter but the pickup games showed how slow I was athletically. However, it would turn out after one year that my lateral quickness and vertical leap just couldn’t cut it for the next level. At the time, I modeled my game based on AI. Playing in the Basketball Mecca of the world, North Carolina, the cradle of so many great basketball legends, my high school friends were divided based on which Local University they supported. You were either a baby blue or a dark navy blue, representing either Chapel Hill or Duke. Entire tables in the lunch room might be even divided based on which school you liked, even though we may never be able to get into those schools. However, engineering was the desired major at the table I sat so we had a preference for the 3rd school NC State. Eventually though, I did apply and get into Chapel Hill to major in Material Science.

So I have a background based on a love affair with basketball. Maybe that is why I am so obsessed talking about height and length all the time. In basketball, it seems like one’s height is the main way a person defines themselves. You are supposed to automatically gain self-esteem from being taller than your peers. So I wanted to write a height related post, but not about the science. (This is similar to an article I wrote very early on in the blog when I compared the height of Kevin Durant to Lebron James (Available Here) which ironically has become one of the most popular and commonly read posts I have ever written. Maybe people care more about the pictures and camera angles than the real science we are trying to bring to the discussion.) It is over a strange commonly discussed topic among the basketball community. That is over the real “true height” of what many sports commentators claim is the best player in the game right now KD Kevin Durant.

Just how tall is the current NBA superstar Kevin Durant? What is his true height? How does it compare to the other ‘big’ that is getting a lot of news these days, Anthony Davis and his height?.

Two numbers define a basketball player’s “length”, their height and wingspan. If you have also a large wingspan relative to one’s height, which is assumed to be already tall, you are described as “long”.

  • KD’s Draft Express Measurements have him listed at around 6′ 9″ without shoes with a wingspan of 7′ 4.75″ (Draft Express) or 7′ 4″, depending on which resource you referenced. he has a 9′ 2″ reach.
  • Anthony Davis’s Measurements are supposed to be 6′ 9.25″ without shoes with a wingspan of either 7′ 5.5″ (Draft Express) or 7′ 4″, depending on which resource you referenced. He has a 9 foot reach.

Looking at the body proportions of the two, their lengths are almost exactly the same, but their horizontal dimension, width, is so different from each other. Durant’s shoulder is rather thin compared to the rest of his body. Davis’s shoulder in comparison looks to be three times as large.

In a recent interview Anthony Davis gave to determine who would be the 2014 NBA MPV (Available Here) he listed KD at 6′ 10-6′ 11″. So it is obviously very strange that such a physical specimen like Anthony Davis would claim a fellow basketball superstar by his own estimation is taller than him, even though their official listings have Davis to be the taller one.

So is Kevin Durant really almost 7 feet tall as so many posters on Basketball Forum Threads claim to be?

I don’t think so, but I do believe that Durant, unlike most other basketball players, or maybe even men in general, have given the lower range of his height. We know that people’s height fluctuate over the entire day, as the intervertebral discs inflate and compress based on gravity loading down on them over time. The variation can be huge, as much as even 1.5 inches or 4.5 cms.

Davis, like Lebron James, does the professional basketball standard rule of listing their height  at most a partial inch above what is listed. If they are above a certain inch, their height is listed at the next inch. Anthony Davis measured at the predraft combine of being 6′ 9.25″ in height so he put him at 6′ 10″. That is fine, since a lot of players do that. If we took into account the variation of a person’s body to shrink and expand over a day, I am sure that at some point, Davis would be up to 6′ 10″. Lebron Jame’s body would also be at 6′ 8″ at some point within the day, at the maximum measured height. That is something which I have confidence in saying.

However, the fact that Kevin Durant has been estimated even by his teammates to be not 1, but 2 inches taller than his listing suggest that maybe it is more than just his desire to put his official height listing at the lower range and diurnal variations. 2 inches is too much of a different. There have been maybe a little too many people around KD who have made the off handed general comment that he seems to be noticeably taller than what he actually writes down.

  1. So it is not just that he lists his height at the low range
  2. Plus, it is not just that he took the lowest value from the changes in his height over the day.

That means there is another factor or element which we haven’t considered. I am going to take a guess, and say that it has to do with the profile shape of his skull.

Here is my personal theory: Different nations and cultures have different hairstyles. African American men seem to prefer to go for the short hair look. It is rare to see a black NBA player who has long hair. Most of them have a very clean cut shave. Sure, white american men do that shaved head too (I shave my head all the time too) but black men in the last 2 decades , since the 80s, seem to really go for the very short hair style.

What that results in is that we can see the shape of these black professional player’s skull very clearly. Kevin Durant’s side profile shows that the skull bone portion that is dorsal of the parietal lobe of the outer cerebrum is extremely pronounced.

Kevin Durant True HeightIn a video which KD loaded to his own YouTube Channel (Kevin Durant’s 35th Hour, Episode 2: Hard Work Beats Talent) I clipped a picture from the time range of 10:30 showing him saying hi to Carmelo Anthony. Anthony is listed to be around 6′ 8″ (with a Draft Express predraft combine listing of just 6′ 6″) and actually looks not that much shorter than KD. I am guessing that if they both stood up completely straight, took off their shoes, held to an erect torso posture, and lined their heads against the wall for a clear height measurement reading, Anthony would be not that much shorter than KD.

Personally, I would find it very hard to believe that these elite athletes, which number only a few hundred out of the entire world, with their already extraordinary size and length feel any type of insecurity in the need to inflate their listed heights. For a person of Carmelo Anthony’s athletic skill, it doesn’t make much sense for him to list himself even 2 inches taller than what he really is. The most that most people would do is maybe say that they are an inch taller than what they really are. Melo could be probably more closer to 6′ 7″ most of the day, so in comparison, KD is not that much taller.

In a very old post I wrote about, I talked about this interesting trick to increase one’s measured height by tilting one’s head for maybe upwards of 1/4 -1/2 of an inch in height increase. (Entitled “Grow Taller By Head Tilting“). Most people including basketball players are told to took forward instead of down when getting their height measured. If in fact, you tilted your head downwards by 45 degree, your measured height depending on the pronounced bulging of the parietal bone at the back of the top of the head would elevate that measured height.

Kevin Durant Side ProfileLooking at the picture of Kevin Durant’s Side Profile, you see that his skull is noticeably more pronounced in the back. That is why in actually, he is probably around 1/2 -1 Full Inch Taller than even his low range of height. The way that he is measured, with his face tilted upwards (Not downwards) means that the top of his skull is not actually at the peak, which is how you are supposed to measure your height. The NBA trainers did not get the actual peak of his head, which should be from the back, and not the middle of the head for Durant. It is his own unique skull bone structure which makes him actually taller than what is claimed.

He is NOT lying. It is just that the way height has been traditionally measured did not take into account that the way you tilt and position your face relative to the back of the head parietal bone can be a big difference by as much as even as much as 0.5-.075 of an inch. For Kevin, since he was probably measured with his face looking ahead, he was measured about 3/4th of an inch shorter than what he really would be at, based on his unusual skull side profile.

There is also the issue of his slouching. Since his rather proportionally thin shoulder blades make him develop an ectomorphic body type, his upper body strength would not be as high as a person with wider shoulders. The result is that his usual posture is a slouching hunches pattern. His propensity to slouch and not have the best posture means that he probably did not completely stand fully erect for his combine measurements. Most people would try to puff up their chest and stand as erect and straight as possible to get the highest reading. He seems like the relaxed, cool guy who did not care that much for such a thing, since he is already tall, and tall enough to make a huge difference in the game that he plays at the professional level.

A good full erect posture and a normal slouched posture could make probably around a 1/2-3/4th of an inch difference.

If we combine the effect of the tilted head and his slouching feature, I would say that if he really tried to really get a maximum reading, by tilting his head downwards at the right angle and his standing as straight as possible, his real reading would be around 6′ 9.75″ – 6′ 10.5″. Averaged out, I am willing to say that Kevin Durant’s real true maximum height, if he did the best, most accurate reading, and taking into consideration changes throughout the day, would be actually at 6′ 10″.

Anthony Davis Wide ShouldersAnthony Davis in comparison, has the extremely wide shoulders to suggest that his upper body has the bone infrastructure to hold up for a proper measurement. Davis choose to go with the traditional way of height ruling. Stand as straight as possible, feet in the proper position, puff up chest, and back leaning against the wall.

Assuming a quarter of an inch over a height listing, he put himself at the next inch which is the industry standard. Anthony Davis is probably closer to the 6′ 9.5″- 6′ 9.75″ height mark most of the time (NBA predraft measurements do indeed seem to get unusually low height measurements on average by around 1/4th of an inch) so he is just around 1/4 of an inch shorter than KD, which is almost impossible to detect from far away.

Most men measure their relative height to other men based on where they are at eye level. Of course, they are assuming that the distance from eye level to the top of the head is the same, which it is not. Based on a few personal measurements, the average distance from eye level to the top of the skull ranges from 4-5 inches. If you are looking at another person who is exactly looking at you in the eye at the same height, there is no way to tell which person is actually taller, and the difference between you and the other person can be as much as a full inch apart, based on the natural shape and form of the skull.

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To get an idea on how much I tabulate length in basketball players, this listing was something I created in my own time in an excel sheet months ago…

Largest Wingspan of Basketball Players and Giants
Manute Bol – 8′ 6″ (at 7′ 7″ height)
Kenny George – 8′ 5.5″ (101.5″)
Mamdou N’Diaye – 8′ 1″ or 8′ 3″ (at 7′ 4″ height or listed at 7′ 6″)
Shagari Alleyne – 8′ 1″ (at 7′ 3″ height)
Jaber Rouzbahani – 8′ (at 7′ 4″ height)
Gheorghe Muresan – 7′ 10″ (at 7′ 7″ height)
Beejay Anya – 7′ 9″ (at 6′ 8″ height)
Rudy Gobert – 7′ 9″
John Riek – 7′ 8.75″
Alexis Ajinca – 7′ 8.75″
Saer Sene – 7′ 8.5″
Rudy Gobert – 7′ 8.5″ (at 7′ 0.5″ height)
Michael Olowokandi – 7′ 8″
Wilt Chamberlain – 7′ 8″ (at 7′ 1″ and 1/16″)
Boban Marjanovic – 7′ 8″ (at 7′ 2.25″ height)
Shaquille O’Neal – 7′ 7″
Hassan Whiteside – 7′ 7″
Andrew Bynum – 7′ 7″ – 7′ 6″
Alonzo Mourning – 7′ 6.5″
Brendan Haywood – 7′ 6.5″
Eddy Curry – 7′ 6.5″
DeSagana Diop – 7′ 6.5″
Aziz N’Diaye – 7′ 6.5″
Hasheem Thabeet – 7′ 6.25″
Andre Drummond – 7′ 6.25″
Bismack Biyombo – 7′ 6.16″ (listed also at 7′ 7″)
JaVale McGee – 7′ 6″
DeAndre Jordan – 7′ 6″
Hamady N’Diaye – 7′ 6″
Gorgul Dleng (or gorgul dieng) – 7′ 6″
Cole Aldrich – 7′ 6″ (or 7′ 4.75″)
Dewayne Dedmon – 7′ 6″
Samuel Deguara – 7′ 5.75″
Demarcus Cousins – 7′ 5.75″
Pavel Podkolzine – 7′ 5.75″ (at 7′ 3.5″ height)
Brook Lopez – 7′ 5.5″
Elton Brand – 7′ 5.5″
Anthony Davis – 7′ 5.5″ (or 7′ 4″)
Darco Milicic – 7′ 5″
Shawn Bradley – 7′ 5″
Lucas Nogueira – 7′ 5″
Kevin Durant – 7′ 4.75″ (or 7′ 4″ back in 2006)
Dwight Doward – 7′ 4.5″
Greg Oden – 7′ 4.25″
Emeka Okafor – 7′ 4″
Nicholas Batum – 7′ 4″ (???) (or 7′ 0.75″)
Chri Bosh – 7′ 3.5″
Ndongo N’Diaye – 7′ 3.5″
Aaron Gray – 7′ 3″ – 7′ 3.25″
Tayshaun Prince – (7′ 3″ – 7′ 2″) (also listed at 7′ 6″)
Nerlens Noel – 7′ 3″ – 7′ 4″

An Increased Oxygen Concentration Level Causes Insects To Grow In Size

An Increased Oxygen Concentration Level Causes Insects To Grow In Size

I was watching the 9th episode for the new Cosmos: A Space Odyssey series when the Astronomer/Physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson explained a principle on why insects that was alive on Earth 300 Million years ago (called the Carboniferous Period) could be able to grow to incredible sizes.

The way I understood his idea was that insects are basically animals, in the animal kingdom. That means that they will need like all animals Oxygen to be able to get to all of their tissue. Flora Organisms, aka within the Plant Kingdom, need the other type Carbon Dioxide.

It turns out that insects don’t have lungs. The insects that were living back then was able to bring the O2 into their bodies through outside their bodies by some type of opening (I suspect that he means like any orifice, like a mouth) by transporting the oxygen through a network of tubes.

If the insect was too large, the outer reaches of the tubes, closest to the orifice’s opening adjacent to the opening to the outside of the body, would be absorb all that oxygen before the oxygen reaches the internal organs. Imagine your skin getting all the O2 but the O2 never reaches your heart. However, the carboniferous period’s atmosphere supposedly had twice the level of oxygen as current day.

This means that insects could grow much bigger and still get enough oxygen in their bodies. The result is that the dragonflies would grow to the size of eagles and the millipedes can grow to the size of alligators.

So I started to think about the consequences of what would happen to the evolution of humans if the atmosphere of Earth increased in O2 levels.

Would an increased oxygen concentration level in the earth’s atmosphere cause mammals, specifically humans to get larger in size over time too?

I have before asked the theoretical question and did some calculations to guess whether there is a limit to how large humans can get. What we could come up with were three main constraints which would limit the size of humans.

  • The natural material strength of articular cartilage, the collagen in joints, and fluids like those found in the synovial joint of the knees and the nucleus pulposus. – Too much mass on top of the body would crush the tissue below it, like the IVDs would be crushed. (Remember that humans is one of the few animals which walk completely upright. Most mammals have 4 legs, not two arms and two legs. That means their entire body weight is equally distributed into quarters. We put so much emphasize on our heights because we walk on two legs and are upright aka erect! If we had 4 legs on the ground, we would not care about height, but length instead, like how one measures a fish.)
  • The surface area over volume/mass ratio of a the person would decrease to a point where the mass could burst out of the person. (Remember that as a person increases vertically, their weight/mass increases at a cubic rate (^3) while the surface area increases at a squared rate (^2). This is why a person 5 feet tall can weight 100 lbs, 6 feet at 200 lbs, and at 7 feet tall at 400 lbs. With every feet we go up, our weight goes up at a faster rate than our skin (and maybe also skeletal structure) can handle)
  • The corollary to the 2nd point is that the heat transfer limitations of a thick enough skin to hold all that volume/mass in the body means that the body would hold all the heat inside. The result is the internal organs turned into liquid from being heated to an insane level.

This new point that DeGrasse Tyson makes shows that we forgot at least one more critical point, which is that as a person’s body increases, the amount of length of blood vessels the blood would have to be pumped through increases dramatically. It may not seem like a lot of distance to cover but it was said that all the blood vessels in one person lined together on a straight line is supposed to reach from one coast of North America to the other coast.

I remember watching a documentary where it was revealed that current Indiana Pacer’s Center Roy Hibbert, standing at 7′ 2″ has a heart size that is twice as big as the average human. Obviously his heart has to do a much higher level of output of blood pumping to get the nutrients in the blood to all the places in his body. There is only so far a biological instrument like the heart can grow up to before the 4 chamber system can not contract and relax fast enough to pump the necessary flow of blood around the entire body.

(On a side note, primatologist have confirmed the existence of a distance relative the gigantopithecus, which is believed to be up to 10 feet tall. Assuming that the legends of the Bigfoot and Yeti is not true, but fabrications of the human mind, we still have one scientific claim that shows that theoretically, humans can reach the 10 feet mark in height.)

However, it may not just be the heart/blood/nutrient transport problem, which the increase in O2 would fix. It might also be a neuro-chemical problem, where the nerve fiber bundles are so long that the electrical signals from the dentrite-axon-threshhold electrical mechanism to just not work well enough and never reach the brain.

Remember again how Robert Wadlow died. His lower legs supposedly did not have the nerve endings working properly. I am guessing that the incredible length of his legs mean that the distance for the electrical signals from pain or stimuli to reach his brain became a constraint. When his lower leg got a small scratch, he did not feel the scratch. The result is that an infection started without him feeling anything, until he noticed it and by then it was too late.

Of course, Wadlow’s case suggest that there could be a 5th limitation placed on the human body, which is that once you get too tall/large, the nerve responses decrease since there is a much longer distance for the electrical signals to travel to reach the brain.

However, I am going to make a guess that it might be reasonable to suspect that if we increased the level of O2 in the atmosphere, the overall human race over time would increase in height at a higher rate than what is expected of it with average levels of O2. It is already guessed by some futuristic thinkers that the human race would increase in height over time anyway on average as the ability to have access to good nutrients would improve over the coming centuries. I am just saying that a O2 increase might make our whole race just slightly bigger.

At least with the increased O2 levels, the 4th major limitation would be remove which would prevent the human mammal from getting bigger.

(Something I didn’t even consider is that like insects with their exoskeletons, humans have more than just two orifices to take in oxygen. We know about our mouth and nose, which sucks in the air, which is around 20-21% O2. However, most people don’t realize that we also breathe through our skin, at around 1% of our total intake. If O2 is increased, there should be a slight increase in the rate of cellular chemical activity at least in the epidermal cells close to the outside of the body. This could stimulate an increase in proliferation of cell mitosis, specifcally chondrocytes when the organism is still growing.)

Of course, as mammals, we are warm blooded animals. Maybe O2 increased would cause biochemical reactions in our bodies which make the internal temperature increased. We would obviously need more food caloric intake to sustain a homeostatic state of temperature balance. It could have the opposite effect, and decrease the rate of human evolutionary growth if the body just became too hot internally.