1. One’s Penis/Genitalia – Ex: Size, length, girth, aesthetics, and it’s ability to stay erect, impotence
2. One’s Sexual Ability & Performance – Ex: To satisfy their female partner, Premature Ejaculation, Comparing one’s accomplishments/abilities to their wife/gf’s previous romantic partners
3. One’s Hair – Ex: Loss of hair, male pattern baldness, thinning and greying
4. One’s Finances – Ex: Not having enough spending power
5. One’s Body – Ex: Not buff, no muscle, too thin, no 6-pack
6. One’s level of success in one’s chosen profession/career/job – Ex: Have not reached one’s goals
7. One’s Education Level – Ex: How does oneself compare to one’s peers and likely romantic partner
8. One’s Romantic/Sexual Experience – Ex: Lack of experience
9. One’s Health – Ex: Chronic problems, like heart disease, cancer scare,
10. One’s Social Status – Ex: Not having the respect of one’s peers, friends, family, coworkers
11. One’s Level of Intelligence Compared to Others – Ex: Obviously being less intelligent than others
12. One’s Height/Stature – Ex: Obviously it would be if one is shorter than average

(Yes, I realize that there is actually 12 that I listed)

If you go talk with most adult men in this modern age, and you asked them the questions

• “What do you worry about?”
• “What keeps you up at night and gets you stress out?”
• “Tell me something that you have never told anyone else about?”
• “What types of insecurities do you have?”

These 12 things are probably the most common problems that the average guy will tell you. There will obviously be other things that men will talk about, and some strange weird things they get stressed out about but, these 12 issues will be the things that will be brought up over and over again.

If we go down the list of things we should be worried about, one’s health should come first. If you don’t have your health, you have nothing. It doesn’t matter how well you are doing in your professional life or how much money you have. If you are not healthy, you don’t have the opportunity to enjoy it.

Let’s look at everything on this list and ask the reader – Which of these insecurities are factors which would be most obvious to a total stranger who know almost nothing about you?

Obviously it would be the physical.

You can hide the size of your genitalia, your sexual ability, sexual history, level of finances (unless you dress like a slob or are homeless), your education level, your social status, your level of intelligence, level of success in your career, but it is your physical attributes that people will obviously notice immediately. This is how people make their initial judgement on who you are as a person.

In fact, one can be poor, uneducated, no career, no sexual experience, and with low social status, but all of those aspects one can work on. People would tell you that life is a marathon, not a sprint, so you can take years, if not decades to work on becoming wealthy, educated, have a fulfilling career (or multiple careers), have many sexual experiences with a lot of partners, and improve one’s social statues by gaining the respect and admiration of one’s friend’s peers.

As for things like one’s level of intelligence or size of one’s genitalia, those are more genetic than the others, which one can put time, energy, and effort into. Being intelligent is indeed a big requirement in this society which men worry about, but that can be worked on through education, learning, and surrounding oneself with people who are much smarter.

The size/look of one’s genitalia, there seems to be some techniques which can help with that issue, which many young men swear works for them.

This means that a man’s hair, his body, and his height will be the 3 areas which other people will be making a judgement on, which he might have some level of insecurity about.

• One’s Hair – Ex: Loss of hair, male pattern baldness, thinning and greying
• One’s Body – Ex: Not buff, no muscle, too thin, no 6-pack
• One’s Height/Stature – Ex: Obviously it would be if one is shorter than average

As for one’s body, most adult males fill out in width over time. The way the human body works is that while one is very thin when they are still growing vertically when they were younger, their chest and waist eventually grows in width as they reach their 30s and 40s. Very few men ever stay completely skinny throughout their entire lives, especially Americans.

When it comes to the body, one can go to the gym, and over time make themselves muscular, toned, and have a flat stomach.

As for hair, many men these days are actually preferring to shave their head to accentuate their image of masculinity. When their hair starts to thin, or becomes gray, the men choose the shaved look.

Then it comes down to height. Let’s talk about that in the next post, which I will entitle “Is Height Really That Big Of An Issue With Men?”

I don’t care much about American politics or plan to watch the debates going on these days between the presidential candidates of 2016. However, I was looking at the The Daily Mail news yesterday and they had 1 picture that had the candidates standing side by side next to each other.

Out of the dozen plus candidates, there was one candidate that really “stood out” from the crowd. He looked like he was 5-6 inches taller than Donald Trump. So I did what a normal, curious person did. I googled the heights of donald trump and this guy. Of course, first I had to figure out who this candidate was.

Me, being a person who doesn’t know anything about politics, I had to go down the list of short biographic info to figure out who this person is. Well, it is Jeb Bush.

So Wikipedia says Jeb Bush is 6′ 3”. and Wikipedia says that Donald Trump is either 6′ 2” or 6′ 3”. The Donald has claimed 6′ 3” a few times in the past.

Since Donald Trump is almost 70 years old, we can assume that he probably is not the 6′ 3” that he claims to be, although he might have been that tall at his maximum, at some point in his life. People often loss about 1 inch of height when they reach 50, compared to their maximum. When they are around 70, that height loss could be as dramatic as a full 3 inches of loss, on average.

I would make an educated guess and say that Trump is now 6′ 2”, which is still a very good height to be in. Remember seeing him on a book cover once with the Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki who claims he is 6′ 2″ and Trump was noticeable taller. He will not be disqualified or thought badly by any voters for being shorter than his opponents.

As for Jeb, he just towered over Trump. At the time, last night, I was puzzled at how there could be that much of a discrepancy between them. I did not look at their shoes, or how they were standing.

Well, I wake up today and the DailyMail puts the news of the fact that Jeb Bush was standing on his toes at the top news of the day. The people at reddit/r/short picked it up too and are now talking about it. This type of news will most likely be talked about on all of the internet boards where people focus on height and being short.

The comments that are coming in are mostly average, where people are talking about Jeb’s insecurity and his desire to just look more dominant.

What most people will agree on is that this slight action taken by Jeb, which has now been noticed by millions of people who read Daily Mail and watched the debates, is that Jeb is not the most confident man in the world. He absolutely looks to be 6′ 3”, and clearly among the tallest of the candidates. He should not need to stand on his tiptoes to appear taller for the photos. This will be a gaff that the other candidates might take and use as a weapon against him later on if he stays in the running.

So what would make a guy who is already 6′ 3” want look even taller, maybe up to 6′ 6”- 6′ 7”? Some people have said that this idea is not his but credited to someone in his campaign party. They understand the importance of height and wanted to emphasize Jeb’s great height even further to make himself look stronger than the others in the group. Fair Enough.

If it is his idea, then it could be a character reveal. This guy is just not that confident in his own abilities to be a great potential president. Now that I am looking at the other candidate’s shoes, I am almost positive that there would also be 2-3 other candidates who are wearing extra-thick insoles or lifts, to give themselves a possible edge in the polls.

For Jeb, based on his intrinsic personality traits, being brash and quick in conversation might not be his strong-suit. You look at Trump and you can see that he is a good talker, smooth with words, and when people start throwing the hard questions as Trump, he knows how to deal with it. Trump has a rather large ego and is quite brash, but he projects such an assertive image and tone that most people would not question his willingness to be a leader who can take charge. Of course we all realize that there is a clear line of demarcation between a person being confident, and a person being arrogant.

Jeb should have sat down and learned in great depth all the topics that he is planning on talking about, if he is really thinking about becoming the future president of the US. I don’t have a strong opinion on him as a person, and living through his brother’s and fathers terms in office, I do become wary in his ability, if political intelligence can be passed down genetically.

When it comes to confidence, Jeb doesn’t have a lot. He is not charismatic, but he does have some things going for him. His 6′ 3” height would have helped him slightly in the polls, but now this fiasco might have nullified that advantage. His ability to speak Spanish fluently would help him slightly, but these days, almost everyone can speak Spanish now. I speak Spanish at a conversational level.

Personally I don’t think Jeb has any type of insecurity with his height (too old, too rich, and too tall), but there would be many guys who would do a similar action in that type of situation to overcompensate.

So is confidence really enough to stop the insecurity?

Based on my own life experiences, I would say that confidence is enough for maybe 75% of cases of men who complain about how short they are. Most of the individuals (specifically males) who have an issue with their height are often not that short to begin with. They often range from 5′ 7” – 5′ 10”. They just don’t reach that magical cutoff height of 6′ 0”. They probably compare themselves with their guy friends, who seem to be all much taller than them. These friends who are average with just average intelligence with large egos, uses what they do have to feel better about themselves, and probably like to tease and joke on the guy in their group is the smallest. It is a very college frat-type thinking.

This suggests that a short male’s insecurity is not something they developed themselves, but something that they acquired after years of interactions with their fellow male peers.

True confidence that is unshakable would be enough for guys in the 5′ 7”-5′ 10” group. They honestly have nothing to worry about. Spent $600 on a sharp suit, $300 on a pair of shoes, put on some diamond stud earrings, and a $1000 rolex and few people would ever think about talking bad about this person, especially after people reach a certain age. A well dressed and put together man who projects confidence and holds presence is a person most socially intelligent people would not be teasing on over appearance.

Even if you don’t feel truly confident, I suggest that one spends the money, put on this attire, and just try out the philosophy “Fake It Til You Make It”. Most guys would instantly notice that people’s perception of them and their level of respect increases dramatically. Women will be friendler to them and smile more, which may or may not be a sign that they are romantically interested in them.

However, we must also be realistic. The suit, shoes, and rolex will work, but up to a certain point. The cocky/confidence attitude works until it stops. Once a guy is below a certain height, even those external changes can’t stop the haters completely.

A guy who is 5′ 4” who is completely put together and immaculately dressed will on ocassion come across some 6 feet tall slob with little emotional or social intelligence who tries to heckle and belittle him on his physical short coming. It is in those types of social situations where one’s “Fake it Till You Make It” projected image will be tested. To have real confidence means that one can hold one’s frame without any of the loss of presence.

Ultimately, to have true, TRUE confidence means that that one is not swayed by the external elements, but has a diamond strong inner core of confidence. One is extremely comfortable in who they are, does not have any need to question or defend their identity. They know what they value and what they believe in and doesn’t feel the need to tell everyone about it.

When they are in a professional setting, they are respected and their coworkers, bosses, or employees listen to them because they are good at their job. They have a high level of cognitive, emotional, and social intelligence, aka maturity.

In a personal setting, on a date, they will not be so lucky or respected. The arena of love, dating, sex, and relationships is a true battlefield. We are just animals at the most basic level. A lot of our actions and decisions have already been programmed into our biology from billions of years of evolution. A certain percentage of the heterosexual female population will judge their potential male romantic partners based on physical stature. Being so below the average height will absoutely mean that some females will reject them. If one is even shorter, like 5′ 0” – 5′ 2” then it would be extremely hard.

Super-confidence will break down, since our biology/instinctual/evolutionary programing kicks in. Since we are physical beings, the physical needs will override all else, when we are placed in a state of great stress, pain, or loss. When a guy is 5′ 0”, confidence will still matter, but luck will become just as important. Some men who have become slightly more successful like to believe that the benefits and rewards they got in life from their effort is mostly based on their work. However, in a thought experiment, where we got a chance to live our lives a 2^nd time, but placed in a different birth situation, many of these successful people would not become the success that they were in the 1^st life, at least not at that level. Luck, that will be the most important aspect when all of the factors that one can control (fashion, dress, income, professional achievements) has been maximized, since luck is what we can’t control.

It may be true that luck is something that we can work to our favor, where opportunity meets preparation (Opportunity + Preparation = Luck). However, we must remember again that preparation is the part that we have control over, but opportunity is what we don’t have control over. We can work very hard and become prepared for a great opportunity. However, for some people, the element of “opportunity” never comes around. If it does appear in our life, we are not smart enough or experienced enough in our life to recognize that an opportunity has presented to ourselves. Based on bad timing, the opportunity is lost.

Since we are all born, we are almost all given a fair share of chances in pursuing what we want, some more than others, (as evidenced by Warren Buffett’s speech on his idea of being born in Bangladesh). However, there will be some people who will loss, based on things that they have no control over.

One of my sources which I read up on the latest biotechnology news is the website www.fiercebiotech.com. The type of reader who usually reads these websites are people who are trying to learn about startup companies which are still at a stage where they are willing to accept small investments/funding by semi-rich investors as a type of Angel Investor. The news aggregator website gives small pieces of news that are being released by the startup’s PR department to get people talking.

Something that was mentioned in a few posts from 2-4 years ago was this company called Histogenics which has been trying to get the implanted hyaline cartilage to work out for people who are suffering from osteoarthritis pain. Refer to this article written back in 2012 “Histogenics Closes $49 Million Series A Fundraising to Support Commercial Development of Transformational Cartilage Repair Products“. This is when i started the website and back then I wrote about the technology/product that they have. The old post is “NeoCart Autologous Cartilage Tissue Implant For Cartilage Regrowth And Replacement“. 3 Years later, I think I can give a much more detailed look at their research and give a more educated guess on their future endeavors.

In some ways, what they are doing or trying to do is very, VERY similar to at least half a dozen other research labs I have discovered in the last 3 years. I wrote a post just a few weeks ago about a university research team who is doing something very similar, but the other team has not decided to take their technique out of the lab yet for a larger scale application.

Refer to this section I took from the first link above…

“….Histogenics’ flagship products focus on the treatment of active patients suffering from articular cartilage derived pain and immobility. The Company takes an interdisciplinary approach to engineering neocartilage that looks, acts and lasts like hyaline cartilage. It is developing new treatments for sports injuries and other orthopedic conditions, where demand is growing for long-term alternatives to joint replacement. Histogenics has successfully completed Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials in which the NeoCart autologous tissue implant’s effectiveness is compared to that of standard microfracture surgery.”

Of course this article was from 3 years ago. Now, if you go to the products page (Here) of the Histogenics website, you can see that they are now doing Phase 3. Phase 3 has its description on the website ClinicalTrials.gov, which we are all very familiar with. – Confirmatory Study of NeoCart in Knee Cartilage Repair

It would seem that the information for the Clinical Trial of the NeoCart platform was just updated last month.

Like they said, their approach is… “implantation of an cartilagenous tissue implant derived from the patients own cells.” this is in comparison, to the other well known approach of microfracture surgery.

They even give a contact information if you want to be a subject/patient in their phase 3 clinical trials – Kathleen Large – 18559636227 – NeoCartContactCenter@UBC.com or at NeoCartImplant.com.

From the UBC part, it seems that the implantation process will take place at UBC, which might stand for British Columbia, Canada.

It seems that for the previous Phase, Phase II, the entire process took them 2 full years, You can read up on the results of that full 2 years from this source – Crawford et al. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2012;94:979-89. This previous clinical trial Phase was done at San Antonio Orthopaedic Group (TSAOG) and headed by Orthopedic surgeon Brad S. Tolin, M.D. They even had a commercial done on asking for people who wanted to join in the treatment.

Let’s summarize the findings of Phase 2, as reported by Histogenics to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commition), which is what is required for most public companies each quarter. This is what they stated at the very end. (source)

“…Our preliminary findings strongly suggest that using the NeoCart autologous cartilage tissue implant significantly decreases knee pain and improves function within six months after treatment and provides significantly greater improvements than microfracture.”

The Big Questions We Should Be Asking Now

So if you are a regular reader of this website, and you understand the scientific words I use, then you obvious would have realized that I reported in a post just last month of a research team from Ohio State Universtiy who has done what seems to be the exact same thing.

I am referring to the post “Scientists Have Gotten Cartilage To Grow In The Lab From Explanted Seed Chondrocyte Cells And Reimplanted Back Into Patient“. Here, it was from the Wexner Medical  Center and the research group leader (or maybe just spokemen) was a David C Flanigan. A person scraped their knee from a skateboard accident and they lost some meniscus and articular cartilage. The guys as Wexner Medical Lab took some of chondrocytes from his body as a seed, grew it to cartilage, and implanted it into his knee and he seems to okay now.

So are these two groups doing the exact same thing? 

For the final result, no, they are the same thing. However, on their approach, it is slightly different. In the previous post, I wrote that the in-vitro cartilage from OSU when implanted back into the cartilage defect, the most likely result is that while the ACI (Autologous Cartilage Implant) would fuse/bind with the cartilage around it, it generally will eventually develop into fibrocartilage tissue. This is the criticism I gave in that post, and showing that the research that was done at OSU is a step in the right direction, but they just haven’t pushed to a point where I should be giving them too much credit.

At the end of that post, I said that microfracture surgery might be easier, and better than what Wexner has created. Well, in Phase II of Histogenics clinical trials, they showed that their autologous cartilage implantation is better than microfracture surgery. Based on the transitive property (where A>B, and B>C thus A>C), this shows that the Histogenics approach is better than what is available at OSU. Of course, this is assuming that my suggestion at the end of the first post is accurate, that microfracture surgery would be more effective than the stuff Flanigan’s team offered.

The people at Histogenics are able to make a structure that is very similar to hyaline cartilage. This is where they are ahead, at least 1 step ahead. Keep in mind that in the older post, in 2012, they said that they got the in-vitro generated cartilage to be just like hyaline cartilage. I would assume that after 3 more years of research, and then reaching Phase 3, they got the hyaline cartilage down.

To see how far they are at, You can go a little further and do a quick Google Patent Search and type in the word “Histogenics” into the Patent Database. There was a patent called “Acellular matrix implanted into an articular cartilage or osteochondral lesion protected with a biodegradable polymer modified to have extended polymerization time and methods for preparation and use thereof – WO 2005018429 A8“. A 30 second read of the abstract tells you that while creating bone implants is very easy, they state that the patent is technically to treat articular cartilage.

For us, we are now 1 step further!!!

It just seemed like 2 week ago I said that we were maybe 2-3 steps away. Well 2 weeks later, I report to the readers that 1 more step has been taken. We are now essentially 1-2 steps away.

There is seriously just 1 last step to go, but that last step to go from hyaline cartilage for articular cartilage to epiphyseal type will be a big leap. Alsberg is working on it, as well as people like Gordana Novakovic. Alsberg has already jumped into the last step, trying to get it to work. However, no one has yet been willing to go from the 2nd to last step to the final step yet. This is where we will see real funding into the venture come about.

What do we need to see to make take the final step?

We would need the funding from a billionaire source. I read just today from MIT Technology Review that the Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel has put in funding to the cancer fighting startup StemCentrx. He talked about the fact that Biotech funding is very tricky. Conventional biotech research is sort of like a shotgun approach, where you try thousands of combinations of stuff and hope one has a useful result. Thiel realises that to make biotech startups less costly, and easier to fund, biotechnology has to evolve to a point, where research is more of a sniper-approach, where the element of randomness is reduced, and you can actually predict and design out what you want for a result. The book that I am writing currently, which I predict won’t be finished for another 3-4 years, will be the step that Thiel is talking about, where we predict and design the exact steps to take the final step.

This is one of those posts which will probably be more controversial. However, on this type of website, I don’t pull any punches. I tell the people everything, and hold nothing back.

Maybe half of the people who write to me are young enough where they are still growing, around the age of 15-18, and they ask me what can they do to help get that extra 3-4 inches before their bones completely fuse.

The most logical answer would be to just do what the average endocrinologist does, which is to get injections of rHGH (Recombinant Human Growth Hormone). Yes, there are another 2 dozen other compounds I can suggest after doing this type of research for the last 3 years, but let’s focus on the most obvious way, which has been proven to be effective by medical professionals for over 30 years.

Of course, to suggest that one get rHGH, there are many concerns by people, like safety, legality, and efficacy.

• Safety – Is taking HGH even safe?
• Legality – Is it legal to buy HGH in the US?
• Efficacy – Even if I got the rHGH, would it even work?

Safety – This is usually the first thing people think about. Our health is the most important thing. Well, from my personal research, I have not found any case of people who actually developed a severely negative side effect from taking synthetic HGH. HGH is naturally produced in our body by the anterior area of the pituitary gland. The level of growth hormone that is released by the pituitary gland varies. However, the release is greater when we are asleep, compared to wakefulness. The release is greater during the summer than the other seasons. Also, the release is greater during our puberty years than when we are older, as adults.

In my opinion, until people can show me 3 PubMed studies which show that a high level of HGH is bad (excluding Acromegaly) then I say that it is safe. In fact, the benefits of GH are great. GH helps people feel younger, stronger, loss weight, and have more stamina. What people are more likely to associate with health risk is steroids. Steroids is actually synthetic testosterone, which is completely different from HGH. While GH is produced in the head, testosterone is produced in the reproductive organs and the internal organs. There is synthetic GH and there is synthetic testosterone. Bodybuilders often use both to build muscle mass.

Legality – I have not done the necessary searching on Google to see whether it is legal. However, I would assume that it would not be as a big of problem as steroids. When it comes to steroids, people have a very negative opinion from multiple cases of bodybuilders who went bad. With rHGH, it should be more lenient. A quick search Google reveals many websites claiming that you can order the stuff. One website I just found out about is hgh suppliers. Another resource which I would recommend much more is the renegade researcher Ellis Toussier. Read my review on him in a previous post here. Toussier claims to have been living in Mexico since the 80s, and he has been injecting young kids which the real synthetic compound hundreds of times, for parents who are concerned with their kids who might be short or have a GH deficiency. He claims that he lives really close to a Eli Lilly Factory where they make the real rHGH and he has a contact on the inside to get the protein as a extremely low price. You can even find Toussier on Linkedin.

Efficacy – When it comes to effectiveness, we know from reading hundreds of PubMed study articles that done properly, at the right dosage, the compound does work. Some people, who have not done the necessary reading, might claim that HGH injections would not make a young kid grow taller than what they have always been pre-programmed by their genes from birth. They state that if one does not have a GH Deficiency, the HGH therapy would not be effective. Technically, that is not true.

The reason it is not true is based on the hundreds of instances where people develop gigantism. We know Gigantism is a real medical condition. We also know that Gigantism turns into Acromegaly after the person’s bones fuse. Does this mean that for a person to develop extreme height, they have a growth hormone deficiency condition as well as having an increased pituitary gland activity?

We look at cases like Tanya Angus, Adam Rainier, and Brahim Takioullah and can make the case that all of these cases had the person have an overactive pituitary gland. The gland often has a tumor that is benign. The gland released more GH in the system, often at a rate 10-20X as much as normal. The natural form and the synthetic form has the same function. Since an increased stimulation of GH into the system causes these cases resulting in extreme height, do the person also have a deficiency? Since the argument made by the GH naysayers is that the therapy won’t work without a GH deficiency. Well, it does work.

We have shown that this chemical is safe, can be easily bought, and does work, if used properly.

Here are some resources which I suggest the person start looking at if they want to try it out.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/steroids/ – Note: Remember that HGH is NOT a Steroid. They are 2 different things. People like to categorize them as one thing, and lump them together, but they are very different.
• https://www.eroids.com/pics/where-to-buy-legit-hgh-and-increase-your-odds-of-getting-a-good-product-.-the-definitive-guide
• https://hghsuppliers.com/

This chemical is very expensive though. The chemical industry’s standard of unit is the IU, and for just a few IUs it would cost a person into the thousands. This chemical compound is not cheap.

What I can recommend to people is this. Don’t buy any type of GH from China or India. It is just too dangerous based on customs people taking the compound away and from the possibility that the chemical will breakdown along the way on the ship or plane. If you want to get real, good GH, go to Mexico. Companies like Eli Lilly, who was the first company to synthesize HG back in the 70s, have their factories in Mexico and sometimes in the Philippines now. Get the real thing. Don’t trust anything sold on Alibaba, AliExpress, or Amazon.

However, I have personally purchased Nootropics from India with success before though. I have tried Piracetam, Phenibut, Kratom, L-Theanine, and Modafinil. Nootropic stacks are similar to the steroid/hgh stacks bodybuilders use. Learn how to do them right. Get educated and join the LongeCity forums.

A year ago, I found a good resource www.modup.net from the reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/modup/. Talk to Sophie and she will help you guys out. Even if the customs people take away your order, they will send out a replacement for free.

As for needles, look on AliExpress.com for needles which are often really cheap ($5-10 per set). Amazon will never sell needles for legal and safety reasons. If you guys can’t find places to buy needles, contact the customer service reps of the semi-annual Canton Fair to ask for a listing of medical equipment suppliers/factories in China.

Anyone who has every considered the idea of possibly going through with the process of limb lengthening surgery to make their body longer aka taller has also asked the question “Will I still look proportional after the surgery?”.

This point was mentioned once again in a comment as a response to the previous post, about the good news of the research Dr. Alsberg has been working on. That news was definitely a game changer.

The obvious concern is that while height and looker taller is important, it is equally important that their body still looks proportional. The feared result after the procedue to make one’s tibia or femur longer is that either the torso, the arms, limbs, or head might look small or short now.

To get a more in depth access to people who ask such questions, visit the forum website www.limblengtheningforum.com 

In response to people who have this type of fear or concern, I would like to refer them to multiple studies that I have accumulated over the last 3 years. The average person on the street who doesn’t think about their height and body proportions as we do (the regulars of this website) probably have not heard of the concept of a person’s “Wingspan”. The wingspan of a person is the length from the tip of one’s left middle finger to the tip of the right middle finger, when the person has fully stretched out their arms.

In many sports, particularly basketball, boxing, and football (quarterback position), the length of one’s arm’s (aka reach) is very important. In athletics, while height is almost always mentioned, the wingspan will also be brought up in these sports.

The generally accepted rule (based on probably Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vetruvium Man sketch) is that the wingspan of a person will be the same as one’s height. The data that has come out from national censuses, collection of data of anthropometric studies done over the decades is that the wingspan of a person is on average slightly longer than the height. In males, the wingspan/height ratio is even more skewed. I can’t find the study at this moment, but the average ratio of wingspan/height is around 1.02/1, for males.

Based on a just an initial hypothesis, it sort of makes sense when one realizes that while the feet and torso is always putting load/weight on the legs, the arms don’t have any load placed on them. While the growth plates in the legs have to push against the force of gravity, the growth plates in the arms are not, at least downwards. This means that the arms are on average, going to grow just slightly more than the legs, without the constraint of gravity pushing down on them.

So my first point is, it is most likely that for the short male who is asking, their wingspan will be longer than their height. An extra 3-5 cm to their vertical length will not cause a big proportionality problem since their width length is already there.

Here is my 2nd argument. People who develop short stature, from some form of real medical condition develop a normal/proportional sized torso and head, but their limbs suffer. Achrondroplasia, which is the most common medical condition causing severe short stature, most often results in a person with a normal body, (with normal sized had and torso) but with exceptionally short limbs. This means that for their condition, it would makes sense just to lengthen the arms and legs, and never touch the skull, neck, spine, or torso area.

Achondroplasia is often caused by an increased level of FGFR3. Studies have shown that inhibiting the effect of FGFR3 removes the effects of achondroplasia. However, it only works by first realizing that one’s unborn child has the condition, and a gene therapist going into the embryo and editing the genetic makeup of the embryo before the baby is ever even born.

The same can be seen with GDF5 (growth-differentiation factor 5) – mice that were bred to not have this gene being expressed develop relatively normal torsos and bodies, but their limbs (arms and legs) were severely shortened. It seems that there are many ways to make a person shorter, and the most common ways to do that is to cause some genetic issue of their limb development.

So if a person is worried about proportionality, they should not be worried about the length or size of their torso.

In fact, in the beginning of this website, I made a theory/hypothesis from watching my own body, and the Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps body. People who are big eaters when they are young, who develop to be taller than average, seem to have their height disproportionately in their torso. Thus the torso length/leg length ratio is larger. The next time you see an adult male who is both tall and obese, look to see whether their torso/body seem to be particularly long. More likely than not.

My point here is that, to increase the length of one’s torso, it seems to be possible by being a big eater when one was younger, before they stopped growing.

This is true with people like Yao Ming. In pictures of Yao Ming sitting down with other NBA Players which I analyzed years ago, it seems that Yao seems to get his great height from his torso. When he was sitting down, he would still tower over other professional basketball players, but when you look at his legs, he has similar leg length as the others. Compare this to someone like Wilt Chamberlain, who got his great height mainly from his long legs, specifically the femur.

However, I realize that I never really answered the original question, the title of this post. – “Can We Find A Way To Make People Taller And Also Keep Their Body And Limbs Proportional?”

My 1st Point – On average, for men, their wingspan is actually longer than their height. If they go through with surgery, they should not need to worry about the disproportionality of their arms to their new longer legs.

My 2nd Point – I theorized from a few examples of people’s bodies that one can increase the length of one’s torso, at least when one is still growing, by eating more, (meat, grains, vegetables, dairy). After one stops growing, obviously it won’t be possible.

My 3rd point – Most people are not as height and proportion obsessed as us. They either don’t care or will never notice. After the leg lengthening, one may look at the mirror and focus only on the shortness of one’s arms or body, but most people will not even notice a difference.

Real Answer: In theory, anything is possible. Maybe one day in the far future, we will be able to make people not just taller, but also get the other organs and structures in the body to grow with the leg bones. However, in my educated opinion, after looking at this problem over and over again for over 3 years, there is only 2 ways that I can see. Technically, the 2 techniques that I propose are in essence the exact same physiological process. The difference is whether one chooses a very hard problem to solve, or an insanely hard problem to solve.

Technique #1: To be able to make the entire body to grow again, scientists will have to find the solution to reverse aging of the human body itself, to the extreme case of Benjamin Button. This would most likely require that the human body be placed in a chamber with amniotic fluid, which is a similar function to acid in Ph to soften/rubberize the bones to remove the Base-like (Ph-wise) hydroxyapatite crystals which makes bone hard. The fluid the body is in seeps into the human body, and converts the bones back into cartilage or cartilagenuous type tissue.

This technique would involve probably decades (if not centuries) of research in learning how to not just stop aging, but also to reverse aging, to actually turn a 60 year old women with skin full of wrinkles. to a 16 year old girl with supple, wrinkle free skin. Scientists would need to study how telomeres work, how the junk microRNAs work, which of the thousands of the genes in our chromosomes control the role of height, how to use the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, gene editing, gene therapy, how to increase the Hayflick Limit, how to stop oxidation chemical reactions from causing free radical buildup in the cells, particularly around the mitochondria area. To give a reference of what this would be like, we would have to reach the technological level of the Kryptonians from the Superman story. A true galactic master race/species who have already conquered inter-space travel. To have this type of technology, we would need to be a much, MUCH more technological advanced species to build this type of technology.

This proposal, I am not holding my breathe for, at least in my lifetime. It is way too science fiction for me.

Technique #2: Scientists figure out how to get transdifferentiation to work out – changing bone tissue to cartilage tissue. Eben Alsberg has proposed this idea, which would suggest that if he is successful, and other researchers pursue his ideas further, maybe in 50 years, they would figure out how to get the bones to turn into cartilage with a series of simple needle injections of various material (growth factors, chondromodulin, TGF-Beta, GDF5, chondrocyte seeds, pathway signalling proteins, MSCs) in the local area of where the growth plate once was, the bone area will magically turn into a “new growth plate”. This would basically be “reopening the growth plate”. If it is successful in one area of the body, the same series of needle injections will be injected in the 20-30 other areas of the adult skeleton where there once was epiphyseal hyaline cartilage tissue to work with.

This idea, it seems more viable, but I don’t see anything like this coming about at least for another 50-70 years down the line, and that is being super optimistic and making a guess at the exponential rate of technological growth based on Kurzweil’s Law of Exponential Growth.

This is going to be one of those posts which will definitely change the direction and content of this website. It is game changing, since it shows that we are getting much, much closer than before. Much closer than I expected, which is a shock to me. I am just amazed at just how close we just might be. Its seems like all the technical difficulties in theory has almost all been removed. Now, I feel like all that is standing in our way is funding, to get this laboratory success to be taken into the public/real world and applied.

Just 10 minutes ago I found out that one of the primary researchers I have been tracking, Professor Eben Alsberg, has been working on the exact, the EXACT same type of research that I have been proposing we should be working on.

Not only that, I barely missed meeting Dr. Alsberg. Apparently he was one of the speakers that was attending the 2015 World Termis Conference on Regenerative Medicine in Boston back in August. I was in Boston at the exact same time, at the sister conference of Termis, the Organ-On-A-Chip one. Apparently the Termis Conference was going on at the exact same days (off by 1 day) and around the exact same Boston area. Alsberg was in attendence maybe just 1000 feet away from me. Many of the people who went to the conference I went to, like the company representatives of Cellink (from Sweden), were going to the Termis Conference as well. At the time, I thought that it would only be Dr Atala of Wake Forest who would be there, and no one really close to doing the type of research I was hoping for. Well, I was wrong, extremely wrong.

Originally, I found out about Dr. Alsberg from a reader of the website who sent me a link to Alsberg’s paper on creating the first evidence of functional growth plates. Well, it turns out that for more than a decade (maybe 14 years after) after that 2001 paper came out, Alsberg and his team of researchers based in Case Western University has been fine-tuning the cartilage regeneration technique.

I would like the readers to refer to 6 sources I would like to use to validate my idea that Alsberg, like maybe 4-5 main other researchers, is working on something really close to our holy grail. I thought that no one was attacking the problem that we wanted to be solved. I was wrong again.

Alsberg is trying to regeneration the growth plate, and not just in 1 single approach. He is trying ideas which I thought was pure science fiction, the type you see in comic books.

Tyler and I have both agreed that the only way one could possibly “reopen” the growth plates is if a tissue engineering type biomedical engineer could solve the problem of converting bone tissue to cartilage tissue, which is basically one of many types of cell-to-cell transformation, known by the scientific term Transdifferentiation.{Tyler-also you could create miniature breaks in the bone and induce stem cell differentiation into cartilage;  but some growth plate cells may transdifferentiate into osteoblasts and may maintain the growth plate cartilage genetic material so by converting them back to chondrocytes may be a way to create new growth plates; however, bone still places a constraint on growth so you have to find a way to weaken or break it some how}

I have said at least twice that I don’t think it was possible to figure out transdifferentiation of bone tissue into cartilage tissue, at least this century. Even for the possibility that it would ever be possible, I was pessimistic. Well, it seems that Alsberg is trying to do just that. Since he has been working on this problem far longer and more in depth than me, he would be more aware of the exact technical details in getting this type of cell transformation to work out. If he is still trying to do it, it means that he honestly believes that it is possible. Given what I already know of Alsberg, I put my faith in his ability.

Now I refer to the reader who is somewhat knowledgeable on basic biology to read over the sources I provided below.

From the sources, I have been able to make multiple conclusion, all of them extremely positive, for our endeavor.

1. Alsberg is researching how to convert bone to cartilage. If he succeeds, which he believes is just a cell spatial-gradient and signaling issue, then we can create cartilage in the middle of bone tissue. This is a non-invasive way of growing taller!!{Tyler-Note that LSJL involves a pressure gradient and affects cell signaling}

2. Alsberg is researching how to implant cartilage (lab grown/in-vitro) back into the body.

3. Alsberg is researching how to grow cartilage tissue in the lab to be strong enough to handle the en vivo environment.

4. Alsberg already succeeded in growing growth plates almost 15 years ago, from a paper he wrote in 2001.

5. Alsberg believes that the trick to get the lab-grown osteo-chondrogenic tissue to expand is to get the spatial gradient of the cells inside the ECM to be in a certain orientation. So he already has figured that out.{Tyler-Interesting, maybe we can alter the spatial gradient within the bone via mechanical means}

6. If you look at the papers he has published from source 6 that I provided below, you can see that his research is basically circling around and around the research that is our holy grail. I did not believe that he would actually be doing the exact type of research we are hoping for, but he is. Technically, he never actually wrote that he is trying to grown functional growth plates to be reimplanted back in the body, but the 5 first sources reveal enough. A simple reader would be able to put the pieces together to form the overall picture. Alsberg is trying to to get growth plates to work out.

This type of research I did not expect for another 10 years., at least not someone who is actively tackling the exact problem. I suspect that probably by the year 2020, Alsberg with Ballock will have written a paper discussing the viability and possibility of implanting their lab grown physeal-like tissue into bone defects (from osteonomy) to increase the length of bone for people who are past the stage of bone maturity. If they believe that there is a financial windfall from taking their research into market, (aka a rich saudi prince funds them a 9-figure check to get the stuff from of lab-to public), the world will be changing in a dramatic way.

In another 15 years maybe, if they get the signaling correct, they might come out with a 2nd different way of making bones longer, by using transdifferentiation. If they are successful in doing that, we will have reached out holy grail. Imagine our grandchildren always having a non-invasive technique to make their bones longer. This is right out of a science fiction book.

I promise the readers that I will go into more detail in a 2nd post, going deeper on the science, and also creating a picture of what is possible, if Alsberg with Ballock are successful. From the looks of it, they are going to succeed, and it might not just be them. There seems to be at least another team that I am aware of, which are working on something very similar to them.

It might turn out that within 15-20 years, there will be more than 1 company who are racing towards getting this limb lengthening surgery alternative out into the market for the general public to use. As for the trandifferentiation possibility, that probably won’t come about for another 50 years at least, after I am gone. When that happens, I will be happy that finally the short statured people around the world can finally let out a breathe of relief.

Note: Of course, there is indeed a limit to how much we can length the bones of a person. Making a person who is 5 ft to 6 ft is technically possibly, but the result may be slightly weird. Not only that, what if an already tall person wants to go through with this treatment, turning themselves into 8 feet??

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Refer to source #1 – http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130919/Innovative-system-can-help-manipulate-stem-cells-to-repair-damaged-tissues-and-organs.aspx

Scientists know that physical and biochemical signals can guide cells to make, for example, muscle, blood vessels or bone. But the exact recipes to produce the desired tissues have proved elusive.

Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have taken a step toward identifying that mix by developing an easy and versatile way of forming physical and biochemical gradients in three dimensions.

Ultimately, one of their goals is to engineer systems to manipulate stem cells to repair or replace damaged tissues and organs.

“If we can control the spatial presentation of signals, we may be able to have more control over cell behavior and enhance the rate and quality of tissue formation,” said Eben Alsberg, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and orthopaedic surgery at Case Western Reserve and senior author of the research. “Many tissues form during development and healing processes at least in part due to gradients of signals: gradients of growth factors, gradients of physical triggers.”

Alsberg, postdoctoral scholar Oju Jeon and graduate student Daniel S. Alt of Case Western Reserve, and Stephen W. Linderman, a visiting undergraduate on a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates summer fellowship, tested their system on mesenchymal stem cells, turning them toward bone or cartilage cells. They report their findings in Advanced Materials.

Regulating the presentation of certain signals in three-dimensional space may be a key to engineering complex tissues, such as repairing osteochondral defects, damaged cartilage and bone in osteoarthritic joints, Alsberg said.

“There must be a transition from bone to cartilage,” he said, “and that may require control over multiple signals to induce the stem cells to change into the different kinds of cells to form tissues where you need them.”

In their first test, the researchers found that stem cells changed into cartilage or bone cells in the directions of two opposing soluble growth factor gradients: one that promotes cartilage, called TGF-beta 1, and another that promotes bone, called BMP-2{Tyler-Interesting that BMP-2 has been used to promote cartilage in tissue engineering as well}. The stem cells were placed in a solution of modified alginate, a material derived from seaweed that can form a jello-like material called a hydrogel when exposed to low level ultraviolet light.

The solution was divided between two computer-controlled syringe pumps, with BMP-2 in one syringe and TGF-beta 1 in the other. By controlling the rate of injection with the pumps and using a mixing unit, a hydrogel with a BMP-2 gradient starting with a large amount and tapering to nearly none and an opposing TGF-beta 1 gradient from low-to-high was formed.

The hydrogels were further modified in such a way that the growth factors were retained for a longer period of time. This enabled prolonged exposure of stem cells to the growth factors and further control over their differentiation into bone or cartilage cells.

The researchers then modified the hydrogel with a gradient of adhesion ligands, molecular strings that allow the stem cells to attach to the hydrogel itself. After two weeks of culturing the cells, they found the highest number of cells in the hydrogel region where the concentration of ligands was highest.

In a third test, they created a gradient of crosslink density within the hydrogels. Crosslinks provide structure to the gels. The lower the density, the more flexible the hydrogel; the higher, the stiffer the gel.

After two weeks, more cells were found in the most flexible gel regions within the gradient. The flexibility may allow for more free movement of nutrients and removal of waste products, Alsberg explained.

“This is exciting,” Alsberg said. “We can look at this work as a proof of principle. Using this approach, you can use any growth factor or any adhesion ligand that influences cell behavior and study the role of gradient presentation. We can also examine multiple different parameters in one system to investigate the role of these gradients in combination on cell behavior.”

If the technology enables them to unravel recipes that generate complex tissues, the biodegradable hydrogel mix could be implanted or injected at the site of an injury, the researchers say. The recipe would guide cell behavior until new tissue is formed, restoring function.

Refer to Source #2: Environmental cues to guide stem cell fate decision for tissue engineering applications

Abstract: The human body contains a variety of stem cells capable of both repeated self-renewal and production of specialised, differentiated progeny. Critical to the implementation of these cells in tissue engineering strategies is a thorough understanding of which external signals in the stem cell microenvironment provide cues to control their fate decision in terms of proliferation or differentiation into a desired, specific phenotype. These signals must then be incorporated into tissue regeneration approaches for regulated exposure to stem cells. The precise spatial and temporal presentation of factors directing stem cell behaviour is extremely important during embryogenesis, development and natural healing events, and it is possible that this level of control will be vital to the success of many regenerative therapies. This review covers existing tissue engineering approaches to guide the differentiation of three disparate stem cell populations: mesenchymal, neural and endothelial. These progenitor cells will be of central importance in many future connective, neural and vascular tissue regeneration technologies.

Refer to Source #3: http://www.termis.org/wc2015/docs/programWednesday.pdf

Refer to Source #4: New Method Grows Thicker, Stiffer Cartilage

Many research labs are busy working away at developing better tissue engineering techniques to grow replacement parts for aged and damaged human bodies. Here’s a lab at Case Western that has developed a new and promising cartilage growth technique.

A lab discovery is a step toward implantable replacement cartilage, holding promise for knees, shoulders, ears and noses damaged by osteoarthritis, sports injuries and accidents.

Self-assembling sheets of mesenchymal stem cells permeated with tiny beads filled with growth factor formed thicker, stiffer cartilage than previous tissue engineering methods, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have found. A description of the research is published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

“We think that the capacity to drive cartilage formation using the patient’s own stem cells and the potential to use this approach without lengthy culture time prior to implantation makes this technology attractive,” said Eben Alsberg, associate professor in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedic Surgery, and senior author of the paper.

Think of all the people with painful knees, fingers, and other joints because their cartilage has worn down. The ability to fix all these damaged joints would cut pain and increase mobility. Increased mobility would also increase exercise and muscle mass.

Among successful tissue engineering projects so far: functional replacement mouse pituitary glands, replacement urethras for kids, and bladders for adults. The list is going to grow every year and the rate of growth is going to accelerate.

Refer to Source #6: http://www.aptcenter.research.va.gov/pdfs/cvs/Alsberg-Eben-CV.pdf