I’ve been working hard on trying to increase my hand and feet size via clamping and I’ve had some moderate measurable success and I’m working to get more.

The reason I chose the hands and feet was because I didn’t want to be limited by clamping strength in terms of getting results.  I’ve hard to order clamps that aren’t available in hardware stores and I may have to get even stronger clamps.

But one things I didn’t consider was the shape of the bones and not just the size(hands and feet bones are smaller).

The curved nature of the ribs means that LSJL is going to be more effective think of water in a curved pipe rather than a straight one.

The fluid inside the bone is going to be bouncing around all the curvatures of the rib rather than just flowing down a straight line.  And take a look at how much more cartilage there is in the ribs than there is normally that likely means that the rib bones will behave differently from long bones.

And there is already LSJL going on in the ribs, it’s called scoliosis bracing.  However, it differ from LSJL in that it’s not on the epiphysis(the weakest part of the bone) and that the load is static(although you are moving around in the brace).

Just by breathing you’re doing LSJL on the rib cage by all the expansion pressing against the ribs.

There’s also been reports of people getting larger ribs via pullovers but that is not LSJL.

Papers like this one report growth in the rib cage due to age, Quantification of age-related shape change of the human rib cage through geometric morphometrics, I couldn’t get the full study but the study established correlation between thorax(basically rib cavity size, the larger your ribs the larger the rib cavity) and age, weight, and height with weight being the largest correlation.  And weight can perform lateral loading on the epiphysis, it’s just that due to curved nature of the rib bones it needs a lot less load than other areas and people store a lot of weight in their torso.

And another region of interest is the jaw which has a lot of curves too and a lot of people are interested in the jaw due to it’s importance in sexual dimorphism and it’s perceived impact in male dominance.  Thank of Michael Cera, Zach Braff, and James Ellworth in terms of jaws.

I’m already doing LSJL on the jaw but I’m going to be working harder at it.  Then I’m going to figure out how to do a routine for the ribs.

I’ll see if I can find more evidence of rib growth over time(you can help) and post about it definitively at the next LSJL update.

Here’s the last update.

Here’s the new feet images:

I’ve been loading only my left foot trying with clamping various parts of it.  It looks like the left foot is starting to catch up with the right although I do have confirmation bias(I want to confirm my existing opinions) but I always have confirmation bias and I see greater changes than I did before.

So I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.  See if I can get greater changes in my feet, see if I can clamp my right hand to be bigger as I have before x-rays and I can just get after xrays to get definitive solid proof, my right hand does look bigger to me but I’d rather to see if I can get more definitive growth as again I do have confirmation bias.  And of course I’m trying to clamp to increase height.

Hyperostosis indicates that it’s possible to form new bone as an adult.  Hyperostosis seems to affect ligaments which would make it hard for height growth as there ligaments really placed to add to height.  It may be linked to insulin as diabetes may affect hyper ostosis.

Morphological characteristics of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis in the cervical spine.

“(A) Plain lateral radiograph shows a 69 year old male with DISH in the cervical spine. A solid formation of new bone is extending over at least four vertebral bodies. (B) Computed tomography (CT) visualizes the thoracic spine of a 72 year old male in the sagittal view. The scan shows a flowing ossification of the anterolateral spine with bridging over more than four contiguous vertebral bodies. The intervertebral discs and apophyseal joints are relatively intact in both images. (C + D) The CT scans in axial view demonstrate the differences in position of the new bone formation depending on the region. (C) The CT scan of the cervical spine corresponds to the radiographic image (A) and demonstrates symmetrical hyperostosis (yellow) anterior to the vertebral body and possible displacement of the trachea. (D) The axial CT of the mid thoracic spine in a 58 year old male with DISH shows the newly formed bone on the right anterolateral side with the aorta clearly located on the left anterolateral side.”<-So this is all over time.

“It has been hypothesized that vascular structures act as a natural barrier for the formation of new bone in DISH”

If blood vessels do block bone growth than that fact can be exploited to increase height.  There is an epiphyseal artery though that doesn’t block growth.

“arteries may act as a natural barrier for newly formed bone in DISH. The lack of crossing segmental vessels in the cervical spine may permit linear bone growth creating a bar-like structure in contrast to the flowing pattern typical for DISH in the thoracic spine where segmental vessels are present.”

Some people have claimed to have grown taller in a non-epiphyseal plate driven method via HGH.  Now it’s important to note that acromegaly is not solely based on HGH and there are some cases in gigantism where HGH levels are lower than people who supplement via HGH so it’s possible there’s another factor driving the length.  This topic was discussed before here.  In that page there are additional acromegalic x-rays and additional discussion of non-growth plate driven height growth.

You don’t just grow interstitially, you also grow appositionally even on the longitudinal ends of the bones.  For most, this is insignificant but for someone with high HGH and thereby higher bone turnover this could be much more significance but the question then becomes if they are gaining height in the feet and hands due to the larger number of bones there then in legs and arms then why aren’t the growing in the torso.

It follows logically that if two people are growing by different methods interstitial growth(traditional growth plate growth) and appostional growth on the longitudinal ends(endochondral ossification of the articular cartilage or some other bone thickening method) then the two bone shapes will look differently on the x-ray.

Here’s a “normal” hand x-ray:

Here’s an acromegalic hand x-ray:

One thing that strikes immediately is the greater whiteness between the acromegalic x-rays and the normal x-rays but the two bone shapes seem largely the same.  However there does seem to be greater articular cartilage spacing which could explain the increased hand size.

I couldn’t find a spine xray of someone with acromegaly but here’s a chest x-ray:

Unfortunately you can’t really tell anything about the spine because the bones are so thick.

Here’s a normal chest x-ray:

So basically the x-rays tell you that acromegaly may or may not cause a form of non-growth plate based longitudinal bone growth.  There’s just not enough x-rays of people with acromegaly to draw conclusions.  Or x-rays of people who supplement with HGH like Richard Piana.

Here’s a study(Unfortunately I couldn’t get the full study) that may have some insights:

Acromegaly and bone.

” Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-1) have pleiotropic effects on the skeleton throughout the lifespan by influencing bone formation and resorption. Despite these positive effects on skeletal metabolism, in presence of GH and IGF-1 excess, bone turnover increases excessively leading to deterioration of bone microarchitecture and high risk of fragility fractures, thereby impairing quality of life.

Coexistent hypogonadism, diabetes mellitus, hypovitaminosis D, hyperparathyroidism and over-replacement with glucocorticoids impair bone framework, however, the effects of acromegaly on bone mineral density (BMD) are still controversial and despite normalization of bone turnover after treatment, the risk for fractures remains increased. As a matter of fact, a major clinical aspect emerging from the studies published so far is the lack of clinical-diagnostic tools able to reliably predict the appearance of fractures in patients with acromegaly occurring even in the presence of normal or low-normal BMD.”

So bone turnover could potentially alter bone architecture and make non-growth plated based growth a possibility.

eIF2alpha signaling regulates ischemic osteonecrosis through endoplasmic reticulum stress

This is the effect of salubrinal on normal animals.  You can see salubrinal makes the bone more porous in the image.

14 Week old rats were used.

The dosage was 0.5mg/kg of salubrinal for 4 weeks.  If salubrinal can make bone more porous than it has the potential to be used for longitudinal bone growth.  Ping Zhang and Hiroki Yokota two LSJL scientists are putting a lot of effort into this so it is possible that there are effects of Salubrinal that they haven’t mentioned yet.

Here’s a hydrostatic pressure study that I found:

Microdamage assessment in equine bone resulting from high hydrostatic pressure and/or irradiation.

“HHP (~1200 MPa) was applied to non-irradiated and irradiated specimens of equine cortical bone and compared to non-pressurized controls”

“Twenty four cylindrical specimens (nominally 6.35 mm in diameter and 12.7 mm in length) were machined from the mid-diaphysis of an equine third metatarsal such that the longitudinal axis of the specimen cylinder and metatarsal were coincident. Specimens were kept hydrated throughout the machining process. Six specimens were then assigned to each of four groups: +HHP/-IR, +HHP/+IR, -HHP/-IR and -HHP/+IR (+ and – denote presence and absence, respectively). HHP was applied using a modified hydrostatic extrusion press  in the manner consistent with much other work. Specimens were immersed in silicone oil at 37°C, pressurized to the desired level and immediately depressurized. In this group of specimens, 1200 MPa was the minimum pressurization value. “<1200MPa is extraordinarily high.

“microcracks were found in all fields of all specimens and ranged from 0.1 to 0.375 mm across groups. In the +HHP/+IR group, on average, 14% of the microcracks had lengths greater than 0.1 mm however in all other groups microcracks of this length comprised only 1 to 4% of the identified microcracks. The vast majority of microcracks were situated within the interstitial tissue and often in a parallel assemblage between osteons. Microcracks were found to travel along cement line interface around the osteon in just the pressurized specimens regardless of the presence or absence of irradiation. Only rarely were microcracks seen to progress across cement lines and/or lamellae ”

Figure 1 shows the microcrack images.

Here’s one with 350MPa HP.

Biomechanical investigation of the effect of high hydrostatic pressure treatment on the mechanical properties of human bone

“The bone specimens from one side were exposed to different pressure values of 300 or 600 MPa over 10 min.”

“Biomechanical properties of the cortical and trabecular bone did not decrease after exposure to 300 MPa regarding the testing parameters Young’s modulus and ultimate strength ”  The study did not show any cortical bone damages so we can’t say whether there was or was not.

“Even after HHP treatment at 600 MPa the strength of bone only decreases up to 15%.”

So High Hydrostatic Pressure does damage cortical bone and cortical bone is restrictive to longitudinal bone growth but we will never be able to safely generate that much pressure in the bone.

Here’s the last LSJL update.

Here’s the latest feet images

One effect that clamping my right foot has had is that my right quad is a lot bigger than my left quad now.  I left weights as muscle should help with LSJL as muscle can contract to stimulate bone and generate hydrostatic pressure.  Differences in feet size change weight distribution.  So now I’m going to clamp my left foot and not my right foot to try to get it to catch up.  If I can bridge the gap between the two that’ll be strong proof of LSJL.

Here’s a picture from another angle that shows the size difference better:

The right calcaneus is also bigger so if I get some left foot growth I’ll gain some small but significant amount of height.

I may have gained some arm length but it’s within measurement error.

I don’t think clamping the toes is what’s helping.  I think it’s the clamping of the feet itself.  I am doing hand clamping as well.  I am clamping individual fingers and pretty much the whole hand is growing and not the specific fingers.  I have x-rays showing that my left hand fingers were longer except for the metacarpal.  So if I can’t get my left foot to catch up that’ll be another option to prove LSJL.  If my right hand keeps growing significantly I can get x-rays.

We’ll see how things go with my left foot.  It seemed I was almost ready to go up a shoe size with my right foot but with the muscle imbalance I’ll have to go with my left and get them to equalize.