Over the last 2 months I have definitely gone back into going deep into the research and I have made some quite startling connections and one of my theories on how it is possible to make people taller has definitely become validated by a study I found just a few days ago.

First, let me say that I have pored over hundreds of studies on the subject of pediatrics, growth, endocrinology, and biology. I have thousands of saved studies I still have not read in depth. When you spend this much time reading, analyzing and thinking about a subject, you start to see connections where maybe other people have not seen yet.

My initial theory on the link between the intestinal tract and the growth pattern of a person was started when I sat in at this thing called Mini-Medical School that the state school (University of Washington) close to my house. There was maybe a total of only 6-8 lectures, but 1 entire lecture was dedicated to a professor called about Fecal Transplantation.

Fecal transplantation is the medical process of taking a bit of the fecal matter from one person and putting it into the gut of another human, to change the microbiome, aka the bacteria composition. It sounds disgusting to the average person, but when I heard about the case where a obese female was turned permanently skinny (she could not gain weight afterwards no matter how much she ate) after she had the fecal sample of a skinny person implanted, my eyes were as big as saucers. Now I understood the power of fecal transplantation.

Since that time, I have looked for more studies which link gut bacteria composition to the person’s overall health. I have looked into probiotics, started drinking a lot of Kombucha tea, and looked for ways to optimize my gut health. One thing I have started to do is gone completely on the Soylent 2.0 diet (with avocado, garlic, aspirin, water, tea). I wonder what would happen to my overall health if I just stuck to really basic food elements.

If you think about it, it really does make sense. I once wrote about the possibility that babies will probably have better growth patterns when they stay on drinking their mothers milk than going on the formula too early, because of the colostrum and the casein content. Tyler proposed years ago in a blog post about the possibility of the link between taking casein and height increase but he did not consider colostrum as the other key active ingredient in human female milk.

We all know that the rate of growth is highest when we are just a baby. Our digestive tracts are still virgin, and not fully developed yet. Those critical component’s in the mother’s milk have antibodies and other active ingredients that basically gives the newborn all of the necessary stuff to grow their immune system fight pathogens (bacteria and virus) that will eventually come at the baby as it grows up and lives on as an adult. It is the mother’s milk that goes into the babies digestive tract, and this is probably the most important determinant of how well the baby will do later.

There are many studies which link the health of the digestive tract to onset of Alzheimers, Arthritis, and Periodontal disease even. To the average person trained in the traditional medical school, it wouldn’t make any sense how it is possible that there is any link between what is in our intestine and the health of our brain. They are two totally different organ systems, which rarely have any affect on the other.

That is actually true, for an adult, but if we reverse time, and put that person back as a baby, when they just came out of the womb, they are still begin developed neonatally, so it makes sense that you can change the overall health of the person as an adult with a few key actions when they are just a baby, since their fitness level and health potential can still be molded.

What I claim is possible is to basically take the fecal matter of another baby who has the genes for tall stature, and implant that fecal matter into the subject baby. Don’t do take the fecal matter of a human adult, because the fecal matter of a human adult is actually poisonous and potentially deadly, at least for the baby’s digestive system. There is a reason why we can use cow and bat fecal matter to use as fertilizer, but human fecal matter would just kill plants if you used it as fertilizer.

This will cause the still modifiable baby’s immune system to change to have the microbiome of a baby who is genetically predisposed towards tall stature. Think Shaq being 7′ 1”, whose mother was 6′ 2”, and how both of his grandfathers were supposedly 6′ 9” in height. There are definitely families in any population which have the genes for tall stature. The theory is that the baby who has the fecal implant will now became much bigger as an adult than if they didn’t get the transplant.

For further proof, I refer the reader to the study which validates this idea. “Gut microbiota induce IGF-1 and promote bone formation and growth”. The study is extremely new, just published Oct of 2016.

Abstract

Appreciation of the role of the gut microbiome in regulating vertebrate metabolism has exploded recently. However, the effects of gut microbiota on skeletal growth and homeostasis have only recently begun to be explored. Here, we report that colonization of sexually mature germ-free (GF) mice with conventional specific pathogen-free (SPF) gut microbiota increases both bone formation and resorption, with the net effect of colonization varying with the duration of colonization. Although colonization of adult mice acutely reduces bone mass, in long-term colonized mice, an increase in bone formation and growth plate activity predominates, resulting in equalization of bone mass and increased longitudinal and radial bone growth. Serum levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a hormone with known actions on skeletal growth, are substantially increased in response to microbial colonization, with significant increases in liver and adipose tissue IGF-1 production. Antibiotic treatment of conventional mice, in contrast, decreases serum IGF-1 and inhibits bone formation. Supplementation of antibiotic-treated mice with shortchain fatty acids (SCFAs), products of microbial metabolism, restores IGF-1 and bone mass to levels seen in non-antibiotic- treated mice. Thus, SCFA production may be one mechanism by which microbiota increase serum IGF-1. Our study demonstrates that gut microbiota provide a net anabolic stimulus to the skeleton, which is likely mediated by IGF-1. Manipulation of the microbiome or its metabolites may afford opportunities to optimize bone health and growth.

My Conclusion

This very study shows that if you can adjust the gut microbiome of a baby lab mice, the long term, net result is that the grown up adult mice will have much longer and bigger bones. The process is that the gut has some way to stimulate the Liver and Adrenal Glands to release much more IGF-1 into the body. IGF-1 as we know is what growth hormone breaks down into which goes to the growth plates to make bones longer and wider.

Of course we must always be aware of the possibility that many times, transplants are rejected by the subject’s/host’s body. But that is a discussion for another day.

Tyler-Here’s a recent study I found:

40 YEARS OF IGF1: The emerging connections between IGF1, the intestinal microbiome, Lactobacillus strains and bone growth

“In most animal species, postnatal growth is controlled by conserved insulin/insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling. In mammals, juvenile growth is characterized by a longitudinal bone growth resulting from the ossification of the growth plate. This ossification is under IGF1 influence through endocrine and paracrine mechanisms. Moreover, the nutritional status has been largely described as an important factor influencing the insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling. It is now well established that the gut microbiota modulates the nutrient availability of its host. Hence, studies of the interaction between nutritional status, gut microbiota and bone growth have recently emerged. Here, we review recent findings using experimental models about the impact of gut bacteria on the somatotropic axis and its consequence on the bone growth. We also discuss the perspectives of these studies in opening an entire field for clinical interventions.”

“Circulating IGF1 levels are highly dependent on the nutritional status.”

“two months after birth the GF[Germ Free] mice were 14.5% lighter and 4% shorter compared to CV mice.”

“SCFA[short chain fatty acid] production may be one mechanism by which microbiota increase serum IGF1.“

Update:  Looks like ClaimingPower.com is no more.

A few months ago, I became aware of this website called ClaimingPower.com, written by this guy who said that his goal for the last half a decade was to change the overall shape of the face, by pulling the nose. The led to me getting in contact with other people who are working on the same type of project. This one guy shared to me that he found a much faster, more effective method to pull the face, to make the face more aesthetically pleasing.

We talked for about an hour on Skype and he said that it is possible to get this type of “facial realignment” change since the irregular bones that make up the human face (maxilla, mandible, occipital, etc.) are not fused. There are sutures between the bones which means that the bones can indeed move slightly. The last I heard from him, he had gotten a 6 figure initial investment and was trying to patent his technique.

So I wanted to understand and learn more about this interesting small world and who else has tried this bone remodeling idea. One name that came up a lot was Michael Mew, who has famously given talks at Men’s Self Improvement Conferences, specifically the 21 Convention, which used to be a convention were men in their 20s shared tips and techniques on how to pick up women.

A little more searching on Google revealed a few more relevant websites, but there was one website which caught my eye. Orgone Energy Products. This website is quite interesting and strange. What the website reminds me of is one of those really much older website designs you saw maybe back in the mid 2000s. Some products that are listed on there like CycloAstragenol are products which were really hot and talked about a lot by the media 5 years ago but has now died down. Could an extract from the Astragalus plant really help inhibit the shortening of telomeres and hold back aging? We are not sure.

There is one blog post entitled “Orgoneproducts Newsletter: New Hormone Enhanced Orgone Chembusters, (NCR) Nuero-Cranial Restructuring, and True Love.” writen back in Nov 2 (of 2015?) which made a strange claim.

Apparently from doing this simple jaw alignment exercise, this guy went from 6 2.5″ to almost 6′ 5″ in height.

Quote…

“The one natural solution for boosting testosterone levels in Men that I offer is TKO- Tongkat Ali an Indonesian herbal based formula that will raise testosterone levels. Hormones are a complete conversation in themselves, feel free to contact me for more info that I am hesitant to put into print…..The good news is even the worst case scenario can now be changed with consistent application of physical regenerative therapies, hormonal reset, continual immersion in high intensity life force fields. What types of physical regenerative therapies am I talking about? Three, specifically and a fourth to be talked about at a later date. First is Neuro-Cranial Restructuring, the short name is NCR, not to be confused with National Cash Register. NCR developed by Dr. Howell, is an advancement of endo-nasal therapy. It uses small nasal balloons to release connective tissue in the sphenoid bone. An NCR treatment is like unlocking a spring, allows for symmetry correction in the head, face, and spine. The balloon is inserted in one of the six nasal passages in the nose. There is a testing protocol to determine which nasal passage. The testing protocol is where the magic is found, diagnosing the correct nasal passage with each treatment allows for the least amount of force to be used to create the greatest movements without trauma. Each NCR treatment creates compound positive symmetry changes which results in correcting facial and spinal distortions over time. Incremental change leading to massive long term results. In my case, I have partially corrected a scoliosis in my spine that resulted in an increase in functional height of 2.5 inches. When I started I was 6′ 2″ and a half, I am now a shade under 6′ 5″. My head size increased as well as I my eyes became more level over a 5 year period. We now have a fulltime NCR practicioner, Plato Rosinke, in New York City. Plato has been trained by Dr. Howell and is one of the more proficient NCR practioners in the world.”

My Personal Interpretation – Now I don’t know how old this person is who writes the blog, or how bad his case of scoliosis is. However, he did claim that his height increased by almost 2.5 inches after this technique, which somehow straightened out his back. The truth is that most people have some level of curvature of the vertebrate. If this technique can somehow alleviate the level of curvature of the vertebrate, then this technique should work for the majority of the people in a population giving at least a fraction of a inch extra in height..

Not only that, he made another claim in a more recent post (June 24) that his shoe size also increased. “The Shoes Have It.. Starecta/Bite Block Changes: Shoe size jumps from 11-13.5”

Quote…

“The starecta/bite block begins the reversal of the compensation process and the body unwinds and regains it’s natural symmetry. After three months on the Starecta, I was having almost daily headaches. I thought this was part of the correction process, but little did I know it was from shoes that were way too tight. I had naturally high arches the story goes, one day I got the epiphany that maybe I needed bigger shoes! I hobbled down to my favorite shoe store on St. Marks and First; the name escapes me, but it is my favorite. A small selection, but all the shoes are well thought out at this nameless shoe store that be my favorite of all-time. I got a new pair of sneakers size 12; I had jumped a full shoe size...About a month later, the headaches started up again, but this time I was wise and made a pre-emptive strike and ran to my favorite nameless shoe store to buy the next installment in this shoe saga. The headaches again subsided, there was peace in the land and all was well. This time I started to look more closely at my feet, I speculated based on the size of my arches, I was not quite done with the shoe expansion….They no longer had my Size! I had outgrown them, 13.5 apparently was too much of a man for them.”

My Personal Interpretation

This guy makes the claim that there is some type of biomechanical connection between the feet and the alignment of the jaw. He was using this device/technique called the Starecta for months and the headaches started. By some luck, he realized that maybe the headaches were caused from having the shoes being too tight. So he got a size higher. Later, the headaches came back so he got another size larger.

My Final Conclusion

Whoever writes those blog posts have gotten themselves into the area where scientists would never go into. Many things that this person says works is not based on real scientific data. However, this person is willing to try a lot of different healing methods to see which ones works for him. The efficacy of all of the techniques and ideas he throws out should always be questioned.

What I found suspicious is that he talks alot about heartbreak and hormonal issues. It is very possible that he is still a teenager, and this growth in height and feet size is just from natural growth of the body. Or maybe he is in his early 20s. Then we have to consider the possibility that this person actually suffers from a pituitary tumor, which is causing the excessive height growth and the increase in feet size. That would definitely explain those intermittent bouts of headaches. People who suffered from excessive GH in their body from their puberty years to adulthood, turning the gigantism to acromegaly talked about how they suffered through headaches.

If the person who runs the website is ever reading this, I strongly suggest they go check their hormone levels with an Endocrinologist and get a CT scan of their brain.

In the last half a year, there have been talks among the very, VERY small online community of people hoping to become taller that two key people who used to be very active have come back. They go by the name of Alkoklar and Xcrunner211. A person who goes by the username shark2016 said that they sent an email to me to look over the information that Xcrunner211 has been talking about. So here I will do that. As for Alkoklar, I will write about him in a 2nd post, looking that his claims as well.

The person who uses that Xcrunner211 username has become quite active on the heightdiscussion.com forum, where they are now talking about a new chemical they are selling. Refer to this thread entitled “Growing Taller” – http://www.heightdiscussion.com/index.php?/topic/22601-growing-taller/

The Xcrunner debate started back in Aug 10 of 2015, where this new poster said that they are a biochemist. This person says that they have been searching for a way to grow taller after growth plate closure their entire life and he did find something that increased his height from 5′ 5” to 6′ 2”. He claims that he has helped people in their 30s grow 3-4 inches.

Quote… “There is no such thing as fused plates there is always a height potential regardless of
age(potential surely diminishes with aging but never runs out)once the puberty-like hormone and somatropic peptide profile is sustained, you will grow again“

He says that he has not been active in the online grow taller community because of something that happened in the old growtaller forum, which existed years ago.

In the past he has claimed that Ghenerate in spray form works to increase GH production, but only effective in a 1 time form after the growth plates are gone. He has also used BMP7, IGF-1 Induction, Osteogenic Protein 1, GDF4, Methyprotodioscin, and Icariin.

Let me list a bunch of mistakes he has made in his thread posts.

Mistake #1: He mentions BMP7 and OP1 as two chemicals he has used, but he didn’t realize that they are the exact same chemical. OP1 is another name for BMP7.

Mistake #2: He says that the growth plates never close but become inactive. That is incorrect. Any person working in a medical imaging department in the field of radiology would tell you that there is no sign of any layer of growth plates left.

Note #1: That Ghenerate spray seems to have been discontinued and no longer available.

Medical Fact: In fact, if he actually knew how the process of endochondral ossficiation and condrocyte condensation worked, he’d realize that the “growth plate” is not an actual body part per se, but actually a zone of unossified cartilage that is between the primary ossification center and the secondary ossification centers, as those 3 areas of bones (yes 3, not 2) get progressively bigger in comparison to the overall osseous-chondrogenic tissue.

He mentions that women during pregnancy sometimes grow taller, which is something which we reported years ago, and have reported multiple times since, so it is clear that this xcrunner person reads our website, since it is the most authoritative site on the english public domain.

Mistake #3: In a post he made back in June 15, 2016, he has claimed that “Everyone I supplied to so far grew”. That goes against what he would write in a later post, claiming that his formulation of chemicals won’t work for everyone.

He keeps on claming that customs have been seizing his shipments, which is something reasonable to believe, since that is what happened to my order of Modafinil years ago when I ordered some from this India based chemical production company. If you guys are interested in reading about my experience there, search the website’s sidebar on my older monthly posts.

The cost of his chemicals: “A bottle will cost 6000”. (So are we talking about 6000 USD or what other currency?)

He claims that his bottles has enough compound to last 25-30 days, and should produce 3 inches of height increase and a max of 5 inches.

Quote… “As of now i am already blacklisted by customs officials and If i try fighting them..its a lost case for me as it is illegal for me to sell this formula. Its against fda and goverment trade laws. I received my third letter today from customs officials saying i must stop sales of the formula and go through standard fda laws and patent procedures but its a setup for them to bust me”

Commentary: First, one does not get blacklisted by custom officials. That is not how it works with custom officials. They don’t blacklist seller or people, they blacklist chemicals and stop chemicals from reaching the intented customer. This chemical,, which is supposed to be new, would not be listed by the US government or the DEA as any type of class A type of illegal drug. Plus, it was quite easy for that India company selling me Modafinil to get around the customs official by just putting a different chemical name on that package. Please be aware that the customs people have to look through thousands of boxes each day and they are not going to open all thousand boxes and check inside each to make sure that the chemical that is claims is what it actually is. There is no chemical ID machine in the customs official’s office. 

Quote… “My last words is for anyone thinking on taking on height increase research..all you gotta do is study op 1 protein and all the bmp proteins and its dna components then figure out how it differentiates into mesenchymal stem cells of the inactive growth plates then BAM! height increase resumes full force… Its all about restoring somatropic protein profiles and properties that occurs naturally during puberty but keep in mind though that if this is done wrong it can cause CANCER instead and no height growth!”

Commentary: There are so many mistakes that this guy is making, on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin. Like I said before, OP1 is BMP7. BMP7 has been shown to have the most chondrogenic potential when used on mesenchymal stem cells to turn towards the chondrogenic side, on par with BMP2.

Plus, BMP7 is a protein, and not a cell, so it doesn’t have any DNA component. It is not a organism, or alive, so it doesn’t have any cells. Only when there is an organism of some type, could there be any DNA, (or maybe RNA if it is some type of primitive prokaryotic cell which even I don’t know much about yet). Again, BMP7 does not have any DNA component.

Third, there are no inactive growth plates, but dead growth plates. There are no more chondrocytes or cartilage tissue where the growth plate zone used to be to use the chemical on. Where that zone used to be, there is now just a thick layer of cortical bone, and inside that layer is trabecular bone, and in between the super-strong hard inorganic trabecular bone maze is where the yellow-colored bone marrow are, which does have some adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells.

One person who has decided to commment and sort of argue with Xcrunner is a poster calling themselves Jacob Walker. This Jacob Walker has contact me and the NHGH website email multiple times, and have been sincere and honest in his desires, and he has claimed that he has learned about the biology of bones and become very knowledgeable. I have messaged Jacob many times, and he has been very helpful.

Jacob did somehow get Methyl protodioscin and injected it into his leg to see the effects, and he talked about his leg being in extreme pain for weeks and developing tendonitis. He sent me a email saying that he put himself as a guinea pig, and the results were really bad.

At some point, other posters came in and started to throw in various biochemistry concepts in and talked about a little bit of everything, with no one able to integrate and make sense of what all of the biochemistry talk was about. That is expected, since I would assume that few people have ever taken a University level Biochemistry class before. Even though I did myself, I got a B- in that class, and 10 years later, I remember almost nothing from that class except for the beginning and ending compound of the Kreb/Citric Cycle.

Here are a few of the technical points which I agree with

1. Methylation of the DNA is really just adding the chemical Methyl Group (CH3) only certain parts of proteins, which in this case is the very DNA itself. I am not sure if adding methyl groups to the very DNA is even possible, since I did not read much on that subject.
2. There are some chemicals like Noggin, and Ghrelin, which are inhibitors to any of the BMPs. There are probably hundreds of proteins and chemicals in our bodies which do that which I am not aware of.

This Jacob Walker person has said that they have learned about the cell pathways and how cells transmitt information to each other. He talks about the concept of transdifferentiation, but I think he made a mistake in using this term, because the process of transdifferentiation is extremely rare, at least for the purpose which we want for it. Maybe he was talking about the few studies showing how mesenchymal stem cells, when stimulated turn into fibroblasts, and then those fibroblasts turn back into mesenchymal stem cells, or into osteoblasts.

There is a highly technical post Jacob wrote on Oct 22, 2016 which he really got into the biochemistry of the cell pathways which I don’t understand at all. I don’t know what the various types of Smad proteins do. I am aware that the Noggin and the Chordin are inhibitors to BMP and TGFBeta, respectively. He claims that the compounds Smad-6, Smad-7, and I-Smad are all types of chemicals which can inhibit R-Smad and Co-Smad. That I can not validate. There are a lot of chemistry and biology stuff I just never learned in detail, or at all.

Here is a really good clue why this entire thing is a scam, which would be very obvious. The username Dmitri Petronova, wrote in the post from Oct 25, 2016 the following sentence… “And I have friends who post here as well. Most of them are foreign like me and we are aspiring to become medical students and we all have interest in this topic. When I post, I tell my friends and we all post and this is why you see only minutes away from our posts….I share my apartment with Liu Xian, Yong Shin, and Haruda. All of them want to become medical students”

Commentary: So 1 of the possibly only 12 posters on this thread has admitted that three of the other posters on this exact same thread are his roommates???

Isn’t that suspicious??? Even if I was 15 years old, never took a biology course, never researched this topic and no nothing about biochemistry, and was still naïve, it would still seem to me, with average intelligence that this is a HUGE COINCEDENCE.

Conclusion: I remember an email that Jacob Walker sent me months ago where he showed me a screenshot of an email he got back from this Xcrunner guy. If you guys search through my posts of the last 6 months, you might even find that picture somewhere. (type “Jacob” or “Xcrunner” into the search bar on this site to search for that older post. Too lazy to go find it and link to it.)

It is quite obvious that this person saying that they are xcrunner211 has probably created at least 5 new forum profiles, all of them validating and social proofing the xcrunner211 username, saying to the other posters to give the guy a chance and why he is not a scammer.

I would say that shark2016 and jacob walker might be the only 2 usernames on there which post regularly and who are not in on the con. (remember the British show “The Hustle” where 3 people work as a team to cheat the “mark” aka target. Ever hear of the term “Shill” used in Vegas streets by street pick pocketers? They are all accomplices, but in this case, I suspect there is not 5 people working together, but 1 guy who created 5 different accounts to validate 1 account. )

If Yong Shin, Haruda, and Dmitri are roommates, why would they write to each other on a online forum ,when they can just walk across the apartment they share and just ask in person?

No matter what however, at least 1 person is lying, because based on all the claims made by the posters, somewhere there is a clear logical contradiction, which even they should be aware of.

Remember this fact: When a criminal who has lied about something has a story that is too elaborate and complex, a very quick and intense interrogation by the police with some smart questions will make the lies quickly unravel. Complicated multiple lies are easy to spot, since eventually all the lies and claims start to become logically inconsistent.

So to you shark2016, and Jacob Walker, I side with you guys. You are right. Those 5 (maybe now 6, 7?) are like a high school bully team all ganging up on you guys, trying to pressure you guys using social peer pressure to not talk about your scepticism. Stay strong.

As for you shark2016, probably all the following usernames/profiles are fake, Liu Xian, Yong Shin, and Haruda, Dmitri Petronova, Jose, etc. (or at least all created by 1 person)

Most of the time we don’t get any useful messages or emails. Only very occasionally do we get something that is actually worth reporting. Here is something.

The original source was from – http://www.kp.ru/daily/26526.3/3544077/ – From google translator, converting from russian to english, a young russian female by the name of Anna Tsitsyankou of Krasnoyarsk (25 years old). Anna’s mother, Olga, says that her daughter’s middle finger is shorter than the others, relatively from some injury when she was just 3 years old which damaged the growth plate cartilage area in her right middle finger bone. 

Using the automatic translator, we get “...Teplyashin” preparing to conduct a unique experiment – to grow its own bone to lengthen the phalanx person who, for whatever reasons, this is not the phalanx.” Further “…scientists will grow on the basis of collected stem cells from her piece of the missing finger bone and then transplanted it to her piece”

So when I read this part, what I am assuming is that the Teplyashin’s team, or any tissue engineering research team, is trying to cut off a piece of anna’s bone, so that they can extract the stem cells in that bone, and use it to turn into a new bone piece. However, it is obvious that it would not be possible, without anna losing even more length of her finger bone for that. Here is how his research team has got around that.

The next paragraph – “A team of scientists of our Center of cellular technologies developed and patented in the US” and the European Union a unique method: 28 days mineral harvesting in vitro in a special solution is saturated with stem cells, and then the surgeon implanting it in the rest of the patient’s native finger. Grown phalanx survives, and no one even noticed after three months, that it in this place once was not!

My interpretation of this following paragraph is that in the lab, a scaffold was created, and anna’s stem cells were extracted and placed into the scaffold where they multiplied for almost a month. After that time, the stem cells completely invaded the structure of the scaffold. Once that was done, somehow the surgeon attached that scaffold to her finger. The surgery was a success and after 3 months, she has a new right middle finger, and the casual person walking by would not notice at all that her right middle finger was unusual at all.

What I am not sure of is whether Teplyashin’s team choose to first cut Anna’s phalanx somewhere in the middle, and attach that scaffold where the cut was, or whether they just attached that scaffold to the finger tip her most distal phalanges bone. However, this story does show that Teplyashin’s team is still working with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

The way that this news article explains it, it suggests that the surgical idea was to implant the scaffold which is saturated with stem cells somewhere in the middle of Anna’s phalanges bones. If that is the case, since the article says that the experiment has already been tried, tested, and been successful on lab animals for years (I am assuming they are talking about the old sheep leg experiment which we reported on years ago), maybe we can assume that the Finger growth technique that was patented was not just to attach a lab grown organic piece to the end tip of a finger.

The good news is that this surgery will not cost the girl any money, and the surgery’s cost will be paid for by the researchers. However, she will be responsible for paying for the flight to get to their surgery clinic and her hotel. The article mentioned trying to get Anna 100,000 rubles, which converts to about $1,614 USD to fly her to the surgery clinic.

It would be the news source or website “Komsomolskaya Pravda” which will be reporting on the updates of this story. If you guys want to donate some money for this finger bone lengthening surgery to take place for the russian young woman, then you can contact the following. aveligzhanina@yandex.ru

There is a rather famous YouTuber and bodybuilder Rich Piana who has very publically admitted to his long term consistent usage of steroids as well as growth hormone (Please note that technically steroids and growth hormones are 2 different types of chemicals but for the average person using common words, we can say that growth hormones are in the “steroids” category.). In a couple of his videos, he has talked about what consistent usage of growth hormone has done to his body over the years.

Here are the changes in his bones which he has claimed.

• Rich has used growth hormones for 10 years straight
• His shoe size has gone from a size 12 to a size 15.
• His head size (skull size??), when measured through the wearing of hats, has gone from 7 3/8ths (fitted cap) to 7 3/4ths or even 7 5/8ths
• His hands have grown
• His fingers have grown
• His wrists have grown – by his claim, his wrist has grown 3/4^th of an inch (I am assuming in circumference here)
• His fist have grown 1/2^th of an inch in width

So basically he said that the GH injections have grown every single tissue in the body. Here are a few of his other claims, which he used the word “probably” on…

• heart has grown (probably)
• brain has grown (probably)
• intestines have DEFINITELY grown – The evidence for this claim is that his stomach has grown thicker over the years.

It seems that the growth of his stomach was what caused Piana to stop doing GH.

Overall, there are 3 chemical compounds Piana talked about…

1. Growth Hormone (somatotrophin)
2. Insulin
3. IGF-1 (Insulin like Growth Factor Type 1)

His usage of all 3 types of bodybuilding chemicals has caused his intestines to grow. His claim that these same chemicals causing his heart to grow as well will mostly cause him to die at a younger age, which he has sort of fully accepted.

Some Other Information That Piana Talked About

The Cost of Steroid Cycle

• To compete on the national level of bodybuilding, you would need to be taking about 18 IU – 20 IU of growth hormone a day. The exact type of growth hormone Piana took was Serostim
• You can buy this growth hormone from a pharmacy, and a kit of Serostim would cost about $2000/kit.
• There is 7 bottles in 1 kit. He would use 4 bottles a month.
• The Serostim is about $400-$600/kit
• If you got it from a doctor, the serostim is about $8000/mth

The usual first cycle that most bodybuilders do, which is sort of like the gateway steroid to the harder stuff, is TEST and DECA, which is a mild cycle – Dosage: 1 cc a week

For Piana, he claimed that after he went through the first trial of steroids ever when he was younger, he put on 28 lbs in 8 weeks, and 22 of those lbs was muscle.

What We Can Take Away From Rich’s Claims

Most people would have never heard of this guy unless they are really deep into the bodybuilding community. This guy is very loud, and makes grand gestures and likes to show off. That is fine since everyone has their own way of life and they will live it in their own style.

We can however learn quite a bit about the long term effects that growth hormone usage will have. The biggest thing is that his shoe size went up 3 sizes. Did the growth hormone cause the irregular bones in his feet to grow bigger? Or maybe the growth hormone caused the ligaments and tendons that connect the bones to muscles and bone to bone to grow” thus expanding the area and distance between each of the bones in the feet, causing the feet to thus expand?

Let’s note that Rich never talked about him noticing any changes in his height after he started using GH.

When he says that his wrist have gotten wider too, I am not sure whether that is just normal appositional bone growth for males between the ages of 20-30 or the result of the GH.

It is obvious that the expansion of the soft tissues like the  ones found in the intestines that are the most notable, and that side effect of GH was what caused Piana to stop using GH, at least on a consistent regular basis.

For the longest time, I had thought that the researchers who look into generating and regenerating bone tissue and cartilage tissue had no plans or desire to try to get bones to be increased in size aka volumetrically increase.

I was wrong. I have been very, VERY wrong.

In a recent Discover Magazine article, I finally realized that this belief that the average orthopedic researcher looking into tissue engineering and growing replacement organs would never think of applying their knowledge for the goal of helping adults grow taller was all wrong.

Let me show you guys what I mean.

1. Buy this magazine, that might still be in magazine stands right now, in every Barnes & Noble bookstore in the country. “Discover Magazine Series – Secrets of the Human Body” – SCB014 2016 – (UPC: 074470583509)

2. Flip to page 143, and read that single article. It is entitled “Extreme Enhancement – How Nanotechnology could turn us into 8 ft-tall super-athletes” by Mark Miodownik (University College London) –

Let’s just take 2 paragraphs from this article, the 1st and the 4th.

1st paragraph

“One of the most powerful applications of nanotechnology is the design of replacement organs, such as livers, kidneys, and eventually hearts. This will have an enormous impact on those in urgent need of donor organs, but also opens up the possibility of super-organs.”

4th paragraph

“Bioscaffolds are also successfully being used to develop replacement bone for reconstructive surgery. Whole bones can’t be created yet, but success in this arena will not only change the science of hip replacement, it may also lead to new type of cosmetic surgery in which wholesale changes to body shape are carried out. Want a pair of long, slender legs? Have a pair grown for you – and why stop at 6 ft?”

My Personal Interpretation

Reread the 4th paragraph, and tell me how you the reader interpret what he is saying. This guy has admitted that one of the main goals of tissue engineers and biomedical engineers have always had when it comes to figuring out how to regrow full bones was to allow people to possibly grow taller, as adults to the height and size that they want.

I once asked my friend who is a software engineer who works on really crazy high level technical problems why it seems that the young full of energy startup computer entrepreneurs never take on the really hard, really important questions. What he said to me made me change the way I thought about things completely. I was complaining that it seemed like you would have groups of MIT trained CS majors who decide to try to start the 17th health data collection app or the 34th payment system app, which has already been done multiple times before. Why do these young kids only work on simple, easy problems? It turns out it makes the logical sense. Once you have become successful and have made some money from creating that small app, then you move onto something bigger, a much bigger and harder problem when you have more people, employees, and capital.

The point is this: For the longest time, I have been complaining about the fact that no tissue engineering researcher or group who is trying to regenerate hyaline cartilage has ever come out publicly or claimed that the reason they are trying to do their project was because they wanted to regenerate new epiphyseal cartilage which will be re-implanted into human bone tissue, to expand and volumetrically grow the size of that bone. That is essentially increasing the human body’s height using tissue engineering. It turns out the reason they have not is because the problem is too big, too crazy, and too out of reach. It is smarter to start with an easier problem, just trying to regrow the hyaline layer of cartilage in the articular cartilage of the ends of the long bones in the legs.

I had written a post about a month ago showing that the world’s current hottest Biomedical startup is Samumed, which has their own treatment/injection which is supposed to treat osteoarthritis aka cartilage degeneration. A Venture Capitalist had said that if you can get just 1 mm of articular cartilage regenerated from a simple injection, the company that is created from it would be even bigger than Apple. Solving the medical condition of osteoarthritis is much easier, and feasible than getting a full hyaline cartilage with mesenchymal stem cells embedded in the exact correct formation grown in the lab. This is the intermediate step, which is already a multi-billion dollar opportunity for anyone who has success.

Basic message: Start with something small, and easy, and once you gain some success, you move onto the bigger, harder problems.

So far, let’s to a recap of the teams of researchers which are either really close, or already there.

1. EpiBone: Professor Warren Grayson and Professor Gordana Novakovic will be involved as scientific advisors for this lab-to-reality company. The Paypal and Palantir founder billionaire Peter Thiel has put his own money to back this venture.
2. Teplyashin’s Team: They got the tissue engineering approach to lengthen bones to work out years ago but they were stopped from testing this bone lengthening technique on humans by the Russian government.
3. Robert Ballock and Eben Alsberg’s Research: Their research grant filed with the USA government was completed months ago and their published papers show that it was successful.
4. Lawrence Bonnasar’s team: His work at Cornell and the whole spinal implant shows a lot of promise, which I had written multiple posts about before.
5. Atala’s team: His research at Wake Forest University and the pictures of the lab grown fibrocartilage ear scaffolds are sort of the classic. His team probably won’t be the one to get the hyaline cartilage generation done first though.
6. CellInk – Any company that does 3D-Bioprinting, using stem cell infused medium ink will help with the cause. I personally met the Swedish company’s founder, and his son in a Tissue Engineering conference last year. Super nice guy.

Termis Conference: The termis conference is THE biomedical conference that anyone who is interested in trying to figure this thing out should be attending. The word Termis refers to Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. This is the EXACT niche area of study who will definitely be the group who figures out this problem. In the past years of the annual Termis Conferences, the key people who I have said we should be following their work have attended it.

Overall Message: The people who are trying to regrow bone and cartilage tissue using the basic tissue engineering method of using a scaffold seeded with stem cells and than lab grown (aka in vitro) has always understood the possibility and implications of using their technology to make people taller.