Author Archives: Senior Researcher

There Is Almost Nothing Left To Say

I think after about 2 years of doing this stuff, writing over a 1000+ articles, I have reached a limit to what I can do through words. Research through reading, and intellectualizing has reached a point, and there is not much else left to take away from the studies. We need to take the research into the lab. That is the only thing to do. This means spending thousands of dollars on buying lab equipment.

I think for a long time, I have been just going in circles, doing a dance of mental masturbation trying to say words which really doesn’t do much good. How many times can I write the words “Chondrocyte” or “Epiphyseal Cartilage” and still make the regular reader and visitor still interested and engaged in what I am saying?

I need to call myself out on my own bullshit, on the cognitive biases that have been making me procrastinate and not taking more action. I will say a hidden idea which so many internet bloggers don’t want to admit

Writing is easy. Blogging is easy. That has been what I was doing for the past year.

Tell me who can’t blog or write? No one. Everyone now have become a writer. Writers have now become sexy. Think Hank Moody from Californation. Even Mathematicians, Photographers, Actors, and Painters write now. I don’t know any famous people these days who haven’t written a book.

Most of the writing produced right now is a rehashed, reformulated idea that already exists said by someone before who was 10X smarter than the new writer. You didn’t create anything new, but just presented the old in a repackaged form. That is called Marketing.

It is deep logical thinking, analysis, and research that is hard. There is almost no writing done, until the idea and new innovation has been fully crystalized and thought through to the end.

Real research and analysis, which goes really deep into the science can say something new, discover something about the universe that was never uncovered before, or invent and create something new. You actually have to think hard. You can’t just be superficial and skim the ocean of knowledge, since everyone else has already done it much better than you. Instead of trying to reach wider, you go deeper. That is called innovation. That is called Engineering.

I do read Tim Ferriss’s blog and the recent post where he talks about the common habit of some pseudo intellectual grad student to rehash someone else’s ideas and claim it as their own is one way to have people go into these circles of ramblings which produce no real world value in output in the end. (Post is available Here).

Nothing Left To Say

Sure, Ferriss is talking about philosophical ramblings made by a grad student in the liberal arts, and I am talking about some grad student in the sciences, which have more of a chance of real world application, but I hope my point is still being made clearly.

Maybe for too long now I’ve been reading too many articles and make connections and theories which are not really founded on solid scientific data. Tyler has accused me on being too superficial in my understanding of the biomolecular details, and that is true. I have not been putting enough effort into understanding the deep science, but just glossing over the abstracts.

I am tired of not making a deep enough dent into the research. We have gotten far, at least further than almost any other amateur research on this matter. We are the only source that publish all of our findings in any English based website. You will not find any other website like this one anywhere else on the internet, at least in English.

This information we release is something that is not available anywhere else, since we actively dig through every source that is available, including patents, scholar papers, articles from the 1800s, clues, hints, Eastern Medicine and Mysticism, and every other avenue. I regularly pay $100 for articles from major Scientific Journals to get to the content, to see what we can find. I have tried to get into contact with researchers from multiple universities to ask them on clarification on their research. We have reached the limit of what is possible right now.

The number topics and ideas I can bring up is finally reaching the real limit. I thought the limit was around 150 at one time. I was wrong about that. Then I thought it would be at 300, I was wrong again. Then I thought there would just be 700 posts. That turned out to be wrong also Now it is over 1200 and this time, I think we are really reaching the end.

There is almost nothing left to say. 

So what is left? I don’t know. I do know that there is still about 50+ old posts I plan to write up, which I never finished, ranging on a variety of fields, from supplements, on related product reviews to biomolecular analysis.

I am not planning on writing another thousand posts like that Geoffrey Arnold guy (who writes for the website The Social Complex and on Reddit) who complains over and over again about heightism, and claims that discrimination against short men is a cultural bias, not based on biology. I don’t believe that heightism is a cultural programmed bias, but based on evolution and biology. He can spent the next 20 years, writing 10,000 more posts showing again and again how short people are discriminated against. I won’t though.

He is the modern day Sisyphus, doomed to be pushing against that rock of other people’s cognitive biases for eternity, fighting his own personal war against a system which won’t change. If it heightism was a cultural thing, yes, maybe after hundreds of years it can be reverse, but if it is biological, he is doomed for failure in the end. There is a difference between persistent and realizing that there is a chance for a light at the end of the tunnel for real change and success, and being stupid, delusional, and pigheaded.

Was I delusional back in the Summer of 2012 for creating this website to look for an answer to make me and everyone else who wanted it to be taller, even though I was already 27? I probably was, because I was in so much pain back then.

Am I still delusional to this idea which most adults/people would say will never work and might call me crazy? No. I am now fully aware of what I am doing. There doesn’t seem to be any easy answers, or solutions. Only the hard ones are left. It only gets harder from this point on, just like life. Over time, life only gets harder and harder, not easier.

However, I know for a fact that I have definitely made the internet a much better place. I call out the scams and the lies going on in this niche. I chose not to create a forum for the website so that there will be much less spam, and no human drama that could erupt between people posting. That is a lesson I learned well from looking at the mistakes of people before me.

I don’t plan to give up, but don’t want to run in circles either. From now on, if I don’t have anything really worthwhile to say, then I won’t say it at all. I want to produce quality, not quantity. 

{Before you spend 100$ on studies you should see if I can get them.  I agree that there research that’s coming out is slow.  There are very few studies directly related to what we’re working on(growing taller) but there is a ton of gene and protein work out there related to growth plates and there’s mechanics.  Maybe we’ve done most of the key studies but we can organize them better and try to make connections between them.  However, I do think it’s time to do more experimentation.  I’m doing my best with LSJL and it’s taking about a month to start noticing bone changes.  I think maybe my calcaneus experimentation, maybe the finger experimentation, maybe building a better clamp for the knee.  Will all be the next steps to find the definitive way to grow taller-Tyler}

How 4-D Printing Can Synthesize Biological Tissues And Organs Which Grow Themselves

How 4-D Printing Can Synthesize Biological Tissues And Organs Which Grow Themselves

I am rather getting really excited these days since I have put in orders to get a few Arduino kits and Raspberry Pi kits to play around with since I am so deep into the DIY Electronics movement. I’ve already joined the DIY Biohacker movement, being a big fan of Dave Asprey, and taking various types of nootropics, special supplements, and implementing some of his other ideas. To save time, I have given up eating for a month by getting the much anticipated Soylent drink that is so well talked about in Silicon Valley these days. Can I become even more productive and efficient with my time by giving up eating too?

So far, I’ve been reading up on the development of making your own tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation) device and have some confidence that I can possibly build one if I can just find maybe 2-3 months of free time. The idea of using a short burst of direct current to stimulate the electrical activity in my brain is quick attractive to me.

Of course, currently I have 4 major projects going on at the same time. In addition, Tyler has started to remind me that I had promised to you guys that I would build the Lateral Synovial Joint Loading machine which I eluded very early on in the website. That cost has been raised to probably around $1200 and it would require me to ship some parts from China. I do have a rather short attention span and jump from one idea to another, but this one is something I have stuck to the longest in quite a while. I will get around to it, but it won’t be for at least another 2 years.

Some of the ideas that I have been spending my personal time testing on and researching are…

  • Electric Planes – Just how viable is Musk’s idea to also make our flying vehicle no longer dependent on petroleum based derivatives?
  • Electrical Stimulation for Pain Relief – This one is the other major project I’ve been working on the for the last year or so, which has created a nice passive income stream so far, allowing me some free time to pursue multiple types of strange intellectual pursuits.
  • 3-D printers – I plan to buy my own preassembled set in the next few months
  • Drones – Imagine a squadron of drones being assembled after their parts are made by 3-D Printing. I use the Raspberry Pi to be used as the controller for the drones.

Of course, some of these ideas, I will give up on, or combine together. However, there might be an even bigger idea that is coming along. Something huge that have caught my idea recently is the development of the next generation of printing technology, called 4-D printing.

The idea is to now make 3-dimensional products which can actually take over the process of production so that they can actually finish the job of the printers themselves. This is what has been described by the early promoters of the movement called “4D-Printing”. This idea let me think about what would be the implications of this 4D Printing technology to our goal.

I will upload a video of the specific TED Talk done below.

The picture below is one which I clipped from the video (around time 50 second time frame) which show just how many different types of application this next generation of printing can be used for…

Smart-Assembly Revolution

It is amazing to see what is now being created in our age of exponential growth of technological innovation, as claimed by Ray Kurzweil. I would love to live up to the 22nd century just to see where we are going to end up in the next century, hoping that we don’t kill ourselves or go extinct in this century.

Will we in the year 2101 finally have colonized Mars, or the Moon, and found or been contacted by some extraterrestrial intelligent life outside of our planet? Or would we be pushed to the edge of extinction due to our waste of the natural resources of our planet, causing the extinction of 90% of all the flora and fauna species, polluting the oceans, destroying the rain forest, and eating all the fish until there is nothing left?

It is too hard to predict where we will be in the future, but we live in a very interesting time.

As for the possibility of using this technology for biomedical reasons, I strongly believe that within even a decade, we will be using 4-Dimensional Printing technology to create biological tissues which can grow bigger themselves. I imagine it similarly to the idea of cellular automata spoken about by Stephen Wolfram where a complex, self evolving organism is completely organically grown from a much simpler organic compound which just followed a few rules of physics.

If the tissue can grow bigger themselves, and even spontaneously organize themselves into the shapes, and forms that is found in our own bodies, then we can create the epiphyseal growth plate cartilage tissue needed to expand to help make us taller. Not only that, the type of biological tissues that we can build would be much more organized that what nature can provide for us.

Imagine a 3D Printed collagen filled like cartilage disc which starts to turn into 4D by being “smart” and learning to start to absorb the culture medium around it so that it can grow bigger over time. With a short (maybe 2 hour) surgery, you will have this smart tissue which is compatible to your body dissolve and gel with your bones but know also to how to expand in the axial direction to make your femur bones grow longer aka longitudinally.

Since the printed compound is much better organized with the chondrocytes in columns, the lengthening will be much more than using the same type of growth plates that you had when you were younger, going through natural growth periods. Just one cartilage implant can give your upper leg portion an increased length of 4 inches. Sure, 3D Printing is what is available right now, but 4D Printing will be an even more revolutionary technological breakthrough.

Another implant first injected in liquid form can learn how to mold & solidify itself into the space between the knee joints and create a completely new layer of articular cartilage, thus reversing the effects of osteoarthritis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shear Stress Facture

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

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

Facture Of Tibia Periosteum

2 Inches of Increase

The messages are small but the key facts are…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what you as the reader should take away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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