Author Archives: Senior Researcher

Expectant Mothers Drinking Milk Results In Faster Growing Babies and Taller Teenagers

Expectant Mothers Drinking Milk Results In Faster Growing Babies and Taller Teenagers

Faster Growing BabiesThis post is a tip on what a mother can do to help her future children become as big as possible. A few things we’ve found before has been that babies who are born during the summer seems to grow slightly faster than babies born in the winter.

This post is a repost of multiple articles which came out in the end of last year (2013).

We refer to multiple news sites which published the exact same information

 

 

The study looked at groups of mother who drank more than 150 millilitres, roughly a quarter of a pint of milk, a day during the pregnancy compare to groups which drank less than the pint of milk. This equals to about 3 cups of milk a day.

The study is really interesting since the study managed to track most of the mothers up o a 20 year time period.

The study is entitled “Maternal milk consumption, birth size and adult height of offspring: a prospective cohort study with 20 years of follow-up“

It is noted by most people however that genetics will almost always overrule the effect of the milk.

What are the implications?

Something which has not been suggested by any of the journalists is the generational effect of this habit. Based on my personally experiences with meeting multiple people who have a milk allergy aka lactose intolerance, I’ve noticed that people who can’t convert the lactose in milk end up slightly shorter than their peers who can ingest the milk.

The result is that the already taller mother who can drink milk will on average have even taller kids while the already shorter mother who can’t consume milk with have her kids end up shorter. The result is that the the heights of the offsprings of the two groups of mothers, will diverge away, resulting in on group being noticeably taller than the other, as the generations go by. Of course, in the real world, you can’t segregate people based on height and we are sure that the two groups of offsprings over the generations will intermingle and mate together, normalizing out the heights so there is no bipolar distributions.

Glucosamine, Vitamin K2, and Fosamax Supplement Formulation For Height Increase

Glucosamine, Vitamin K2, and Fosamax Supplement Formulation For Height Increase

Fosamax SupplementAfter the recent look at the possibility of using Vitamin K2 and Alendronate on increasing BMD in the post “Reverse Low Bone Density aka Osteopenia Leads To Height Increase In Older Women“, we believe that taking the Glucosamine with the two compounds might have an additive effect. What we propose beside the Glucosamine Sulphate for slight height increase from our post “This Non-Prescription Supplement Has Been Scientifically Proven To Make You Grow Taller Even With Closed Growth Plates” is to now do a combination pill formulation.

Use all 3 in combination

  • Glucosamine Sulfate – 1500 mg
  • Vitamin K2 (take both MK4 and MK7) – 50 mg/day
  • Fosamax – We haven’t researched this compound yet. – This is the only compound which will require a doctor’s prescription to get.

This formulation is something which will not work for most people who have ossified cartilages. It will only work for a very small percentage of people, possibly as small as 1-3%.

Those types of people will most likely have the following traits

  • Female
  • Has a very thin body type with
  • Low on estrogen levels
  • Has low bone mineral density and possibly suffering from osteopenia or osteoporosis
  • In the mid-age range and possibly going through menopause.

Even then, this formulation should only result in maybe 1-2 cms of extra height increase. We believe that it would work on maybe just 1% of any randomly selected size group of people with all the features we have listed above.

Since most men don’t have a problem with their BMC, the formulation would be even less effective for them.

The Vitamin K2 with its ability to remove calcium deposits from in-appropriate areas of the body and redistribute the Ca to the right organs and tissue in the body suggest that is might be able to reduce the level of calcification in cartilage.

Legends On 9 Foot Tall Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa Runners Jumping And Levitating In The Air And Himalayan Yetis

Legends On 9 Foot Tall Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa Runners Jumping And Levitating In The Air And Himalayan Yetis

Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa RunnersWhen I was a young kid in elementary school, and even a little in middle school I was fascinated by the occult and the paranormal. I’d try to read all the books I could in the local library about strange and supernatural phenomena.

One of the places in the world that really fascinated me was the closed off land of Tibet and Nepal. I heard so many crazy legends of how Tibet was the spiritual center of this world and about the amazing abilities that the Tibetan Yogis supposedly possessed.

There was also myths and stories about this secret Spiritual place called Shamballa or Hsi Wang Mu, or Olmolungring. There is a book called The Return of the Wisdom of the Serpents which I read a decade ago which introduced me to this alternative interpretation of historical events. Obviously most of the stories in this “paranormal” based book is completely made up in the imagination of the author, but there are some information and facts about the story which can be validated by historical facts (like dates, names, and events). It is just that the way the authors of these types of books try to connect the various events of history cause them to weave the type of story to explain everything from a mystical/occult perspective, which is not helpful for a person who was trained in the sciences.

One story which I remember quite vividly was from a unique paranormal book series. I read a very short excerpt on legends of extraordinary beings which moved around in the Himalayan Mountains. The story goes that there was a group of Western (European, British, or American) mountain hikers who were trekking through the Himalayan mountains. I would assume that maybe they were explorers from back in the late 19th century or early 20th century. They were probably part of a mountain exploration expedition.

They suddenly noticed that below where they stood, high above a mountain ledge, there seemed to be this very tall man jumping across the himalayan fields. The man who they estimated to be maybe 9 feet tall was jumping across through the himalayan mountains while gazing forward or upwards, never changing his gaze. He was described to have been jumping extremely high up in the air, and seemed to be landing slowly. It was said that this man was supposed to be levitating (or gliding) through the air. He was described to have been wearing wearing thin robes, as opposed to the thick covering most normal people would be wearing walking through the insanely freezing element of the mountains. It seemed that he did not feel the cold.

I am reminded of the ability of the Late Dr. Murdo Macdonald Bayne, who also trekked through the Himalayan in the early 20th century and claimed that he had the ability to levitate slightly, due to childhood experiences. The most famous Tibetan yogi, Milarepa was said to have learned how to perform Lung-Gom-Pa and found that he was able to cover amazing distances after he achieved a high level of spirituality.

Lung-gom-paI did not believe in that story until years later when I found out that there seems to be indeed a group of Tibetan monk runners who did this exact thing, as a form of spiritual practice. They are known as the Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa Runners. They practice what I believe is probably the most extreme form of long distance running in the world, beyond anything that should be possible for humans. The most commonly referenced similar practice has been the Japanese Monk Marathon Runners (called Kaihogyo) of Mt. Hiei, but these Japanese Monks seem to cover only 1/10th of the distance that these Tibetan Runners cover. For further reading on these guys, read the Biography on the Monk Yusai Sakai who only recently died back in Octover of 2013. Even the newspaper The Guardian did a piece on these Japanese runners who walk around Mount Hiei. (Available Here)

It is really hard to separate the real from the fiction, the actual from the supernatural, especially in a place like Tibet, Nepal, and the Himalayan mountains since humans after thousands of years still haven’t been able to take over this most extreme of environments. Legends like Shamballa and Shangri-La have developed in the minds of the Westerners, who just a century ago thought that these remote cultures who lived tens of thousands of feet above normal sea level in the freezing Himalaya Mountain was some sort of secret location which represented some type of occult hidden dimension.

From the writings of Alexandra…

The student must sit cross-legged on a large cushion. He inhales and allows his body to fill with air. Then holding his breath, he jumps up with legs still crossed using no hands to support him. He repeats this always remaining in the same position. This method enables them to become extremely light, almost weightless. “The lung-gom method does not aim at training the disciple by strengthening his muscles, but by developing in him psychic states that make these extraordinary marches possible.”

Only after years of drilling oneself with different types of breathing exercises are they permitted to attempt the actual racing performance itself. When he finally reaches this point in time, he must completely concentrate on the walk, the in and out breathing rhythm, always looking ahead, never speaking. He can not be distracted by anything and must keep his eyes fixed on a single object.

The best conditions for their runs are flat plains, desert spaces, and evening twilight. Even after walking for miles or days, when the evening has been reached, the tiredness of the run subsides and the lung-gom-pa runner and continue on for miles more. During their runs, they are continually told to keep their eyes fixed on a particular star. Some float through the air so much, that they wear heavy chains around their bodies so that he is not in danger of floating in the air.

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At this point, it is probably very important that we as scientific research take great effort in being able to separate the real from the crazy, the possible from the impossible, and somehow try to make a real effort to not turn this type of extreme event and reframe it into some type of mystical or spiritual thing. We have to be aware that there is going to be some things which will sound too fantastic to believe.

While our effort is to figure out how does the body increase in height, it is also interesting to look at the phenomena of levitation, which many people have claimed these Tibetan Yogis can perform.

Tibetan Marathon RunnersWe refer to the picture to the right, which was taken from the 14th page of the website/magazine TrailRunnerMag.com Oct 2011 Issue. The 1 page excerpt talks about these tibetan runners.

Apparently before the Chinese Occupation of Tibet, the Lung-Gom-Pa Runners were only trained in two Buddhist Monestaries…

  • Nyang-To Kyi Phug Monestary – this is supposed to be near a place called Shigatse)
  • Samding Monestary –

Two Westerns have documented this meditation practice. They are…

  1. Lama Anagarika Govinda, a German-born Buddhist monk (traveled through Tibet in 1947) – wrote about it in his memoir The Way of the White Clouds (Full Text Available Here)
  2. Alexandra David-Neel, an early 20th-century French explorer, was the first European woman to reach Lhasa, Tibet’s remote and forbidden capital. The surreal encounter is recounted in her memoir Magic and Mystery in Tibet. She managed to stumble across a working lung-gom-pa while crossing a remote Tibetan plateau in 1924

The claim is that these runners are supposed to be able to cover 200 miles within a span of 48 hours within rest. The training is supposed to take on average 3-7 years. You give up your previous life completely (including one’s name) and go into a cave to do meditations, visualizations, and breathing patterns. Over time, you are supposed to leap into the air in the lotus position, and when the tibetan yogi is supposed to drop back down, the descent is slowed down. That is the phenomena known as levitation.

It is very similar to what we see in the early levels of Transcendental Meditation taught by Maharishi Ramana back in the 60s and 70s where the Indian Spiritual Guru claimed that after one reaches a certain level, one would be able to levitate.

To get more information on the exact way that these TIbetan Yogis learn this skill, refer to the article entitled “Lung-gom-pa Runners of Tibet“

Interpretation

If these claims about how a fellow human is able to run for days without any food or water covering hundreds of miles is indeed valid, human nutritionists would need to reconsider their previous judgements on the limits of the human body.

It is my personal belief that although there might some level of superstition that has permiated completely though the Tibetan culture, some of the claims made by this yogis that reside in the Himalayas may be true. We saw a few years ago about a Boy who called himself a student of the Dharma who showed that he could fast for weeks on end without eating or drinking anything. People around the world called himself the Buddha boy (Wikipedia article on him here) but that would be extremely inaccurate since to label a person a buddha is to say that they have reached the end of their samsaric existence, which is not true.

I have never been able to find the source of where it was said that these Lung-Gom-Pa runners were supposed to be 9 feet tall however it might be that Alexandra’s writings had became re-written many times over throughout the centuries. Is it possible that somehow these Tibetan Monks figured out a way to increase their size as well as learn the skill of levitation? It seems possible, since one of the earliest posts I ever wrote for the website was about the claims of how certain mystic yogis in ancient india was able to perform what are known as Siddhis or super-natural feats. It was entitled “Growing Taller By Using Yogic Siddhis“. In traditional Hindu Yoga legend, Patanjali was said to have claimed that the spiritual seeker can perform either 8 or 9 main siddhis. One of them is called MADALASA VIDYA or Mahima Siddhi. This power allows for the person to increase their size to be as large as possible.

I had claimed back then that if there is any validity to this claim, then we the person who is performing yoga could at a high enough spiritual attainment and level be able to increase the size of their body. That would explain why the source I remember had the writer say that these Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa runners seemed to be gigantic in size.

The Yeti

The other most common legend on the Himalayan Mountains about some type of abnormally tall humanoid creatures is the Yeti aka Abdominal Snowman. Is it real or a type of hallucination due maybe from lack of oxygen by climbers? The last I checked after reading over the real scientific research, the best explanation is that the Himalayan Brown Bear, which has a brown coat of fur, is the real culprit for the yeti sightings. What the western mountain climbers actually saw was not some 8 feet tall ancient, hidden ape as some cryptozoologists believe, but actually a bear. For proof on this claim that the Yeti is the Himalayan Bear, refer to the book “Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids“.

We do note that one of the authors of this “scientific” book on mythical creatures is Michael Shermer, who has been the leader and main writer for the Magazine Sceptic for the last few decades. His campaign along with the illusionist James Randi has been to debunk all claims about the supernatural, paranormal ,and the occult, so there is some level of bias in the book to try to explain away all legends as tricks of the mind (as fellow non-believer Derren Brown likes to put it).

Programmable 3D Printers Creating New Epiphyseal Growth Plate Cartilage As Interchangeable Body Parts

Programmable 3D Printers Creating New Epiphyseal Growth Plate Cartilage As Interchangeable Body Parts

Programmable 3D PrintersNote: This will be the last of a series of really long posts I have been writing for this past month. I realize that some of the post I did this month have been extremely long. I need to personally take a break away from the insane speed of writing I’ve done for this website, and will give the research responsibilities to Tyler for the next coming 2 months. The monthly reports will continue though. I am going to diverge a little away from the research when I come back in May since I wanted to expand a little on the subjects I wanted to add onto this website. 

In a recently Youtube Video I watched where the Venture Capitalist Steve Jurvetson was being interviewed by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, they started to get into talks about some of the companies that Jurvetson has invested in over the last 20 years. His vision is that in the next few decades, the biotech, nanotech, and IT fields will somehow start to merge into one multidisciplinary field which has full of potential for disruptive innovation and technologies. The idea that the field of biology, computer science, and the shrinking of the devices we can design suggest a few ideas which I wanted to propose to the readers of this blog. (I have put the video below)

(Note: I’ve been a huge fan of Steve Jurvetson for years now and after finding this recent article by Eliezer_Yudkowsky on Steve in the post “Competent Elites“ I think it is safe to say that he is one of those people which has a g factor that is far higher than most people in the world based on his academic pedigree. Interestingly, I somehow managed to get to that article from the blog Information Processing run by Stephen Hsu, who seems to enjoy talking about intelligence and the elitism associated with going to good universities. It is really interesting to read about the inner mechanics of what happens in the higher institutions of society. But that is a conversation for another day.)

Something that he did mentioned/reference in other videos I’ve seen him in, like in Google Talks and Entrepreneurship & Startup Business Conferences has been this seminal work entitled “The Law of Accelerating Returns” written by Ray Kurzweil back in 2001. I spent a full hour dissecting that particular piece of analysis to get a vague idea of how a person should understand the process of the growth of technology and innovation, and what might be expected in the coming decades.

It is really worth the time of the readers of this website to see what the Singularity University (or even the idea of the Technology Singularity) is all about. At the rate at which technology is completely overtaking almost all areas and aspects of our lives, there may come a point within the next century where the vast majority of people will no longer have jobs since they are completely done by robots which have intelligence and capabilities which far outstrip our own.

He also mentioned Kathleen Eisenhardt who is a Professor at the School of Engineering in Stanford University and also the annual retreat by Google called the Google X Retreat and Larry Page’s personal desire to beat death itself in starting Calico, which is supposed to do breakthrough research to help people increase their longevity.

So what does all of that have to do with what we are trying to figure out, which is a way to increase our height?

Well, there was some mention of the disruptive technology of 3D Printers. At some point before, I’ve written a short post on the possibility of using Electro-Spinning and growing cartilage tissue in a culture dish “Increase Height And Grow Taller Through Bioprinting And Electrospinning“. There was a famous picture I had on that post, of a fully regrown ear which I will post below. Ear is made from fibrocartilage. Fibrocartilage is not the same type of cartilage found in growth plates but it would not be that hard to make 3D models of other types of cartilage.

Interchangeable Body Parts

When I get back to the States, specifically Seattle in a few months, I am going to plan to look into the possibility of starting a small corporation to obtain laboratory equipment from the local University of Washington Surplus Store. Over time I am interested in buying a fully functioning 3-D Printer, and getting the neccessary tissue engineering cultures to print out unique batched of human tissue.

I want to personally try to run my own lab in house to test the viability of growing human tissue, specifically neural and chondrogenic tissue. I fully believe that with the right type of chemical compound like Thyroxine we can get the chondrocytes to be align properly, forming one of the key layers for growth plate formation, for easy implantation of cartilage tissue between bone segments.

I would like to refer to the article from Live Sciences “3D Printing Aims to Deliver Organs on Demand“. They talk about how the level of difficulty in reconstructing different types of tissue and organs can be divided into 4 groups.

  • 1st Level (Easiest to build): Flat structures with mostly one type of cell, such as human skin, represent the easiest organs to make
  • 2nd Level (Still somewhat easy): Tubular structures with two major cell types, such as blood vessels, pose a greater challenge
  • 3rd Level (Medium in difficulty): Hollow organs such as the stomach or bladder, each with more complicated functions and interactions with other organs
  • 4th Level (Extremely complex): Fourth level of complexity includes organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys — the ultimate goal for bioprinting pioneers

We briefly mentioned Anthony Atala (Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C) before in the last post about using 3D printers to be used for bio-printing and electro-spinning. He founded the company Tengion to look into the various ways to regenerate the types of tissues in the human body.

From the article….

  • “Regenerative medicine has already implanted lab-grown skin, tracheas and bladders into patients — body parts grown slowly through a combination of artificial scaffolds and living human cells“
  • “Atala’s group previously built lab-grown organs by creating artificial scaffolds in the shape of the desired organ and seeding the scaffold with living cells”
  • “The ability to print full-size functioning organs depends on figuring out how to seed 3D-printed organs with both large and small blood vessels that can supply nutrient-rich blood to keep living tissue healthy. So far, no lab has succeeded in 3D-printing organs with the network of blood vessels necessary to sustain them.”

It is my belief that the entire structure and form of most growth plates would put the level of difficulty in creating such a cell in scaffold structure to be in just the 1st level of difficulty. Most growth plates are only about 2 cm thick, even among the youngest of children. That thickness can be modeled easily by a 3D bioprinter. The way that bio-printers work is from depositing layers and layers of cell culture/alginate/hydrogel/scaffold on top of each other, dispersing the live cells of various types evenly distributed over the previous layer.

After the cartilage layer has been created to be similar in shape & form to the normal cartilages, we would test the material strength and properties of the home-grown tissue. Over time, we will put it to structural tests over its tensile strength and compressive strength. It will have to be able to withstand

It is my hope that within 5 years, we would be able to test the idea on humans. I would personally put my own body to the test, wherein I would get one of my fingers to be fractured/cut and have the cartilage implanted to show that implantation of mass bio-printed growth plates would lead to the bones regrowing in length again in the natural process.

We refer to the person to read the following posts below which shows why this idea is completely valid…

From reading over the various groups of surgeons who already tried the physeal transplantation on children who might have had some type of tumor on the growth plate cartilage, after the excision of the tumor, they replaced the tissue area with the cartilage. The major problem has been on how do the surgeons get the implanted cartilage to become vascularized. Our biggest technical problem will most likely be on how do we make sure that the cartilage tissue that we print out gets the micro-blood vessels to run through the cartilage, which is supposed to be semi-anaerobic in nature. One group used something known as  microsurgical anastomoses, which we havent’ done any research on yet.

Reverse Low Bone Density aka Osteopenia Leads To Height Increase In Older Women

Reverse Low Bone Density aka Osteopenia Leads To Height Increase In Older Women

Reverse Low Bone DensityI’ve received messages from multiple women and found stories of older women who noticed that their height increased even when they happened to be middle aged. The best example of this happening was the case of where a women in her 40s started to take versions of Vitamin K2 aka Menaquinone and noticed that she gained about 3-4 cm increase in height. Refer to the older post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Vitamin K2 aka Menaquinone (Important!)”

Vitamin K2Most people have probably not heard of Vitamin K2, but they have heard of Vitamin D, which is often combined with Calcium as a type of commonly sold supplement in any drug store. The Cal+VitD combination is something that is supposed to help increase the bone density and is often advertised on complete vitamin pills for women, like Centrum for Women. We however felt that the supplement is more likely to have negative side effects than increased bone density. I remember watching this video done by a promotor of the Anti-Aging movement who stated that the primary cause for the reduced function in the organ systems is from build up of calcium in various areas, from the arteries (causing strokes and heart attack) to the cartilage (which calcify).

Even if it turns out to be true that the Vitamin D which comes with the Calcium pills might have some positive effect on bone density, there is no correlation between its intake and increased bone longitudinal growth or bone lengthening. Our thoughts right now is that swallowing more calcium may not be the smartest move one can take, especially for people trying in increase their height.

The fact is that the conventional wisdom among professional medical experts seems to be that Vitamin D (The normal type) actually has an adverse effect on growth in children, at least in high dosages taken orally. However, it seems that at least 1 study (High-dose vitamin D supplements are not associated with linear growth in a large Finnish cohort.) it was proven wrong. High Vitamin D intake has no correlation, positively or negatively to growth, to growth, not even in children and infants.

So let’s move away from the idea that is believed by the general public, but move towards the other Vitamin, K2. We suspect that Vitamin K2 may be a much better option.

Some background information on Vitamin K2

There are actually a total of 3 different types of Vitamin Ks. You have Vitamin K1, K2, and K3. They are known by the names of phylloquinone , menaquinones , and menadione respectively.  Within the subcategory of the K2, it is further divided into 4 types of K2. They are known as MK4 (the most well known), MK7, MK8, and MK9.

  • MK4 aka Menatetrenone
  • MK7 aka Menaquinone-7
  • MK8 aka Menaquinone-8
  • MK9 aka Menaquinone-9

The compounds are very similar to each other. From Basic Organic Chemistry, all of the following compounds have a type of structure known as the “quinone ring”. The number associated represents how long is the carbon side chain (based from its Wikipedia article)

Based on a few Pubmed studies we’ve found, it seems that MK7 seems to have a positive effect on the bone density in aged females and also decreases the loss of height. We quote the following passage “….significantly decreased the loss in vertebral height of the lower thoracic region at the mid-site of the vertebrae“. The lumbar spine and femoral head showed an increase in bone mineral content and bone mineral density.

FosamaxThere is another compound known as Alendronate which is sold under the commercial title Fosamax, has some effect on the osteoclasts from eating away the bone structure. They act as a type of specific inhibitor of osteoclastmediated bone resorption. This idea of combining Vitamin K2 and with Fosamax is something which we will bring up in future posts.

However, We do find out that Vitamin K1 (NOT Vitamin K2) does NOT seems to help prevent the decrease in bone mineral density for women over a long time range, at least at the 5 mg a day dosage (Study: “Vitamin K supplementation in postmenopausal women with osteopenia (ECKO trial): a randomized controlled trial.“)

Some cultural references to the use of Vitamin K2

For the longest time, the ancient indian medical practice of ayurveda has proposed that taking Vitamin K2 or the types of foods which contain Vitamin K2 is supposed to decalcify the pineal gland. We know the pineal gland as the small gland that is supposed to regulate sleep.

Besides just India, it was found that in Japan, the fermented soybean based food called Natto contains a lot of K2. That seems to help with bone density levels and prevent hip and femoral neck fractures in older Japanese females.

So what do all the studies which show that MK4 and MK7 have bone density enhancing properties prove?

It gives just more evidence in validating this unique story of the middle aged woman who noticed her height increasing over 1 inch after taking MK7 to stop osteopenia.

We suspect that the same bone physiological process has happened to the women who start the reddit thread/story below.

Height Increase In Older Women

She would increase in height by 1 inch between the age of 21 and 24.

(We are fully ware however that her assessment that she did not menstruate (aka release excess estrogen) would go completely against our hypothesis though. That would suggest that the mechanism on how she grew is due to a completely difference process than what we are proposing. Her inability to have a regular period cycle and menstruate for 12 whole years (while already at the height of 6′ 0″ at 21) suggest that her cartilage did not get the last rush of estrogen release to fully ossify the last bit of epiphyseal cartilage left in her system. teenager symptoms of extreme thinness and ectomorphic body type suggest that she had anorexia causing the last wave of estrogen to be inhibited.)

The main thing is that she went from thin and low bone density aka osteopenia to increased bone density, getting her periods regularly, and normal/balanced hormone release. She never stated what helped her get the balance of her hormones back in order. We suspect that she probably took Vitamin K2.

If we are wrong about the physiological cause for her ability to increase in height in her mid-20s, we would still suggest however that Vitamin K2, which has the ability to reverse low bone density aka osteopenia, would still lead a small percentage of women who have no more growth plates to increase in height. Somehow having a low BMD seems to cause the cortical bone layer to be weak enough to be deformed enough to increase bone volume.

We found almost no studies in Pubmed showing that Vitamin K2 has any type of effect like decalcification of hyaline cartilage, but we hypothesize that it does.

  • It has already been proven to decalcify the heart vessels aka arteries, decreasing the rate of heart attack and stroke.
  • It has been speculated to decalcify the pineal gland by Aryuvedic medicine.
  • So why isn’t it possible that K2 in some form, either MK4 or MK7, might have have the ability to decalcify calcium buildup in the cartilage tissues?

DosageThis would suggest that it might renew the ECM structure of hyaline cartilage which gives them elasticity. If our hypothesis can be validated, maybe high intake of Vitamin K2 can result in micro-growth plates and cartilage embedded into the Bone ECM.

From one source, we found the dosage to be around 45 mg/day, which is what is recommended for women suffering from osteoporosis.

How Pregnant Women With Ossified Epiphyseal Cartilage Increase In Height

How Pregnancy Women With Ossified Epiphyseal Cartilage Increase In Height

pregnantFor almost a year now, we’ve been getting a few comments made by females which suggest that they seemed to have gained anywhere from 1-3.5 Inches in height after pregnancies or multiple pregnancies. The phenomena is something that occurs usually on the first pregnancy, but sometimes the greatest change is seen on the 2nd pregnancy. The range of ages for the women that have posted on the various internet forums have been from 24-34. The one common factor is that they all had gone through with pregnancy, or were going through pregnancy at the time.

The fact is that this phenomena is something that was noticed before by other researchers of height increase in adults. The person who created the website www.HeightEffects.com who called himself Height FX back in 2011 asked on a Mommy Forum about the phenomena trying to get more information. He definitely did his research and knew his stuff, but he never got any answer back from any of the mothers about this most unique of phenomena.

His formulation to help young kids with open growth plates to grow was spot on, with his 4 fold-explanation on how his ‘grow taller pills’ were scientifically validated. The 4 methods he mentions are…

  1. Anti-Fusion Complex
  2. Androgen Optimizing
  3. Somatotropic Signaling
  4. Intracrine Augmenting

In the end, he probably realized that reading another hundred PubMed studies on the mechanism of bone growth, cartilages, and chondrocytes would not be enough. Have a good understanding on the molecular mechanism of human growth and reorganizing the information for easy understanding to validate an internet product (which has the extracts diluted too low to have any effect) is not enough. The science made sense, and it was presented clearly though.

It does not work since there is not going to be some type of PubMed study which would have that type of information. If such a study existed, the researcher would have become a multi-billionaire marketing that method, technique, or idea to Venture Capitalists. He looked for more but never found that.

Refer to our review on the guy and his research in the post “Review Of HeightFX From The Old Height Effects Website”

This entire phenomena is something that we found out about a year ago, but we have not had a lot of time to focus on that path in research. We suspect that this phenomena is much more common than believed, but it is either just not noticed or not reported. Personally, if we were pregnant women, the last thing we would be focusing on is our height. There would be too many things we would be focused on and worrying about. It makes perfectly sense for this type of phenomena to be reported in so few numbers.

Refer to our older posts….

Recently some new information have come in which can explain why a select few women have experienced this most unique of experiences.

If we remember back to our courses in high school about human sexuality and development during puberty, we are reminded of a very unique fact, which is that the hips of the females are supposed to get wider as they are going through puberty. If the hips are getting wider, is it the tissue/fat around the hips that are accumulating, or is the pelvic bone actually becoming wider?

If it is the latter, then how does the physiological process actually work out? How does the pelvic bone wing/iliac crest in the female during puberty get wider?

I was looking for stories & studies about the effects of estrogen on the role of the hip bone, and there were a few women who came forward to state that taking estrogen pills does seem to result in wider hips. That would then explain the connection between wider pelvic bones in women and the increased release of estrogen/female hormone into the system. However, since estrogen is supposed to be increase in puberty for both males an females, then the hips of men should also increase in width shouldn’t it? That is one of the conflicting points of our analysis.

Sacroiliac JointIf we look at the way that the entire pelvic girdle area is aligned, we see that the iliac sides are connected to the sacral bone through cartilage types at the sacro-iliac joint, which is in the center region, and they are connected to each other on the anterior (front side) by the symphysis pubis. The Symphysis Pubis is a “….fibrocartilage joint which may contain a fluid filled cavity and is avascular (has no blood vessels) ; it is supported by the superior arcuate ligaments…”

Note this interesting fact: In normal adults it can be moved roughly 2 mm and with 1 degree rotation. This increases for women at the time of childbirth!!

As for the sacroiliac joint, since it is a joint, there are two surfaces of bones covered in cartilage touching each other. You have fibrocartilage-type cartilage on the iliac crest bone surface positioned in the medial direction. You have hyaline cartilage type on the sacral bone surface pointing laterally.

Refer to the studies…

Pelvic Girdle

Notice from the picture above how the overall pelvic structure, of the female is wider and thinner in thickness compares to the male’s.

It turns out that one of the most common medical problems experienced by women during pregnancy is lower back pain. Often the blame is given to a condition known as pelvic girdle pain.

Pelvic Girdle PainThat was the beginning of our research. From the Wikipedia article on pelvic girdle pain…

…..Pregnancy begins the physiological changes through a pattern of hormonal secretion and signal transduction thus initiating the remodelling of soft tissues, cartilage and ligaments. Over time, the ligaments could be stretched either by injury or excess strain and in turn may cause PGP…..A combination of postural changes, the growing baby, unstable pelvic joints under the influence of pregnancy hormones and changes in the centre of gravity can all add to the varying degrees of pain or discomfort…”

There is also a very common related medical condition known as diastasis symphysis pubis, which is where there is no fracture, but pubis bones are disconnected. From the Wikipedia article, we quote the following excerpt…

“…pregnancy hormonal influences cause relaxation of the connecting ligaments and the bones separate up to 9 mm. To demonstrate instability of the joint the patient is required to stand in the “flamingo” position, (standing with weight on one leg and the other bent). A vertical displacement of more than 1 cm is an indicator of symphysis pubis instability.A displacement of more than 2 cm usually indicates involvement of the sacroiliac joints”

So the ligaments separate. During normal pregnancy, the separation is around 4-5 mm, but with this certain condition, the separation increases to around 9-10 mm. If the separation is up to 20 mm, then then the effect is no longer in the pubis region, but is also affect the two other joints, the sacroiliac joints in the back.

This explains the idea that during pregnancy, the ligaments holding the three joints which normally hold the entire pelvic region in place making it immobilized, becomes lossened.

We are guessing that the looseneed ligaments around the three joints actually makes the joints expand out, making them almost double jointed in nature. The entire pelvic region can be expanded out. This is for easier passage of the baby through the birth canal, during labor contractions and labor pains.

When we consider the fact that once the joints are expanded, the angle of the iliac crest being positioned to the sacral bone is lowered. If the iliac crest is pulled down by an angle, the hip socket which is part of the bone is also lower. Since the hip joint is lowered, the entire lower limbs/legs become positioned farther away from the torso of the body. This translates to an increase in height.

Sometimes we forget that the overall height of the human is more than just the legs and the spine. There is also the cervical vertebrate or neck, the head, the hips/pelvic bones, and the feet. We can modulate and stimulate anywhere as long as it is safe for the person going through with it.

The Other Possibility

When we first reported this phenomena, Tyler proposed that the most likely explanation is from a chemical/hormonal compound. Just one compound, Relaxin. Refer to the post “The Connection Between Relaxin And Possible Height Increase“

At this point, I am almost positive that Relaxin may be the chemical compound that causes the initial loosening of the ligaments, but the actual morphological change in the structure of the bones is what I propose above, which is where the sacroiliac joint loosen by a certain angle, causing the hips to become wider and the iliac crest to drop lower at the same time during pregnancy.

This idea that the hips get wider is validated by this Yahoo Questions we found “Does your hips get wider during pregnancy?”. One of the people who answers understood the importance of relaxin.

There are enough anecdotal stories and evidence of women who stated that after their first pregnancy, no matter how much they exercised their gluts/buttocks and core muscles, they could never decrease their hip size back down to the length of before ever being pregnant. This sort of indicates that the the problem is not muscle tissue or adipose tissue, since you can mold those through exercise. With bones, you can/t The hypothesis is that their hips or overall pelvic bone structure changed.

This type of change would be enough to explain maybe 1 inch of noticeable change in height, but how would we explain away something as large as 2 inches of increase? At this point, we can only propose that it is a combination of multiple physiological processes.

Process #1

You have the increase in feet size from pregnancy, which has been validated by maybe 10-15% of all women who went through pregnancy. A quick discussion among new mothers will bring up the fact that their old shoes don’t fit. Their feet not only got wider, but also longer. How does the bones in feet make it longer? It can’t just be from the ligaments from loosening, although we are sure that the ligaments loosening is part of it. Somehow the bones in the feet must have also gotten larger, most likely from periosteal growth by the irregular bones in the feet, pushing the long bones in the toe region outwards.

Process #2

What we just proposed, which is that the pelvic bone structure was slightly rearranged, with all 3 main joints become looser. The symphysis pubis increases to 5 mm, but in some bone disorders, it becomes stretched to as much as 2 cm. The sacroiliac joints, which have articular cartilage on the sacral bone surface and fibrocartilage on the iliac bone surface, sort of pops out a little, gaining a higher degree of movement, and range. The result is that from resting on her back, the pregnant women has the two wing-like bones on the sides lower themselves from the central vertebrate.

One of the most common problems during pregnancy is the pelvic girdle pain, where the joints become inflammed. This inflammation means that either one or both of the cartilage surface of the sacroiliac joint becomes thickened. Sure, the cartilage thickness is very , VERY small, at around just 1-2 mm. However, we find out that the cartilage thickness in women is slightly more than in men. The thickened cartilage, to maybe 5 mm or even 10 mm from inflammation due to pregnancy causes the lower body bones to be pushed downwards, thus increasing the overall height of the woman.

Process #3

Due to the release of relaxin, certain intervertebral discs and bones in the lower back and sacral vertebral area become slightly looser. The ligament relaxes, the discs swell up slightly, and the pregnant woman lieing down on her side in the fetal position, pops the intervertebral discs which are almost almost immobile to become mobile for the 9 and a half months when she is carrying the baby. When the pregnancy is over, the discs ossify again, but the change has been that the discs have become slightly thicker.

So the question one might ask is, why is this phenomena not seen more often?

We suspect that more often, pregnant women will actually loose height from their lower back region due to the discs being compressed by the extra weight of the baby.

We suspect that if a women can be induced to be in a constant pregnant state with the same level of hormones (O-estrogen, Progesterone, Follicle Stimulating Hormones, etc) going her body, however without the baby in the uterus, and we placed the woman in some type of spinal decompression machine, attached to her hip region and lower back, she can be stretched out to be 2-3 inches taller, and that height increase would be permanent.

We had proposed this idea that some people, women especially, may have never had their growth plates fused properly “A Theory That Epiphyseal Growth Plates Never Fuse For Certain People“

Just two weeks ago, a women messaged us telling us that even at the age of nearly 30 she found out from an X-ray done after a fall that her growth plates were open.

Open Growth Plates

This phenomena is very common among certain women, and it is hard for us to explain.

The obvious explanation from a social perspective is that these women noticed that their height stopped increasing in their teens and assumed that their growth plates were gone and they won’t grow anymore. They never needed to get any type of X-ray to validate this idea since no-one has X-ray vision to confirm it. A growth plate is not something that you can see with the naked eye.

The best explanation from a mechanistic, molecular, or physiological POV is that the women had a weight and BMI which was much lower than average. The weight load on the growth plates never reached a level to fully ossify the rest of it.

We refer to the PubMed study “Fundamental limits on longitudinal bone growth: growth plate senescence and epiphyseal fusion“.

In the study, it was found that as a person’s weight increases, the weight actually forces the chondrocytes in the resting zone to be used up.

The rate of the depletion of the MSCs that differentiate into the chondrogenic lineage from the resting zone is dependent on the weight on top of the tibia bone (or any bone that contributes to the overall height). Gravity is the force forcing the chondrocytes to be used up.

Mathematically, this phenomena can be described as a type of differential equation.

(alpha)*(-dCh/dt) = W     &  at t(time) = o , Ch = Constant # of Chondrocytes in resting zone (We are also assuming that the initial number of chondrocytes does not get replenished.)  W= weight,

However W = beta*rho*(dCh/dt)^3 (or 3/2)

The need to use a power of 3 (or maybe a 3/2) is due to the fact that a dCh/dt leads to a delH or change in height, which is just 1 dimensional. However, the weight is determined by volume, which is 3 dimensioned, based on W=rho*V where rho is the density of the body. and V=L^3 and dCh/dt=gamma*dL

As long as a person does not go over a certain weight in their torso, the cartilage does not become completely ossified. However, once the person gains too much weight on their upper body, the growth plates are used up.

This would explain our hypothesis that certain people, but especially women, have some epiphyseal cartilage left which was never used up. They never got heavy enough.

We suspect that the type of women who would have this happen are girls who went through anorexia or dieted in the extreme. The low weight and their stunted growth (due to not eating right) would cause the senescence of the growth plates to be arrested. Once they get over the anorexia, maybe in their 20s or even late 20s, the cartilage gets reactivated, and the cartilage goes into catch-up growth. Of course, all of this is just our best guess at this point.

Main Takeaway

A small percentage of women, most likely thin girls during their teenage years, will notice a 1-3 inch of height gain from them going through pregnancy.