Something that I read from a recent post was that the weight loss industry apparently is currently around $66 Billion dollars for the 2012-2013 year. Based on a post from FoodEducate.com there is supposed to be around 75 million people who spend on average $800 a year trying to lose weight.

That is a lot of money spent trying to accomplish something which most people can accomplish with even the slightest bit of commitment, dedication, and discipline. So I wanted to ask a similar question about this ‘industry’, if we can even call it that.

How big would the grow taller industry be worth if there was a non-invasive method, specifically targeted for adults with fused growth plates?

Many people on the grow taller forums claim that is would be in the trillions, and that if someone could license the invention and hold onto that type of intellectual property or secret, they would become very rich. I sort of agree, but just how much could the inventor of this non-invasive method be making?

There are currently about 7 billion people in the world. Exactly half of those people in the world are below average in height. This is true for men, and women, Europeans, Asians, Africans, etc. That is how a height distribution bell curve works out.

Of those people who are below average, how many of them would like or secretly wish to become taller? I would say that maybe 70% of those people would pay for a solution, if it meant that it didn’t involve too many steps, too much pain, and too much time taken from away their normal lives.

What these people who are only semi-interested in a solution, they want something easy, like a ‘grow taller miracle pill‘ which does not exist, at least for people who have complete bone maturity. They would probably only make the effort to drive to a drug store like CVS and go up the aisle and pick it up. They would prefer that this miracle pill would not require a prescription but over the counter.

A small percentage of people would be willing to spend some time each day doing the type of stretching exercises needed to gain a slight bit of height increase. Most people are just lazy, and that is okay. Humans are lazy creatures because it is hard to expend energy. If we could, we would want to get what we want, immediately, with no effort, time, or energy spent.

Trying to grow taller is about 10,000X harder than losing weight, if not impossible for certain people after a certain age. The main reason is because they lack the resources or desire to go through with it.

The best orthopedic surgeon who does limb lengthening surgery in the USA is probably Dr. Dror Paley, who has done hundred of these types of surgeries. The next best surgeon is probably Dr. Betz based in Germany. You can read about the journals of people who went through the surgeries from the forum Make Me Taller.

The average cost for grow taller surgery which is called distraction osteogenesis will cost around $50,000-$100,000 for the best surgeons who specialize in this type of surgery. There are probably less than 100 people in the world who are certified and have the skills to do this type of job. There are indeed cheaper doctors who do the height increase surgery, like Dr. Xia based in China for only around $25,000 total but that is still quite a lot of money for most people, and we are just talking about people who wish to become taller in the developed nations, which have a higher living standard.

$50,000 is what the average US household makes. I would guess that people like Paley and Dror would charge about the same price for one surgery procedure of the same price, $50,000. If one the surgeon just performed one of these surgeons everyday for a year , which takes around 2-4 hours each, they would have an income stream of slightly over $18,000,000 dollars. Take into account the medical secretaries, the clinic costs, the anesthesiologists, nurses, and maybe 1-2 other surgeons, and you would still be coming out with around $5,000,000 every year. Of course these dollars will not, and can not perform on a new patient every single day. They would eventually become burnt out. I personally would guess that these surgeons are making closer to around $1,000,000 a year, after taking into account HMOs, other types of medical insurance, paying off their medical staff and other doctors, facility costs, etc.

If there are around 100 people in the world who are doing this, this means that there is already around $100,000,000 of cash flow occurring every year on just this most extreme method of grow taller method. If there was a much easier way to do it, how many more people are going to start trying it out.

I have received emails from people who have told me that they have contemplated suicide because they are so unhappy with their height. They just can’t imagine living the rest of their life at the height which they are supposed to be stuck in. Seeing multiple therapists don’t seem to help, since this aspect of who we are, what our identity is, is set in stone, something that can’t be changed.

If you, or we manage to find a solution, we would be like the answer to million’s of people’s secret wish. There are thousands of people in the world right now who would pay upwards of even $100,000 to go through with the limb lengthening surgery. Millions more want to become taller just as much but they are not willing to accept the surgery approach.

I would guess that probably 50% of any population desires at some level to be taller than they are currently. The fact that everyone in my own personal family have stated it may mean that my family is either extremely unusual bunch of people with some type of height fetish, or they represent somewhat of the average viewpoint on this subject. Most people after they stop growing and become adults, they stop worrying about this issue. They move on to worry about something else, which is usually money.

If we assume that maybe the highest amount of money anyone would ever decide to pay a single miracle pill to allow them to end up taller is around $200, that means that from one supplier alone, they would be about $700 Billion Dollars worth of financial transactions. Of course this is just for a year’s worth of revenue alone. If this was a single company, and the company’s net worth was considered, it would be around $7-12 Trillion. There has never been a publicly traded company worth even $1 Trillion.

In addition, it won’t be the people who are below average who will wish to use the technology. The moment people who used to be taller realize that their shorter peers have now the way to become bigger than them, they will jump on the bandwagon as well. It will turn into a sort of arms race to see who will end up taller due to social competition to flaunt one’s physical qualities. I remember the quote by Al Pacino in the movie “The Devil’s Advocate”. “Vanity, definitely my favorite sin”

What is my point?

If you as a researcher can figure out this problem, and find a real solution, even a slight improvement on the way we make people taller these days, one will definitely become a multi-millionaire, or even a billionaire if they license their technology correctly to the right groups of people.

If one can make a quantum leap on what is currently being done by orthopedic surgeons to lengthen bone, they will become one of the world’s first trillioniare, based on rough calculations.  (That 1st trillionaire title seems to have gone to Mr. Kamal Ashnawi) Maybe I should have named this post “Who is the world’s first trillionaire?”

This is the reason I suspected Sky from EasyHeight.com wanted to try to figure it out. Why should a below average in height vietnamese guy settle for a low 6 figure job as a pharmacist when they can potentially become a billionaire by finding something similar to the “elixer of life”. Plus, he would figure out how to make himself bigger, and help make a huge contribution to the world which no one would ever forget even generations later. This is similar to Steve Job’s comment on desiring to make a dent in the Universe. If you succeed, you are going to make just as big of an influence on millions and billions of people’s lives in the future as long as the human race exists.

I don’t do this research for the money, because there is no money for amateur researchers like me and Tyler. There are some Google Adsense Ads  and Amazon Affiliate Links lying around so that I would earn just enough to pay for all of the website service costs. You might be surprised to learn that although this website gets thousands of unique visitors a day we earn almost nothing. When I say that it is pennies a day, I do mean pennies a day.

People just don’t believe this idea is possible, until they see it with their own eyes or hear enough other people claim that it is true. It is absolutely critical that when it comes to anything related to this endeavor, people have to be sceptical of the claims being made.

However the problem and how to solve it has become clear to me now. I know what exactly I should be looking for. I finally have figured out what I should be looking for in terms of the research. When the breakthrough research does appear, I will be able to connect the dots. I will propose the exact answer, but I am not sure if I can find the right type of investors who would invest in the lab supplies and experiments to prove this idea of mine works. To have an idea on just how hard it is to get a pharmaceutical drug out to market, and how much it would cost, take a look at this article by Eli Lilly

Side Note: I am reminded of a Senior Design Chemical Engineering Course I took back in my undergraduate days. The lecturer stated that based on just how much sulfuric acid (H2SO4) is used in almost all chemical processes to make the raw materials to power any society’s unsatiable hunger for consumer products, if any chemical engineering student could figure out a slight modification on the process to make sulfuric acid itself in large quantities with relative ease, by as much as just 0.1%, and licensed that patent they have intelligently, they would become a multi-millionaire with royalties coming in by the millions every month.

Last night while I was laying in bed the subject of the phenomena where certain females noticed that they have grown taller during pregnancy reappeared in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue and tried to make a somewhat educated guess on what exactly is happening.

Why is it that there have been so many (maybe a dozen on online forums and discussion boards so far which I have found) females who report that they have noticed that they have become taller from pregnancy?

I thought that it was from the dramtic, accelerated increase in progesterone in the post Analysis On The Possible Cause For Height Increase During Pregnancy, but that can’t be since progesterone is supposed to be able to increase bone mineral density, which means that the bones should be getting harder, and less resistant to bone remodeling.

The other idea I wrote about was that the hormone Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) which is involved in Klinefelter Syndrome, was the growth hormone that was being overstimulated. FSH comes from the same place in the anterior pituitary gland as somatotropins. They are stimulated by gonadotrophs. FSH is over stimulated during certain phases of pregnancy.

However, the main problem was alway over how could the pregnant female’s body ever increase in height, especially with a fetus in their uterus? Which bones exactly would be a stretched out for it?

Then I remembered the fact that multiple pediatricians have warned pregnant women that they might develop osteoporosis because of the transfer of calcium from the mother’s body to the fetus’. This is what I am guessing is the critical process I was missing.

The Process

1. The development of the fetus from just a embryo to a organic being which required calcium minerals to start being formed in its developing body means that the calcium level in the mother’s entire body is dropped.

How much is the drop in calcium level? 

From the study Calcium and Bone Metabolism in Pregnancy and Lactation*

“…calcium and bone metabolism is substantially altered during the normal reproductive periods of pregnancy and lactation, and bone density can drop and regain 3–10% in the span of a few months in normal, healthy women.”

So the drop can be as much as 10% of the calcium phosphatase crystals.

2. Because of the position of where the uterus is located, the calcium will be drawn more from the upper part of the body, the torso, than the legs, since the bones in the leg are consistently being remodeled and made thicker and stronger from the effect of body weight loading.

3. If the calcium from the torso is being removed from the mother, then her bones would become weaker. Assuming the normal care of a pregnant women, she would start to spend less time on her feet, and more time lying on her back or in a fetal position in bed.

4. The vertebrate curvature is reduced as she is lying in bed more. Her intervertebral discs are decompressed completely.

Her vertebrate bones after a 10% decrease in calcium mineral loss has become weak enough to realign themselves to be much more straight. It is in contrast to the normal curvature we find in most vertebrate of people.

The thoracic and lumbar region of most people’s vertebrate has a natural curvature, which gets straightened out by the way the pregnant women lies on the bed.

I refer both the lying on the back position and the fetal position.

Notice the picture of the ballerina on the right. Notice how the fetal position some of us get into for sleep is actually a sort of body contorsion which allows for the dorsal side of the vertebrate to be stretched and decompressed.

With the addition of a baby that is uniquely positioned in the lower stomach area, the lumbar vertebrate are the bones that are specifically realigned and positioned as the hardness of the bones are decreased.

What I am proposing is that from the combination of 7 main factors, the pregnant women being more bed ridden would experience height growth.

1. The decrease in calcium levels in her own body from the transfer to her baby by upwards of 10%. This makes the bones more malleable.

2. The fact that the pregnant female is more likely bed ridden causing her to lie on her back more. This slightly helps in the vertebrate realignment idea.

3. The only other bed position is the fetal position which means that her vertebrate is naturally becoming decompressed and stretched out. obviously a pregnant women can’t lie on a bed face down, or that would crush her womb.

4. The position of where the womb is means that more structurally strain is placed in the lower back area, so if the women is in the fetal position in bed, the weight of the womb and baby contributes in the vertebrate realignment.

5. The fact that the irregular bones in the feet of the females get slightly bigger in width contributes. This is from the phenomena of where a large percentage of females have shown that their feet have grown longer and wider from pregnancy, most probably from periosteal appositional growth. I proposed that besides just length and width of the irregular bones in the bones that have increased, the height of the irregular bones in the female have also increased. This will contribute slightly to the height increase.

6. Tyler’s proposal of the onset of relaxin means that the ligaments holding bones in tight structural alignement is slightly loosened for bone realignment.

7. The release of the Follicle Stimulating Hormone by the gonatotrophs in the anterior pituitary gland means that it might act like a growth hormone for the women who is in a position with weak enough bones, where they can be ‘stretched out’

All of these 7 factors causes what I propose is the lumbar and thoracic vertebrate bones to become weaker from a significant drop in calcium levels losing the high compressive strength, have looser ligaments holding them together, and being in positions in bed for a long time which would allow for the natural curvature of the vertebrate to be decreased from a realignment of the individual irregular vertebrate bones.

However, there are also multiple cases of women who have experienced height loss from pregnancy due to their bones becoming too weak and developing fractures. The truth is that height loss from pregnancy makes much more anatomical sense than height increase.

When you are standing up when pregnant, the extra weight of the baby and womb would cause the lower back to become more curved, not less. The bones being weaker in the compressive strength (NOT tensile strength) should mean that when standing, the pregnant women would have their upper body weight loading the vertebrate and bones causing the body to become shorter.

Like always, this is just a theory I am proposing. Something to maybe reference in future posts to either disprove or validate new research, and idea we might have.

Update #6 – Stretching Slightly For Personal Reasons – September 3, 2013

This last month in August has been an emotional and personal challenge as I had to move away from the website for a considerable amount of time to focus on other issues which has appeared in my life. Like most people realize, there are multiple sections in our life which we have to take care of, which can be categorically broken apart into personally, professional, health, relationships, etc.

Things that happened in August

• I decided for now to dissolve one of my companies that has been based in Washington State for productivity reasons. I had started the LLC a few years ago when I was involved and interested in something else. I saw what I thought was an amazing opportunity and I spent half a year chasing that. These days I have shifted my focus.

• I am putting more emphasize on quality posts and epic content. I have been reading multiple sources of information these days and I sort of realize that there is no way that we can get anywhere in the research if we don’t look really deep into the material.

• Tyler from HeightQuest.com has finally started to come around and write unique posts to further the cause. This is a business and research collaboration which I suggested very early on in the Summer months which he agreed to. It has taken a long time but things are working out rather well now.

• Trying to give the website a new look. There was a short redesign of the website for the 2013 year. The current theme of WordPress I am using is just the old 2012 Theme, which I personally think is adequate to do everything that is needed. I switched for a few days to the newer 2013 theme model, but after looking at how large the title font sizes were I decided to switch back to the cleaner, more simple 2012 Design.

• Getting a 2nd DMCA notice from a person who has been selling an extremely popular grow taller E-product online and being forced to take down a few PDF files

• I will also be away from the website for the month of September to focus on my other businesses and projects. However there will still be a few interesting posts I wanted to share.

Things I have realized this month

• I have realized that the ability to grow growth plate like tissue has been around for more than a decade. People have already been successful with explanting progenitor stem cells from an adult humans body and growing them into growth plates.

• Dr. Robert Ballock has been successful in the development of test tube growth plates. If there is anyone in the world currently who can do what we do better, it would be him. His credentials are quite amazing. A BS in BIology for his undergraduate from Harvard. Then getting his MD from Harvard Medical School. This is followed by an internship and residency at UCSD, one of the best medical centers in the country (or was it UCSF?). He would do 3 more fellowships as well. I have done some research on what type of medical student a person has to be in to be able to get into the orthopaedic surgery speciality and the USMLE Step 1 scores for them are among the highest of all medical specialties, with an average based in 2005 to be around 230. The main point is that Ballock is one of the people who would have the best chance of really succeeding in finding an alternative to limb lengthening surgery if we are not successful.

• What we are trying to do, there are probably a thousand other orthopaedic surgeons and researcher in the world doing the same thing. The problem is that probably very few of them are trying to create newly formed growth plates in the bone in vivo in a non-invasive way if possible. However many of them are doing research on hyaline cartilage regeneration for medical and clinical applications. Researchers at the top levels for at least the universities focus on such a small area of science that for most professors which have the actual status and credibility to get major funding to do serious research, their focus is so small that they might not be able to see how their small area of research can be applied to help humanity in general. They don’t know how to translate all the theoretically knowledge and be able to execute on projects which can apply those new information. It is well accepted that for any person in the biological sciences to be able to get a Master’s or Ph. D degree they need to push the field of their study silghtly further out. This means that every person who obtains a Ph.D in the hard sciences understands or knows something that no one else in the world at the time realizes.

Height Changes

• Nothing has changed. Of course I have not measured myself at all this month. I’ve been focused so much on other areas of my life this endeavor was not pursued at all.

• As for my weight, it has been decreasing. What I have noticed is that if you change your eating habits to more fats and meat, and less on bread, wheat, and rice you actually loss weight. I am sort of biased towards the Paleo Diet idea, based on what I read on The Bulletproof Executive podcast.

• There was a documentary done by the UK which explained why was it that for decades the idea that ‘fat’ was bad when it was actually ‘sugar’ that was making people big. Watch the documentary The Men Who Made Us Fat below

To read about what happened last month go to the post Update #5 – Having Legal Problems While Trying To Get Help – August 1st, 2013

We have known about the research that Dr. Robert Tracy Ballock have been doing for a while now and as for myself, it has been a very long time since I took the time to read over his research papers. Tyler has commented in at least two old posts that Professor Ballock is an ally in finding a solution. Of all the researchers in the world who knows about the molecular signal pathways of the growth plates and endochondral ossifications, he is the person to talk to.

I recently found an article that showed that back in 2000 Ballock was awarded some type of prestigious orthopaedic award for his accomplishment of succeeding in creating in the test tube a type of cartilagenous tissue that has almost the exact same properties as the growth plates we have in our body naturally when we were younger.

What I gathered that was important from the article below is the name of another person doing similar research, a Qian Chen. This is NOT the same Cory Chen that Tyler says would help us with the research. Chen is a common Chinese name and I would guess this Qian Chen is another Chinese Graduate student/visiting scholar turned Professor.

With a quick google search, I managed to find Qian Chen’s Profile on the Brown University’s Database. His current title is the Michael G. Ehrlich, MD Professor of Orthopaedic Research
Orthopaedics.

The thing that we as height increase researchers should focus on are his publications and research. The good thing about academics is that most of them have a copy of their CVs available in PDF to look at HERE. I wanted to see what this orthopaedic surgery professor has been doing research on, and hope that over time I can read over his papers.

Two studies interest me. They are…

• Chen, Q., Lei, W., Wang, Z., Sun, X., Luo, J., and Yang, X. Endochondral bone formation and extracellular matrix, Current Topics in Bone Biology, 145-162, Deng, H., and Liu, Y. (Eds) World Scientific Publishing Co. 2005

• Phornphutkul, C., Wu, K., Yang, X., Chen, Q., and Gruppuso, P. IGF-I Signaling is Modified During Chondrocyte Differentiation, J. Endocrinology, 183: 477-486, 2004

He was given a grant by the National Center for Research Resources back in 2007 which is mentioned HERE.

Here is a list of Qian Chen’s projects that he is either still doing from grant money, or that he has finished. Some of the projects he has been involved in will be critical for us to read over and learn more about. 

Growth plate, cartilage, ligament research honored – Wednesday, March 15, 2000 –  Kappa Delta awards presented today – (From the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 2000 Section C, The Annual Meeting Edition of the AAOS Bulletin).

The article is copy and pasted below. i have highlighted the major points about this….

Research into development of a “test tube growth plate,” cartilage cell properties in skeletal diseases and ligament growth will be honored with Kappa Delta awards during the Opening Ceremony in the convention center Auditorium today.

The investigators will present their scientific papers and results of their research projects at the Orthopaedic Research Society meeting which will precede the AAOS meeting.

The Elizabeth Winston-Lanier Award will be presented to R. Tracy Ballock, MD, for developing a “test tube model of the growth plate that reproduces many of the same features of the growth plate in the body.”

Results of these studies with the test tube model demonstrate that thyroid hormone, which is an essential regulator of bone growth in children, works by locally increasing the amount of bone morphogenetic (producing growth) protein in the growth plate and also by modulating the level of proteins associated with the cell division cycle, reported Dr. Ballock.

Dr. Ballock, an assistant professor of orthopaedics and pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland, Ohio, explained that long bones grow by elongation at either end at the cartilage growth plates. “Somewhat surprisingly,” he noted, “the growth plates at the top and bottom of each bone grow at markedly different rates. In order for a person’s arms or legs to be the same length, there has to be some coordination of the growth at the growth plates by circulating hormones and local growth factors produced by the growth plates themselves.”

Dr. Ballock and associates have focused on identifying the molecular signals that regulate the long bone growth in children. The results from the Ohio study “provide the first glimpse of the molecular pathways used by thyroid hormone to regulate endochondral ossification–the conversion of cartilage to bone–and to establish a new pattern for interpreting the roles of systemic hormones and peptide growth factors in regulating cell growth and differentiation during longitudinal bone growth in children.”

The experiments are clinically relevant because the process of endochondral ossification is “arguably the single most important biological pathway in orthopaedics,” said Dr. Ballock. This essential series of cellular events is responsible for the development of the skeleton in utero, results in the longitudinal growth of the limbs and trunk, and provides for the regeneration of bone tissue during fracture healing.”

By understanding the molecular signals that control this growth process, scientists will be able to devise more rational and specific medical and surgical therapies for abnormal long bone growth and dwarfism that affect children.

Next the researchers will pursue the hypothesis that dietary factors in obese children may interfere with the normal thyroid hormone signals to cause a growth plate disorder known as slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE). In this condition, the ball of the hip joint slips off its attachment to the thighbone. Some children with SCFE can develop a severe crippling form of hip disease for which there is no effective treatment.

Qian Chen, PhD, will receive the Young Investigator Award for his outstanding research on cartilage cell properties in skeletal diseases, including arthritis. Dr. Chen and his associates at Penn State have “identified several molecular markers of cartilage cell (chondrocyte) differentiation and demonstrated that these markers are expressed during skeletal development in the young and during osteoarthritis in older people.

“For a long time, it was very difficult to predict, prevent, or treat osteoarthritis because the mechanism of the disease was not known,” he said. “This difficulty stems from the lack of molecular markers of the disease and the lack of characterization of the step-by-step development of the disease.” Dr. Chen’s Musculoskeletal Research Laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey has conducted numerous cell culture experiments and animal studies and “is currently focusing on the regulation of the expression of proteins. If the researchers could determine how to inhibit the synthesis of these markers, they could potentially regulate or even prevent osteoarthritis which affects millions of Americans,” he said.

During the study of molecular regulation of chondrocyte differentiation, Dr. Chen and associates discovered that the “two key transitional points during the pathway, from proliferation to maturation, and from maturation to hypertrophy, are subject to regulation by mechanical stress and hormonal molecules.” An earlier study identified molecular markers that are express during chondrocyte differentiation-proliferation, maturation, and hypertrophy. They also identified “molecular properties of extracellular matrix proteins that are expressed specifically in these stages, including cartilage matrix protein, collagen type X, and type II.”

Supported by the National Institute on Aging of NIH and the Arthritis Foundation, the genetic engineering and cell culture studies have provided a significant amount of new information on the chondrocyte differentiation pathway. Their discoveries have revealed underlying mechanisms regulating chondrocyte differentiation” and may contribute to the development of drug therapy that would regulate cellular proliferation and prevent chondrocyte hypertrophy in osteoarthritis.”

Ultimately, the research findings may lead to profound implications for future analysis of cartilage health and maintenance, tissue engineering, and prevention and treatment of osteoarthritis.”

The Ann Doner Vaughn Award will be presented to Laurence E. Dahners, MD, and Gayle E. Lester, PhD, for laboratory research confirming that ligaments grow and contract throughout the structure of the ligament and not just at the growth plates. This finding opens the way for researchers to devise ways to induce ligament growth in structures that are too tight (contracted) or to tighten tissues that are too lax, said Dr. Dahners, professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Another possible therapeutic value would be to prevent a joint from getting stiff after an injury or to prevent a joint from becoming too lax after a sprain.

For their study, Dr. Dahners and Dr. Lester, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery and pharmacology, placed markers along the deltoid ligaments of seven five-week-old rabbits and then compared the amount of ligament growth between each set of markers in each rabbit’s deltoid ligament. This work “demonstrated that longitudinal ligament growth occurs interstitially rather than at a ‘growth plate’ or growth region,” said Dr. Dahners. In other studies involving rabbits, the researchers concluded “ligament growth is influenced by the application of constant longitudinal mechanical tension to the growing ligament. Mechanical stress seems to play an important rule in modulating growth. As well, the absence of stress has major importance in the development of contracture.

Dr. Dahners explained that ligaments which control joint motion and tendons which connect muscle to bone are made of a fiber called collagen and are in many ways like a rope. There is glue to hold the fibers together in the rope. The rope can shrink or stretch when the fibers slide past each other.

An abundance of evidence supports the hypothesis that changes in ligament length occur through the sliding of discontinuous fibrils past one another, reported Dr. Dahners. “During contracture, the contractile actin cytoskeleton of the fibroblasts is active and presumably provides the motive force in sliding the fibrils past one another while the ligament is shortening, he reported.”

Scientists will continue to research the nature of the “interfibrillar bonds” which bind one fibril to another to prevent sliding. As researchers identify ways to change the interfibrillar bonding, they then may be able to develop mechanisms to lengthen or shorten ligaments to treat patients’ medical conditions.

In their studies, systemic hormonal factors appeared to influence the growth of ligamentous tissue. However, it was locally mediated by mechanical tension, or lack of tension, which caused an increase or decrease in growth throughout the length of the ligament, reported Dr. Dahners.

Sometimes I am amazed as what I see when I manage to focus all of my attention on any type of issue related to height, even if the connection is very small. This is what happened yesterday, while I was walking through the famous COEX Mall that is located off of the Samseong Subway Station in Seoul, South Korea. I was having a rough day and I took my GF to the mall to walk around and as we walked around the a mall the sight of a young boy in crutches really caught my eye.

This young boy, who was very young was walking by himself on crutches and had one of his lower legs wearing one of the external fixators which I am so familiar with. The sight was so extraordinary, and when my GF say the metal device that had its metal spoke coming out of his skin, she expressed shock over the fact that this boy was walking around in public which his external fixator. For her, the sight was too disturbing. I felt a little bit of sadness over what this boy was going through. Personally I probably had more of an understanding of why he needed to get this procedure done.

It was clear that this boy was still very young, who was still growing. He was not using the method of distraction osteogenesis to make his legs longer, and look taller. He had a serious medical condition. Most of the procedures of distraction osteogenesis done is to correct for a difference in the length of a certain bone region between the left and right side of a person. You can do callotasis on more than just the long bones, but also the mandibular bone. One of his legs was shorter than the other. To walk with a more normal gait, his leg was being lengthened. I understood that there was a lot of pain associated with the process, but I have never experienced it myself.

This is the first time I have ever seen anyone were an external fixator out in public. However I am not that surprised to see it in a place like Seoul, South Korea. Seoul has been also the same place where I saw a case of a korean women who suffered from gigantism, multiple people suffering from albinism, one case of a person who suffered from Osteogensis Imperfecta (Refer to Sean Stephenson), and various types of achondroplasia and dwarfism. For a country that seems to pride itself on being so homogeneous and image conscious, there are many people who just don’t look ‘average’ whatever that means.

After see the young boy in the crutched, we actually went to donate blood. Apparently blood donating is a popular thing to do these days in Korea. Everyone there in the donation clinic seemed to know what their blood type is, except me. I was once told that my blood type is the most common type there is. The Asian fascination with blood type is something I probably won’t understand very well. It would turn out that my GF’s blood’s plasma is low on Calcium and that her blood did not have the requirements to make her a potential doner. This concerned me greatly, since she has been complaining about how her knees have been hurting for years, the symptom of cold knees, and the desire to be taller. Immediately I realized that there was a clear connection between her lack of calcium, the knee pain, and the cold knees.

How could a women desire to be taller and not even be able to have a sufficient level of Calcium and Vitamin D in her bones and system?

I would immediately take her to the GNC in the mall and tried to stock up on Calcium & Vitamin D 1500 MG as well as Glucosamine Sulphate & Chondroitin 1500 mg. Her resistance on spending $50 on these supplements which would help at least a little with the bone mineral density, combined with her strong desire to become taller, her choice on diet to avoid protein, and her symptom of having intense knee discomfort and cold knees is actually making me realize that she is asking for things in life which are in direct disagreement with each other. She doesn’t know about this website. She doesn’t realize that I have been dedicating for over a year of my life towards this goal, in not just figuring out how to increase height, but also in treating bone and orthopedic disorders. I know how to help her, but she just won’t listen to my advice. Maybe she thinks she is helping me save a little bit of money, but she is risking her own health, and her height by not fixing this problem.

I wrote about the issue of having low Calcium levels leading to severe height loss later in mid age due to menopause in the post The Connection Between Bone Loss From Osteoporosis And Decreases In Height In East Asian Females. The study Usefulness of Estimated Height Loss for Detection of Osteoporosis in Women showed that while a lose of 2-4 cm in height is normal, any more than 4 cms of height loss due to bone density decreases means that osteoporosis has set in. My biggest worry is that not only will she not increase in height, which she desperately desires, due to refusing to listen to my insistence on taking certain supplements to help improve the health of the knees, she is also going to risk getting osteoporosis due to diet choices causing the exact opposite effect for her. 

If she only knew what I know, and saw what I see.