For a long time I never believed in this idea that a heterosexual male could just go to the local gym and just “lift” his way to a level of physical attractiveness to compensate for his shorter than average height. It was something that was promoted by a large percentage of young teenage and adult males in the USA today, who treat exercise as a preferred form of hobby or past-time.

It seems that I might be wrong to a certain level. In doing research on what exactly women expect from potential romantic male partners, I came across media articles that referred to this one study done in Australis. From Business Insider, there was an article entitled “Women’s Standards Of Attractiveness Are As Unrealistic As Men’s“. The website for Bloomberg magazine also wrote about it entitled “Women Choose Mates by Shoulder Size First, Research Suggests.”

Out of over 100 female subjects (yes, I realize that the size is not that large) that were asked to judge the male form for attractiveness, it seems that shoulder-to-waist ratio was the most determinant factor, followed in second by height, and third by male genitalia size. Related to this subject, there might be evidence that have a shoulder/waist ratio close to the golden ratio may be the best for attractiveness, which is 1.618. This means you measure the width of your shoulders to the width of your waist.

For the longest time, there were always anecdotal evidence spoken by females who were asked about what they found physically attractive in males. They would say that having wide, broad shoulders was one of the key components. This 2013 study seems to confirm this theory.

So how does this help the guy who might have stopped growing taller, but obviously want to go to the gym to make themselves more appealing to the opposite sex?

It seems to be linked to the level of testosterone in a males body again. I found out back in the 2012-2014 time that there is an ideal range of testosterone that should be going through a guy’s body around puberty to make them above average in height. The level of T should be higher than average, but not too high.

What is well known from a study in anatomy is that even after the growth plates in the young guys’ body are gone which contribute specifically for vertical growth, the sternum area is still however cartilage, specifically fibrocartilage. It seems that if the young male has a high level of T, that testosterone will in fact cause the fibrocartilage to expand, which will cause the overall skeleton to grow in width. This creates the wider torso, broader shoulder look. This is what happens when basketball scouts say that the rail skinny tall nba draft pick will eventually fill out. When the vertical growth has stopped, then the width growth starts, expanding the rib cage, and thus the overall upper region of the shoulders.

However, that fibrocartilage in the sternum doesn’t last forever either. Around the age of say 25-27, that cartilage also starts to ossify. This means that if you wanted to expand your torso and make your shoulders bigger and wider, you need to do it in your early 20s to mid 20s.

The best type of exercise which I can recommend anyone, specifically young adult guys around the age of 18-26, who is looking to make themselves have large shoulders, is to focus on just 3 exercises. 1) swimming (specifically the fly stroke), 2) pull ups and 3) shoulder flys.

Now, let’s remember the golden ratio. One need to combine the width shoulders with a narrow waist, which means that they should combine it with the following 2 types of exercise to narrow their waist. 1. Abdominal/Core exercises 2) Cardio (You might not even need cardio if you swim with high enough intensity to burn off the adipose tissue around the waist area).

Let’s remember the things we learned years before. Probably the most popular type of male body that girls want is the mesomorphic type, but more specifically the “swimmers’ build”. Swimmers get their body shape from swimming. If I could just compact down my recommendation for the 1 type of exercise a young adult guy can do to make themselves more attractive to the females, it would be to focus on swimming, and swim with high intensity.

For the longest time, I said that bodybuilding and weightlifting is a waste of time and stupid and doesn’t work in making the females more attracted to the guy, since I knew for a fact that exercise will not make a short guy taller. I thought that height was the most important factor in female attraction.

That may not be the complete picture here. Height is indeed critical and important, but a more accurate description of female attraction is being able to recognize in a guy the physical attributes from the male body to reveal that when that guy was going through puberty, they had the right level of testosterone going through their body. Females can biologically, instinctually recognize which males have the bodies which have the right proportion sizes.

It used to be in the 90s and 80s that the guy who gets the best looking females in the years of high school were football players, not basketball players. Basketball players are on average taller than football players, but football players are much wider, thus wider in the shoulders than basketball players. However, I would be willing to guess that there would be a 60/40 ratio if a large number of females were asked to just whether they would prefer the 6′ 2″ football player body with a 1.6 shoulder-waist ratio to the 6′ 4″ basketball player with a 1.4 shoulder-waist ratio.

There does seem to a be a height cut-off point where the taller you are, the attraction from females actually decrease. There has always been at some level this image that the super tall thin guy is not as masculine (thus attractive) as the less tall, but still tall guy who has wider shoulders, and is buff.

So for the guys out there, I would suggest that one should focus on weightlifting or exercise in general to a certain point to help compensate for height, if they are shorter than average. And when I am talking about exercise, I am saying it to focus on just 2 results. 1) Increase the width of the shoulders and 2) decrease the width of the waist to the golden ratio. 1.6

Phase 1 – When you are still going through puberty and still growing vertically – Exercise Recommended – Swimming. It seems that swimming actually decrease the bone mineral density, which is something pediatricians are against, but from my personal research, the lower than average BMD is nothing to be worried about, since in the long term, that eventually increases as we get older to full adulthood.

Phase 2 – When you are just finished with growing taller and finished puberty – Exercise Recommended – High Intensity Swimming with the Fly stroke combined with pull ups and shoulder flys

Phase 3 – When you are around the age of 27 and older – Focus only on core exercises to decrease the waist measurement, since you can no longer increase the width of your shoulders, since the fibrocartilage have finally finishes ossifying around the ages of 26-27.

Here is where weightlifting aka bodybuilding fails, and doesn’t do anything. Do no do the following exercises, since they do nothing for you in the long term

• Squat
• Deadlift
• Bench press
• Bicep Curl -or any type of exercise that works the biceps
• Tricep Exercises
• Calf muscles exercises
• Leg presses

The exercise of squatting and deadlift is particularly useless and dangerous, to one’s back, hip, and knees. The exercises of bicep often cause tendonitis and bone spurs in the elbows and shoulder joint areas.

Remember that we are looking for “functional strength”. Functional strength refers to the strength that the rock climber gets from being able to lift their entire body weight over their head. Functional strength is what will make one light in weight, faster, and be more agile and quick on their feet. Functional strength is derived from using one’s own weight as the resistance to work one’s muscles. That is why I do not recommend exercising using barbells, dumbbells, and machines. Instead of lifting a weight in a predetermined path, one should be lifting and maneuvering a kettle bell.

Young men these days love to talk about their “gains” which I am guessing is just increases in the measurements of their muscles, but the increased muscularity is not what really attracts females, at least the majority of females. The real truth is that weightlifting and bodybuilding is something today’s young men do for themselves, to make themselves feel better about themselves, to give them the confidence, since exercise increases the level of testosterone and endorphins going through the body. It is more likely that the guy who is exercising to become extremely muscular is doing it to gain the admiration of other heterosexual males, rather than the sexual desire of females, since we are vane creatures and want to be admired, by both men and women.

If we look at pictures of say 2016 Arnold Schwarzenegger, we can see that all of his work in bodybuilding in his 20s to win those Mr. Olympia championships eventually were lost. Father time and mother nature takes away the “gains” we exercised for in our 20s and 30s. This is true for people like Ronnie Coleman, another former Mr. Olympia. His downfall with all his back and hip injuries show that weightlifting and bodybuilding is actually a very stupid, time wasting, and body damaging past-time which the American young adult men these days don’t realize yet.  All that hard work is removed when we get older. Remember that before Arnold came along in the 80s, and his Venice Beach Gold’s Gym time in the 70s and early 60s, exercise was actually not a very big thing.

It wasn’t until the 80s that exercise and the need to have a ripped, muscular body was considered attractive by both the American male and female demographic. However, being tall, and having broad, wide shoulder have always been.

I honestly believe that weightlifting and bodybuilding is a fad that will not stand the test of time. Exercise is here to stay since the benefits from cardio workouts are too beneficial, although cardio can be bad for the joints. That is why I suggest swimming as the best form of exercise.

The NBA just today tweeted a picture of the high flying NBA star Aaron Gordon’s shoes when they burst apart during a game. From my personal experiences, I immediately recognized that he is padding his shoes with insoles. However, when you study those insoles, you realize that they are not the normal type you wear to help with your orthotic medical conditions. These are basketball specific insoles, which absolutely NO sense.

Let’s summarize the information we do know about this kid Aaron Gordon.

He is listed at the height of 6′ 9″ on his current NBA basketball team. However, the website DraftExpress would reveal that his real height is 6′ 7.5″ when measured in the 2014 NBA Draft Combine. He wore shoes that gave him 1.25″ more inches, making him 6′ 8.75″, which is rounded up to 6′ 9″. Interestingly he was measured just 6′ 6″ just back in 2013. His maximum vertical at the combine was 39″, which is very respectable.

Let’s talk about the exact shoes he was wearing. They are known as the Hyperrevs, specifically a black-and-white Nike Zoom Hyperrev 2016 model. When you look for this specific model and what it looks like inside, you realize that it already has a Nike logo styled on the bottom of its designed insoles that is supposed to fit in there.

Let me show you guys a picture of what it looks like inside a Nike Lunar Hyperrev. This is what is supposed to look like below. Notice also how the broken Hyperrevs show that the insole inside is multilayered, and really thick. And that is just the front part. The way most insoles are designed, the front part is the most thin, and as you go back further, the insoles close to the heel become thicker, often over 0.5 an inch.

Here is the honest truth about these basketball insoles. You don’t need them. Nike is a multi-billion dollar company who has had over 30 years since riding the coat tails of Michael Jordan been designing and looking for better and better ways to make shoes that appeal to the basketball community. How is it not possible that Nike hasn’t already realized that the insoles of a basketball shoe is important and looked to make the absolutely most comfortable pair of insoles already embedded into the shoes, which accounted for shock absorption?

These Jordans are often over $500 each pair. There is absolutely no doubt that the insoles in the shoes from the factory in China are already the best there is. You can’t design anything else to be better. The issue of shock absorption, which is marketed in the insole community is already mitigated by the factory built Nike shoes.

Aaron Gordon don’t need those insoles and he knows it. In fact, based on my experience playing basketball, the more weight a shoe has, the less you can jump. This kid is putting extra insole into his shoes for reasons that are not based on basketball. It would be a better advantage for him to not wear those insoles, for less weight, better maneuverability, less chance of a ankle break, and higher verticals.

I am calling this kid out for being busted. It is similar to how the founder of LiftKits Derek White told his story of how he learned about one of the dirty secrets of the modeling world when he saw a fellow model stuff his shoes with insoles to make himself look taller. (Youtube video source here)

I would like to mention that there is even more dirty little tricks in the basketball community to the frequent readers.

Have you guys ever heard of height increasing socks? 

I have, and I have seen these height increasing socks in action. They were revealed in one specific combine measurements. Let me tell you guys who I am talking about. I am referring to the rookie Devin Booker. From 2014 to 2015, his measured height without shoes went from 6′ 5.25″ to 6′ 4.5″.

When you look at this kid next to the 6′ 3.5″ tall NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with a google search, you realize that this kid is not the 6′ 6″ that is listed on his NBA profile.

So how is it possible that a person’s height can change a full 0.75″ of an inch from one year to the next, downwards??? – Some people would obvious state the principle of diurnal variation where one’s height can change through the day. However, the NBA draft has already realized this specific phenomena, and taken that factor into consideration. All measurements in terms of height, reach, vertical, and hand size are measured early in the morning right out of bed. If you guys don’t believe me, there is a youtube video of Blake Griffin getting measured out and you can clearly see when they measure out his height to be between 6′ 8.5″-6′ 8.75″. It is done right after a night’s sleep. Diurnal variation was accounted for.

Height is never supposed to decrease, especially in your early 20s and the start of your basketball career. When you as a potential NBA player is getting that last final height measurement done to see whether those team scouts and general managers think highly of you, I don’t think any player is ever willing to make themselves shorter than they really are. Who would ever bend their knees when on the stadiometer?

Even a 1 inch drop in height from what was perceived before means losing millions of potential earning dollars in one’s basketball career. Quite a few scouts and analysts noticed this strange drop in height without shoes and couldn’t understand it.

There has been a similar case which I have heard of reported maybe 3-4 years back about a South Korean male when being drafted into the military service whose measured height dropped from 1.86 meters tall to 1.81 meters tall from one year to the next. It is not because of a supernatural phenomena.

Well, it is those socks. You have these crazy socks which are probably made in Japan or South Korea which gives you the impression of being taller than you really are, even after taking off your shoes. It is well known that in many Asian cultures, you have to be constantly taking off your shoes for many normal everyday events. You can’t wear lifts in the shoes, since it is too obvious. The next most obvious thing is to wear height increasing socks.

Yes, they are available on Amazon but you would be better to be looking on AliExpress and/or Alibaba for a pair to try out if you want to really hide what you are doing.

Years ago when I was learning how to be good with women by getting sucked into the Pick-Up-Artist industry (2009-2011), I was walking with this guy I met online while we were looking for cute girls to talk to and maybe get a date with.

He made this off handed remark which has stayed with me for a long time which only I have now understood and fully agree with years later.

This is what he said. He asked me the question.. “What is one simple thing girls (assuming ‘white” american here) can do which can make themselves look at least twice as attractive as before?”

I didn’t know. He said “Dye their hair blonde”. 

For a $20 investment, and 30 minutes of work, which is just waiting for the peroxide to kick in and bleach the hair a lighter color, the effects are quite dramatic. Just a few days ago I saw this Youtube video where this Youtuber calling herself Hayley Quinn did a Social Experiment to see if she would get treated differently when she has her normal brown/brunette hair and then with a blonde hair wig.

The effects were dramatic. You can watch it here.

As a guy who has gone through the long process of maturity to becoming a guy who understands the mating game, I can say with completely confidence that the effect is real. This is the pareto princple, 80/20 rule personified. 

With a new hair color, the woman who has done it goes through a substantial increase in confidence and maybe even power over the opposite sex.

So what can a guy do which can give a similar effect, which has just as much of a difference as blonde hair on a woman?

Increase their height, at least temporarily by 2 inches. This means wearing lifts, which gives them slightly more height.

Keep in mind, that this only works for people who are not already tall. We are talking about men below the height of 6′ 3″.

I may have said once before that the optimum height of a guy is 6′ 6″, but that number has been reconsidered. I would now venture that the optimum height for an American guy in the modern day is actually 6′ 4″, maybe 6′ 5″ for the taller females. Once a guy reaches the 6′ 5″ mark, there might even be a slight drop in compatibility with female responses, since that may cause some girls to consider the guy too tall.

2 inches may not seem like a lot, but it really is. Going from 5′ 10 to 6′ 0″ is a dramatic difference. It could mean being agreeable to 30% of females on a dating website to being agreeable to 70%.

Remember of course the limitations. Similar to bottle derived blonde hair, the very quick, cheap, easy technique done will eventually run out and the real, form reveals itself eventually. One has to come clean eventually. However, by the time the other person likes you, they would probably forgive you for your “trick” in the beginning. You can justify your actions by saying something like “everyone when they first meet someone wants to make the best first impression, especially on a first date.” Remember “ask for forgiveness, not for permission”

However, we are talking about a quick, instant change in results thing a guy can do. To increase one’s attractiveness by at least 2X, wear lifts. If lifts from BIg Dons is too expensive, buy a couple of insoles from your local Walmart or Target for $8 each. It will give almost a full 1 inch total. Put insoles in one’s shoes to make one look taller and converse with the opposite sex to see if there is any noticeable change in results.

Yes, this is a crutch, similar to how females will put on makeup and then dye their hair is a crutch. They also like to put on 4 inch heels ala Taylor Swift, and know since they were 12 years old about how to take good pictures (in the right angles) to enhance their strengths and hide their weaknesses. The whole point is this. Girls knows all sorts of tricks since they were little to make themselves much more attractive and get guys to want them. That is what those women magazines are about.

The whole metaphysical idea known as “beauty” is something that is pursued by females in almost all cultures and societies, even in the jungles of the Amazon, Papua New Guinea, and the deserts of Namibia. The desire to be attractive is critical, and often turns obsessive for a very large percentage of each society.

How many do most guys know? – Only 4. What are the 4?

1. Lift/Workout/Have a more muscular body – $30/mth in gym membership
2. Spend $200-$500 to get a new wardrobe. aka Have a fashion sense/style
3. Get a professional haircut – $70/mth
4. Buy nail clippers and hair trimmer to keep the beard/moustache/nails trimmed, groomed, and clipped. – $20 one time investment

However, the problem is that 70% of all modern American guys in the ages of 18-30 are already doing that, at least the normal guys who want to attract the beautiful women into their lives. If every other young adult single guy in your department is doing the same thing as you as written in GQ (aka Lift, Fashion, Groom), how can a man stand apart from them? – By going the extra mile to do things which other men still have a mental resistance against.

Here is the list of things I suggest

1. Eyebrow shaping/threading/waxing – I was very surprized how just 1 session of eyebrow trimming improved my appearance.
2. Men’s Makeup – I suggest the Korean BB Cream for men. It is a primer/moisturizer, foundation, and concealer all in one.
3. Once a month spa treatment
4. Stud earrings – check out what the professional athletes are wearing
5. Get some really good dress shoes. That old 90s stereotype that women will judge a guy based on his shoes is actually true, at least for older adult professional women. Shoes guys. There is a reason why there is a multi-billion dollar industry around just shoes in the world.
6. Slight bit of accessorizing – I suggest a good 2 mm thick silver colored necklace and nice watch. Stay classy.
7. Last but not least, what I have said in this article. Wear some lifts to give you 1-2 of extra height. 3 inches over will be too much. That is too obvious. Don’t be a Robert Downey Jr. and wear 4 inch boots that make you look like a stripper.

This stuff applies to men and women. When you look good, you can feel good. That increased level of physical looks will give any person a slight boost in confidence. When they walk around, people will unconsciously assume that they are taller than they really are.

There was a famous study done where a professor, graduate student, and TA teaching the same course who were all the same height were asked by the university lecture of 300+ students what the students thought their heights were. The professor was unconsciously believed to be slightly taller than the other 2, based on status alone. Guys, use that to your advantage. If you are 5′ 11″, you can get away claiming you are 6′ 0″ if you dress well, have good posture, and exhude a level of poise and confidence.

Some people like to compare breast size of women to height of men. Those two things are not comparable. They are apples and oranges.

• The average cost for a breast enhancement is $7,500-$12,500 and 2 weeks of rehabilitation.A female can be completely flat chested but it just take a 1-2 hour surgical procedure to get a none-cup to a perfectly acceptable C-cup.
• The average cost for limb lengthening surgery to be say 3 inches taller at least in the USA is $50,000-$75,000 and at least 6-9 months of rehabilitation.  If a guy was 5′ 3″, it would require a full 8 inches of lengthening to get to just the average of 5′ 11″. Even then his arms and whole body might look completely out of proportion to the legs that were lengthened.

There are potential complications with both of these types of surgeries, which I will not say which one is more serious and risky.

Breast size is easy to change and almost accepted now. Surgery to increase height is almost never even considered. If it is, people think you are crazy.

• You can’t compare height to breast size.
• Plus, you can’t compare height to weight.
• The best analogy I have been able to think of so far is height to skin color.
• Just as women judge a guys height, and it is hard to change, men do judge women for their skin color and that is something they can’t change, but only hide.

Play the games to win because life is short, your time is limited, and rarely will you get a 2nd chance, a do over in anything. Life is a test and you can’t call in sick. Everyone has to play this game with what they got. Maybe you didn’t win the genetic lottery in being tall, but there are things you can do. If you are born ugly, go to South Korea and look to get some plastic surgery. I fully recommend it.

Don’t cheat or trick, but do realize that there are small tweaks and adjustments you can do to increase the odds for you dramatically.

For men, I will always stress the point of height first. It is true that height is something we don’t have much control over. This site is to give ideas and methods to minimize this factor. Get this 1 factor down, and you will have increased your chances just like when a girl dyes her hair blonde.

I was informed by this post in LimbLengtheningForum.com that VICE themselves have started to look into the biotech revolution that is going on. I talked about CRISPR-Cas9 extensively already, but VICE has also started to report on it, like all of the other major news sites.

Apparently a rep from VICE, a Isobel Yeung interviewed the people who had their babies gender determined by The Fertility Institute with Dr. Steinberg. The Process is called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). It is similar to the older methods where lab technicians will look through the millions of sperms that the male partner has donated and choose the most strong, alive sperm to inject into the female egg.

I personally was not able to get a copy of this HBO VICE episode but apparently some rep of the Fertility Institute did say that you can ask to have children that are tall. Now in 2016, it is already possible for potential future parents to ask the doctors to specifically select for a eye color.

Given what I know about humans, the parents will probably ask for either green or blue eyes, since those colors are unique. So this couple, Deborah and Jonathan got to choose their babies gender (girl) and eye color. If they were given the option to choose for height, they definitely would have. It seems that the VICE rep Isobel was absolutely hooked on the idea that you can make 99.97% sure that you can have your kids to turn out much taller than they would have if you just let nature and randomness talk is course.

The time frame for that ability to choose height in their designer babies: 5 years. That’s it, as predicted by Dr. Steinberg.

Personally I am not sure how the gene editing technicians can get the height thing down. The only gene that has been definitively discovered which has any effect on height is the HMGA2 gene, which required that you have two of these gene alleles.

In one of the pictures, Isobel is pictured with CTO Cunxiang Ju at the National Resource Center for Mutant Mice in Nanjing, China, where they use CRISPR technology to edit the genes of mice. This was all from the DailyMail UK article available here.

From the article…

….”Isobel noted that the process is fairly inexpensive, costing only about $150 for the CRISPR Cas-9m protein, which uses molecular blades to make cuts in host DNA, and getting a syringe. 

As part of its 2011 plan, China has devoted more than $350 billion to biotechnology. At the National Research Center for Mutant Mice in Nanjing, China, CRISPR technology is now being used to edit the genes of mice in an effort to isolate desired traits, and the facility can hold up to 450,000 mice. 

Isobel said that the lab is testing mice for everything from the jet lag gene, which regulates sleep and wake rhythms, to obesity and diabetes. The correspondent noted that there is even a ‘boy genius’ in China who is trying to find a gene to that correlates to intelligence. She added that the research has huge potential to cure diseases and help humans evolve.”…

Nations like China and Russia, which is basically run like the former Soviet Union are definitely going to push ahead to get people of certain traits. They are trying to make ultra-tall, ultra-smart humans. This sounds like sci-fi and it may lead to a dystopian type of society Gattaca style, but that is the way human progress moves, which is to unrelentlesslly push forward.

Is this a good thing? I can not question the ethics of this thing since no matter how the USA physicians debate and agree on a decision, these other countries will push forward. Humans have almost a perfect history of trying to break the rules of nature, to get our own way.

If it is true that within 5 years, parents will be able to make sure their children turns out tall, imagine what else can be done in 25 years. I am absolutely sure that in 25 years, designer babies will become a culturally accepted phenomena.

In some ways, it could be a good thing if we think in terms of 19th century pseudo-scientific eugenics philosophy. (I know, this sounds slightly racist.)

Here are the facts.

• Blonde color in hair is recessive and is slowly disappearing through normal pairing and breeding.
• In the USA alone, 70% of “blonde” hair females are not real, but come from a bottle/dye/stylist. This is due to waves of different groups of people pairing off who arrived in the USA, since the USA is a country of immigrants. It was well known in the early 20th century that Italian, Spanish, and South European men with dark/black hair and brown eyes loved women with “blonde” hair, and pair bonded with them. This is true still in the modern age, where there is enough anecdotal evidence that Middle Eastern men, South Asian men, and African American men all have a above average predilection for girls who have outer physical traits which are only available from ethnic groups in Northern Europe. This meant that 100 years later, the mixing of “white” people has resulted in this recessive hair color being extremely rare.
• Ginger hair are even more recessive and more rare.
• More than 80% of the world has brown eyes while is it is only in the Caucasian “race” that we have any type of eye color variation (hazel, green, blue, amber, etc.) This includes ethnic groups that extend into the middle east, and the central asian countries.
• It is almost an absolute certainty that at the rate which caucasians are pairing with non-caucasians, the traits like blonde or ginger hair and non-brown eye colors will disappear within a few generations.
• It was discovered that there is a genetic basis for the stereotype of Northern Europeans being tall, which is validated. Northern Europeans are traditionally taller than most other ethnic groups in the world (except for certain pockets of tribes), which means that for males of that group, females of other races/ethnic groups would have a natural desire to mate with them, looking for their height genes for their offspring.

If the entire world only had brown eyes and black hair, wouldn’t it be boring, from a taxonomic point-of-view?

Maybe this whole trend of allowing parents to choose their babies would allow for the recessive traits of already extremely unique human traits to come back, in greater concentration?

In the modern age, we preach that we should love diversity and be able to appreciate all the different colors and shapes that humans come in. However, because we are so accepting and loving of all the colors, by the act of miscegenation, we are in fact pushing the world towards a state of blandness, where there is no differences anymore, once everyone has mixed together and we all look the same again, in say 200 years time.

I am not suggesting that due to a few hundred years of imperial influence by europeans that every single parent in the coming decade will wish for their kids to have rare traits like ginger hair and green eyes, and european/caucasian features, even with Asian or African American parents. That would be odd. What I am suggesting is that the parents will definitely want to go with tall stature/above average height, and increased raw IQ points, to make sure that their kids get as much of an advantage as possible to other children.

Update 12/10/2015: The Twitter Account of EpiBone actually wrote a response back to our tweet of its original reply. Technically, they did not confirm it. We corrected that error. My personal interpretation of what they said, if the reply is real, is that the representative from EpiBone said the theoretical tissue engineering is possible. We might have read too far into that message. They technically did not confirm my hypothesis. Semantics 🙂

Sometimes I have to give a lot of credit to the readers and this one goes to someone who actually did something. They contacted the people at EpiBone and asked a simple question.

What I proposed in previous posts about the research (and application) Dr. Warren Grayson and company was working on, and how it applies to making people with no growth plates taller, was I telling the truth?

Someone named BD wrote and got a reply. Like I said, it would take years. The answer is always “years into the future”. How many years? Me being an optimist, I say 20-25 years. However, biomedical research based companies who were started by Ph.D/Academics from universities are usually very cautious and slow. More likely, assuming the rate of technological growth, It would be another 40 years or so.

When I first started writing on the website, I remember that people were talking about this supplement combination which was supposed to help you grow taller. M.E.N.S.

That was the acronym used for sleep, exercise, niacin, and melatonin. I wanted to talk about melatonin.

I recently started to take melatonin just to help me sleep and I remembered that I never really did much research on Melatonin. A quick Google Search on the link between melatonin and the possibility that it can help you grow taller reveals many of the older posts written maybe 4–7 years ago, derived from the now dead GrowTallForum.com website.

People believed in this supplement combination. Melatonin was promoted a lot by people of that old forum because the thinking was that since it helps you sleep, and growth hormones are primarily released when you are sleeping, melatonin would mean you have a greater chance of having growth hormones being pushed into your system.

I looked at the link. Is there something there?

I refer to 7 studies, some of them recently published just in 2014.

• Increased melatonin concentrations in children with growth hormone deficiency.
• Geographical Distribution of Adolescent Body Height with Respect to Effective Day Length in Japan: An Ecological Analysis
• Melatonin enhances chondrogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells.
• Effect of Melatonin on the Proliferation and Differentiation of Chondrocytes from Rat Vertebral Body Growth Plate In Vitro
• Melatonin Modulates the Proliferation and Differentiation of Human Growth Plate Chondrocytes: Poster #311{Tyler-What’s notable about this study is that it states that Growth Plate Chondrocytes express two melatonin receptors MT1 and MT2.  It states that Melatonin stimulates the differentiation of GPCs but inhibits proliferation which could increase height as differentiation is more important than proliferation for height}
• Melatonin combined with treadmill exercise suppresses aberrant chondrocyte behavior in osteoarthritic cartilage via TGF-β1 upregulation (LB834)
• Abnormal Response of the Proliferation and Differentiation of Growth Plate Chondrocytes to Melatonin in Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis

The 3rd study suggests that Melatonin does have this ability to turn MSCs into the chondrogenic lineage. Other sources (#7) says that for the growing child, over-expression of melatonin in the system can cause abnormal chondrocyte growth. It turns out that young kids who have idiopathic scoliosis actually have longer bones (vertebral column and arm length) than their peers. The curvature of the vertebral is because the anterior region of the vertebral is growing faster than the posterior region.

Out of all of the 7 studies, I felt that study #1 was the most insightful.

Short stature is most often caused by 2 ways.

1. Idiopathic Short Stature (ISS)
2. Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD)

It seems that for children who suffer from GHD, they have GHD because of the overexpression of melatonin.

This means that based on this 1 studies, when we generalize the conclusion, it seems that having too much melatonin in the child’s system is bad for their height. However, this condition is something that can be medically treated, unlike ISS, which most family doctors would say makes the kids “genetically predisposed to be short later in life”.

So while MSCs might be helped slightly by Melatonin, too much Melatonin is a bad thing. Referring to study #5, the conclusion states the following for peri-pubertal children. – “These findings indicated that melatonin could inhibit the proliferation and stimulate differentiation of GPC (Growth Plate Chondrocytes) in human”{Tyler-Actually this could be a thing for a height growth as peak chondrocyte hypertrophy is more important than chondrocyte proliferation for peak height growth}

Taking Melatonin does not work. Try to figure out another type of supplement to take to sleep easier.