This seems like a reasonable question to ask when a person who is past bone maturity and physeal ossification is interested in learning how they can grow taller.

Well, to answer this question, there are many factors and variables we have to take into consideration. It is really hard to give a definite answer, although I have stated before that we might be as close as 15 years away from some commercial company developing the technology to do that. On the other end, it could be as far away as 50-70 years, assuming that the rate of progress continues for the fields of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, 3D Bio-printing, and stem cell R&D. Let’s remember that the rate of scientific/technological progress for the biological sciences and biomedical application does not follow the trajectory of Moore’s Law, unlike electronics and Computer Science. To make progress and breakthroughs in BIology is extremely resource/financially intensive, unlike CS, which often just requires a programming wunderkid sitting in his underwear in his dorm room eating Cheetos.

I revealed in a post a month ago about the company EpiBone who is developing osteochondral grafts as implants which has as an advisor Dr. Warren Grayson, who I have said since 2013 is one of maybe 6-7 researchers in the world we should be following. Refer to the post “EpiBone Company To Engineer Osteochondral Grafts – Research Breakthrough!“. The company reveals that there are definitely plenty of people who realizes that there is a huge financial incentive to get this technological problem to work out. There has already been at least 1 patent filed by the research group at EpiBone on how to use a bioreactor to build bone tissue. Refer to “Methods, Devices and Systems for Bone Tissue Engineering Using a Bioreactor – US20120035742 A1”

Let’s now look at the research of Dr. Robert Tracy Ballock, who I have said is the other main researcher we should be following. His work has been on the Growth Plate for the last 15 years or so. He has been working with Dr. Eben Alsberg, who showed that it was possible to growth a functional growth plate. Refer to his grant on Growth Plate Regeneration available here. Further searching on this grant and his work shows that there was 2 grants, one for the 2012-2013 period, and a 2nd grant for the 2013-2014 time frame. (2012-04-11 – 2014-09-30). If you search around the internet for any new academic papers published under Dr. Ballock’s name, he has not published anything for this year, or even late 2014. I would guess that he is finished with his research from the grant which lasted 2 years and plans to write something up. There might even be a Patent application that is filed from his research soon. Whatever he has found, he is not revealing it yet, at least not to the general public.

3 months ago there was a biomedical conference where a university researcher named Dr. Juan Taboas (Ph. D) presented his work called “Repair and Regeneration of the Physis” at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. Just two months ago, the video of his presentation was available for the general public to watch, but now that video has been set to private and one requires a password to watch the video. I did watch maybe the first 5 minutes of the presentation, which was over 1 hour long. There was a video/audio syncing problem so I was not able to record the presentation back then. The part I watched was not that informative and did not reveal too much about his current research.

The abstract of his talk is below…

Physeal regeneration poses a considerable challenge in orthopaedic regenerative medicine. The physis is the cartilaginous interfacial structure at the ends of the long bones that produces appendicular skeleton growth. Fracture, infection, and cancer can result in limb deformity and loss with significant morbidity and medical cost despite their status as rare disorders. Dr. Taboas and his research group are developing hydrogel and stem cell based point-of-care therapies to prevent and repair limb growth disruption in pediatric patients, and for endochondral repair of large boney defects in children and adults. They are currently evaluating the effect of hydrogel composition and zonal patterning on construct growth and architecture maintenance in an in vivo murine subcutaneous implantation model. These techniques may be applied to regenerate other skeletal tissues that require appropriate interfaces with bone for proper function, such as articular cartilage and ligament.

Here is something that the average reader needs to understand. There is a branch (or maybe sub-branch) in the medical research fields known as Orthopaedic Research. Technically, orthopaedic research refers to diseases and injuries of bones, joints, nerves, and muscles. However, there what is not written, but also implied is the cartilage and the tendons as well. Keep this note in mind as we go further along.

When I was at the 2nd Organ-On-A-Chip and 3D Bioprinting Conference in Boston a month ago, there was a presenter at the conference who revealed that she and her group was working on getting stem cells to build tendon tissue. Tendon tissue is what connects muscle tissue to bone tissue. It is similar to cartilage, because of the high level of collagen, although not the same type of collagen. Her presentation was ” Engineering Tissue Microenvironment Informed by Development, Healing and Disease”. Refer to Catherine Kuo, Assistant Professor at Tufts University. Apparently, she got her postdoctoral training in the Cartilage Biology and Orthopaedics Branch at the NIAMS of the NIH. The last I heard, she was changing positions to a different university. This shows that the field of stem cell technology is being applied to form every type of tissue.

There was a paper that was being passed around at the conference which asked all the people at the conference what type of tissue they planned to use the 3D Bioprinter on. The type of tissue that was most often formed from the 3D Printers was cartilage. Not bone, not vascular tissue (blood vessels like capillaries), not tendons, but cartilage. This reveals something critical. It seems that all of the major researchers understand what would be the easiest type of tissue one can print using this new form of technology. Everyone is thinking the same thing, and we are almost all pursueing the same idea: Cartilage.

I would guess that a large percentage of the research done in this well known field known as orthopaedics is on cartilage research, specifically cartilage growth and regeneration.

So what does Dr. Grayson, and Taboas have in common?

It turns out that they both were all at the 2011 Termis Regenerative Medicine Conference in Houston. Their names was on the list of Attendees. I was supposed to go to the 2015 Termis Conference in Boston, but the cost was just too high for me. Dr. Atala of Wake Forest was going to be there. If you plan to take this type of research seriously, you have to spend the money (about $2,000) to attend these types of exclusive conferences to learn what the real academic researchers are working on.

What about Dr. Ballock?

He is a medical doctor as well as a researcher since he has both a Ph. D.and M.D. (Smart guy). Like all academic researchers, he is involved in a lot of societies and academic groups. I am sure he flies around a lot to give presentations and talks in various conferences and conventions. Back in 1998 he was at this conference called “Bioengineering & Orthopedic Science – Gordon Research Conference” which is now known as “Musculoskeletal Biology & Bioengineering”. It was held from July 26-31 in Andover, New Hampshire. He gave a talk called “”Control of Cell Proliferation in the Growth Plate”. It seems that for almost 2 decades this guy has been working on getting the growth plate to work out. He was involved in this multidisciplinary conference back in 2008 called the “Cleveland Clinic Cartilage Innovation Summit”. The conference was basically a group of researchers gathering to talk about the subject of “The Clinical Science and Outcomes of Cartilage Repair, Maintenance, Regeneration and Replacement”.

So What Am I Trying To Conclude From All This Information?

Some people who are in industry who focus mainly on earning income and profit for their employers and no longer in academics (who focus mainly on the research, discovery, and learning more) would say that something along the lines that all the breakthrough research discoveries one finds in the university lab is still useless if one chooses not to bring their findings into real application and shared with the rest of the world.

This applies to the field of Orthopedics (and most any other type of medical research). What I have found in the last 6 months from attending the conferences which talk about the rising field of 3D Printing, and specifically 3D Printing applied to tissue formation is that the researchers in the university labs are trying their hardest to bring their research to the public.

Dr. Grayson is going to help EpiBone succeed in getting bone implants to work. There is already too many companies who have gotten the theory and science down on getting lab grown stem cell derived bone tissue to be reimplanted into the subjects body with complete success. The 1st step in getting bone tissue to be grown from stem cells or mesenchymal stem cells has been multiple times with the academic researchers forming companies to get their research out to possibly make them millionaires. There is no problem with this since the academics see a way to make personal gain from their years of hard work and research.

When we then move towards the 2nd/next step of getting fibrocartilage to be printed from lab grown pieces of cartilage or chondrocyte, there are labs like Dr. Atala or Dr. Lawrence Bonassar who have already achieved that too. You have seen many pictures of the outer ear lobe being grown in the labs in cultures and even on the backs of lab mice. The same can be said about nose tips, which are also fibrocartilage.

The 3rd step is to get Hyaline Cartilage to be printed or grown in the lab. We are getting super close to getting Hyaline cartilage to be printed. There were 2 exhibitors at the Organ-On-A-Chip Conference, (Cellink and RoosterBio) who would be able to provide the raw materials, cell culture medium and seed mesenchymal stem cells, to let any professional lab to play around to eventually get the lamellar structure of hyaline structure to work out. I would be willing to guess that by the time the 2020 Termis World Conference comes around, we would have succeeded there.

Should we try to the traditional seed stem cell into scaffold method or should we try the more revolutionary way of growing cartilage tissue from scratch using the 3D Bioprinter? – We would have to make that decision eventually.

The 4th step would be to get Epiphyseal Hyaline Cartilage to be grown/printed. Ballock has been working on this problem for 20 years. He got a grant for the 2012-2014 time frame to go research on growth plate regeneration. It is not just him who is working on getting this thing to work out. In the grant, he wrote that if he is successful, the growth plate regeneration technology can be used by people who have already reached bone maturity. He knows what his research would mean and how it would effect the public.

Of course, orthopaedic research and development is something that thousands of people around the world are working on. He is not the only one trying to get growth plate regeneration to work out.

• There has been teams in Hong Kong who got the chondrocyte implantation idea to work back in the early 2000s. Based on certain Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) I signed early on, I can not reveal the exact details of those studies, only to say that the experiments were done and were successful.
• I revealed early on, in the late 2012 that there were military hospitals in China who have gotten growth plate transplantations to be successful. Where did they get the growth plate in the first place is still suspicious though.
• I wrote about the fact that even plastic surgeons in Russia, like Dr. Teplyashin have gotten the scaffold technique to be successful but this controversial technique is probably only offered to Russian millionaires in secret for maybe $200 K a pop. They got it to work out in sheep, but that doesn’t mean they have ever performed the same surgery on humans.

The truth is that we are getting quite close, with the best option being people like Ballock. If he is willing to write up his results from his work for the last 3 years, and take those results and form a company around it to develop growth plates grown out of scratch (ie 3D Printed) or based on the traditional tissue engineering method using scaffolds and growth factors, he would have something working in 10-15 years. Of course I could be way too optimistic.

To answer the original question, I would make a very tentative guess based on the idea of Kurzweil’s Law of Exponential Growth, if someone like Ballock is willing to form a company around his discoveries and try to bring it to public, we would have a limb lengthening alternative based on 3D Bioprinting, Stem Cells and Scaffolds, and tissue Engineering within 10-15 years with enough funding. When it comes to funding, I would say that biomedical engineers and researchers would need maybe at least $100-$300 Mil to get this procedure out to public. So who is willing to fund this type of project?

This is sort of old news but it is sometimes still worth mentioning. Back in March of this year there was another story that came out of a person who got cosmetic limb lengthening surgery. Unlike most of the people you hear about, this person was a girl.

While it is not very often we find girls who decide to go through with the surgery, there have been enough cases of girls who do it for the prospect of becoming a model. This girl fits that type of case study.

We refer to this article from Mirror, which is a UK based type media outlet/source. – http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/aspiring-model-spends-thousands-surgery-5115453

A 5′ 4″ tall aspiring model Alexandra Transer got the surgery done for a supposed 6,000 pounds and she has already gotten 6 cms out of it. She comes from a family of people who are below statured. Her mother is 5′ 2″ and her father is 5′ 5″. She chose not to go to University but work for her father in Engineering and saved up the 6,000 UK pounds to get the surgery.

She had wanted to be a model for most of her life, but when she contacted a modeling agency, they told her that she was below the height requirement and that the only way for her to get to that strict modeling height requirement was to extend her legs. She decided to do just that and went through with it, which we found very impressive and brave.

This first surgery she has decided to do is one of a total of 3 planned. There is supposed to be 2 more surgeries she will go through which will eventually put her at 6 feet. Her estimated time frame is that the 3rd surgery will be done by 2018. She will be in her 30s by then and may not get any type of modeling work but she did say that she plans to dye her hair blonde and then feel like a model being tall and blonde.

It seems that maybe what she really wants is to feel beautiful. On this website, we don’t judge. Vanity is something we all go through.

Some new information we learned is that she is actually from Russia herself, Volgograd. For anyone familiar with the LLS community, Volgograd is actually really famous because of the Centre of Anthropometrical (Orthopaedical) Cosmetology and Correction. Refer to Dr. Alexander Barinov and Dr. Viktor Shatov, of the center RUCOSM. Dr. Alexander Barinov is famous for being a protege and student to the more legendary Dr. Yegorov.

She mentioned that a former Soviet Athlete, a Valery Brumel, got this type of surgery done on them in 1968. Why did this olympic athlete get it done back in the 60s? We don’t know about that. I personally suspect that one of the reasons she was willing to go through with the surgery unlike so many other people who wish to be taller but are too afraid of surgery is because she comes from Russia, and specifically her home town has one of the most popular and recognizable centers for height increase surgery in the world. I am sure her parents at first was very reserved in her desires but they probably had a better understanding for why she would go through with it than other parents. Since they are from Russia originally, going a center like RUCOSM would not be as difficult of a transition as other people from other countries who might know any of the local Russian customs or language. Maybe for this girl, going to get limb lengthening surgery is as simple as driving the 3 miles to one’s local gym center to exercise.

Based on current conversion rates, it seems like she paid about $9,400 USD to get the first surgery.

We here have done our own level of research on LLS, and the cost of it. Most people have said that the cost of getting LLS is usually about $50,000 with a trip to one of the more well known, reputable surgeons costing upwards of $100,000 with everything covered, for maybe 10 cm or 4 Inches of increase in the leg bones. The lowest cost I personally have heard of was around $10,000 for the cost of surgery from a former Chinese surgeon. The reduced price of getting one’s leg extended seems to suggest that the cosmetic procedure may be becoming much more prevalant. That may be a good thing for some people who really want to go through with it and are looking for a cheaper alternative.

When we looked at the cost for LLS back in 2011, it seems that the cost was around 12,000 Euros, at least in the RUCOSM center, in Volgograd. Our source was from the Short Support Group website. The 12,000 euros cost was supposed to cover pretty much everything, including a 3 month stay. Of course, from the RUCOSM website, they state that for each surgery, they can only increase one’s bone length by 7-9 cm maximum. This is why Alexandra needed 3 total surgeries, to gain 8 inches or 20 cms of height to reach her desired goal of 6 feet tall from her original 5′ 4″. For her, she was very happy with the results, and there were no complications.

Refer to here for an interview with Dr. Barinov.

Note what he claimed for the cost of the surgery

• How much does the height increasing procedure cost? – Dr.Yegorov works with different clinics, both state and private. The total cost of the procedure including all necessary expenses is from $15,000 to $30,000 US dollars depending on the clinic and the accommodation and service conditions.

We would say that $10,000 USD is a little unrealistic of cost. A more reasonable cost would be probably $25,000 and that would just be for 7-8 cms of increase, assuming that no complications are developed.  Of course those will be 2011 prices. Since it is 2015, We should expect maybe $30-35 K in fees in total. How Alexandra was able to just pay $10,000 we are not sure. Maybe she got her surgery done in the UK, and not Russia. Maybe instead of paying the thousands of dollars in fee for staying at the hospital facility to recuperate, she was able to have someone take her to her home in Volgograd (which might just be a few blocks away) during that time, allowing her to save thousands in hospital fees.

It is the year 2015 but sometimes the best content to explain one’s frustrations in life was already discussed and worked out years before. Let’s rewind time. In 2001, the underground Pick-Up-Artist community was just starting out in online forums and discussion boards. The internet was the tool that allowed many sub-cultures to develop from people of similar interests, passions, and obsessions to come together to discuss the issues that concerned them the most.

Trying to meet, and attract beautiful women to date, have sex with, and marry has been a desire and focus for young men of our species since time began. Young men has always desired to find some type of magic spell or potion to get attractive girls to like them as much as they like the girls. When two females get together, almost always inevitably the conversation lead to talking about dating, sex and relationships. Relationships are complicate, just like the desires, needs, and hangups in people. This is why humans find inter-dynamic drama between humans so interesting. Psychology is well known as one of the most common college majors because people are so fascinated with themselves and how their own minds work. We are the subject of most of our fascination, if not obsessions. Millions of books have been written about the human experience in the areas of sociology, ethnic studies, memoirs, and psychology. It is a very selfish behavior but that is what we are made of.

Drama is what makes the boredom of our everyday lives go away. The baby-internet allowed for this ancient practice of attracting a “hot” female to be focused at a higher intensity until it caused a complete global phenomena. Young men today now know about the art of picking up girls because the internet has been so effective in getting messages and information to spread to all the people in the world.

Finding the best mate possible is obviously one of the most critical and resource intensive endeavors one will take in life, if not the most critical since we are just animals. We are born, we breathe, we eat, we defecate, we look for a mate to reproduce with to pass on our genes (unconsciously ala The Selfish Gene), we have sex, we have offspring, we raise our offspring to an age which they can fend for themselves and have offspring of their own, we grow old, we die. As males of our species, we have hundreds of millions of sperm at any one moment compared to the fertilizing female egg, which is only a few hundred throughout her lifetime. From just a biological resource point of view, the females are the bottle neck in our species, from turning into a virus that just overruns the entire planet. Females will always do the choosing of which male mating partner is worthy of having sex with. Accept that as a normal, healthy, horny, sex-desiring heterosexual male, you will never have the type of power as a female when it comes to accessibility for a reproductive partner.

What is well known is that there is a minority group of men, whether 1% or 10% , which will have more sexual opportunities and chances than the rest (99% or 90%). What makes these men different from the rest of the men who don’t get as many chances to have reproductive success is that they are considered more valuable in females eyes than the others. If you lines up all 3.5 Billion men in a row and let the other 3.5 billion females choose, obviously any person looking at the data of female selection will notice some obvious patterns.

The most obvious of all these patterns is that females on average, want their mating male partners to be bigger aka taller than them, and more than that, taller than the average height of the males in their local tribe. For the longest time, size in terms of height or stature was the most dominant factor when it comes to what females find attractive. We know from epidemiologists that the average height of a nation is an extremely accurate and good predictor of the quality of life in one’s country. There are exceptions, (like Bosnia, Senegal and South Sudan) but the general principle is that taller people on average indicate that they have better genes and fitness, from million years of evolutionary development.

When humans moved further away from the monkeys , turning from paleolithic/hunter-gatherer to farmer/grower and began to call themselves “civilized” the concept of 1) money, 2) land ownership, and 3) property (number of cattle, camels, pigs)  became the 2nd concept of value which women started to believe in. Being wealthy and having land and resources became the 2nd core factor of what women found valuable since we have become “civilized”.

However, civilization has only been going on for 10,000 years so far. Evolution and what we are hard-wired to behave has been around for 1 million years. As animals, the female sex has the brain instinctually program to desire men who are bigger/taller. Taller men on average have higher levels of testosterone levels, and exhibit slightly higher levels of violent/dominant tendencies and behavior. In any prehistoric tribe, there may have been only 50 individuals.  Out of the 50, maybe only 5-7 females are in their reproductive years. Based on the higher birth rate of male/female, there would be around 6-9 men for the 5-7 females. This means that certain men will fail to pass on their genes. Back in the prehistoric age, you can not show off your bank account to impressive women. As a young, virile, horny man you only have a few ways. You show off your strength, your courage, or your dominance. Being clever, witty, or with a good sense of humor helps on occasion in getting 1 girl out of the 7 to find a slightly weaker men “cute”  or “adorable” and she might choose him, but any level of jealousy from the larger men who are more violent means the smaller guy who might be less capable gets killed over the larger guys wanting to take more women for themselves, ala harem style.

Dominance among men in tribes is most easily established through greater height. It can also be established from being wider in torso, with broad shoulders, large arms, and large hands. However, physiologically speaking, all boys fill out as they turn into older real men. This means that the factor of bulk/width is negated. You can’t exercise your way to longer bones or taller height. Almost all men can over time exercise to become wider and more muscular. This means that no matter how much the shorter man tries to exercise to make themselves wider aka “bigger”, their effort can be negated by the taller male who puts in some effort and makes them just as wide as the shorter men. Based on proportions alone (shoulder bone size), the taller men putting in the same level of effort can become wider (on average) than the shorter man.

As it was famously claimed by the UK based program Secrets of the Sexes – Episode 2: Attraction (Documentary)  who looked at what attracted women to men, one of the researchers just said “Just be tall. Don’t go to the gym, don’t exercise. Just be tall“. This reveals something which will aggravate all men. As men we are proactive and take a lot of action and initiative in what we want. When we want something, most of us will do the work to reach our goals. We are strivers.  We are willing to spend hours in the gym to work our bodies to look better in front of the mirror, but there is nothing that we can do to get taller. This is what puts the short guy into a bind. We are stuck in a position which we can’t control.

Ultimately, I go back to the most famous phrase ever used in the original PUA community. Attraction is not a choice– David DeAngelo.

Basically, women can not choose to mate/breed with the shorter men since their brains were not developed to think that way. There will be exceptions to any rule, with a minority of women being okay with mating with someone shorter than them, but the general rule is that for men, being taller is better. There are some disadvantages of being tall like not being able to fit in airplane seats, not finding long enough pants, etc. but those problems are more nuisances which are the result of “civilization”. If you really asked tall men if they are willing to trade their tall height for having a more convenient life, most would refuse since they understand at some level that they are “better” than their shorter peers. They can be extremely ignorant, uneducated, and crass, but they will still find great confidence and happiness in being taller than their more successful and rich male peers. That is their form of identity which they can use to ride out the struggle and disappointment that each human has to deal with in life. For some men, being taller than others can be the most important factor in life since they have nothing else to be proud of.

Have anyone ever noticed why does it seem like the most obnoxious vocal racists always seem to be (stereotypically) southern, hill-billy, red-neck hicks who are not well educated and don’t have a lot of money? – The real answer is psychological which stems from a ego defense mechanism known as compensation. Because being “white” is the only thing that they have that they can put their identity to to make themselves feel better about themselves. They may be poor, uneducated, uncouth, and crass, but they are “white”. The white red-neck can look at his more well-off rich, educated black neighbors but still believe that they are better than their neighbor because they are “white”. No matter what happens, you can’t take their identity, their “whiteness” away. Eventually the issue of “race” becomes what they decide to focus their energy, time, and effort on. They want to preserve what they think is their primary source of identity. The KKK could be a reaction response to the fact that the old black slaves have started to do better in life than the poor whites, who felt their sense of superiority slipping. The KKK want to keep the black american population down at the bottom, to validate their own self-worth. This is exactly the same as height. Once you are white or “tall”, that doesn’t go away no matter how badly you screw up your life and how many poor choices and decisions you make. You will always have the fact that you are intrinsically white/tall to fall back upon psychologically to sooth any damaged ego. The human mind is really ingenious in that way.

I do frequent the reddit.com/r/short sub-group and a recent thread (available here) does have one women just being probably as honest with her feelings as possible. A responder would write to her and explain in words why she is trying to absolve herself of being accountable but this is what this guy doesn’t get. Words are useless. Being angry at a women for bashing and talking shit about short men does nothing except make her resolve and opinions stronger. Trying to convince a women by talking with them that they are being “illogical” or “not rational” or “not make any sense” doesn’t work.

What these type of women are really saying is this message…

I know myself, and I know what I like. I don’t give a fuck about what you say, and I don’t care what you think (maybe I used to when I was younger and more naive and concerned about the opinions of other people but not anymore) since I am going to live my life as I want to. Nothing you say or write out into words is going to make me change my mind or what I have felt most of my life. Maybe this automatic reaction and feeling I have is not completely organic but manufactured from hollywood & media marketing but I just can’t help it. Deal with It.

When the women than adds something like “my last boyfriend was 6′ 4” this is their way of saying to future men who wish to be her potential future romantic partner that they literally don’t measure up to what the girl expects in a guy, from her references in her past experience. This is also a way for the women, who could be very young, nubile, extremely attractive, and highly prized to filter out men. Height is probably the best, most effective way to filter out a large portion of men out of their selection pool. (remember, having too many choices is a bad thing. Having less choices makes it easier). With anything else, any other factor, like education level, level of hygiene, fashion sense, income level, ownership of property, the men the female previously rejected can take their rejection and use their bitterness/anger as fuel to better themselves in that area of life and then come back to the girl to prove her wrong and then show off their new improved life. The height filter is amazingly effective in making sure that the millions of men who would want to mate with the attractive female can never come back into the picture (aka potential mating partner in the selection process/pool) since they can’t change that area of their life. 

Half of the time, the girl can be a real bitch and use intentionally to inflict emotional daggers at men that to hurt/piss off men who are shorter than their arbitrary height requirements, but for the other half, it is a way to let go of certain men who are chasing after her nonstop by giving an excuse that the guy can not back from aka letting them down easily (instead of saying to the guy’s face” I am just not attracted to you”). Height requirements is an effective rule of thumb to follow in making a mate selection choice. Some men do it too, but not to the same level or degree.

I may not have been part of the PUA scene which had been big maybe a decade ago, but the old David DeAngelo phrase “Attraction is not a choice” is the most succinct phrase to explain females preference for taller men than anything I could have thought of. For short men and brothers out there, we are at an advantage being given the short end of the stick in terms of genetics, but that is okay since height is the not only factor that effects how women will look at us. There are things we can do. Few of us will never face rejection. Almost no men will get every single girl he wants.

Sometimes no matter how much we do accomplish and make in terms of money, we still can’t win against the taller guy, because we are just animals acting out our neurological patterns which have been pre-programmed into our heads from birth. Shorter men have to try harder, and that is the way life operates. Stop complaining. Accept it.

So is there nothing we can do as men who have it harder than others? What can we do? – Become Mister Right. Think Different.

An interesting article appeared in the online website The Daily UK today which made me think about the issue of height from a perspective which I never put any effort into before. I refer to the story of Lena Dunham standing next to Taylor Swift Here.

In certain parts of the internet, where men talk about the post-modern version of dating and relationships, a concept has come out called “The Red Pill”, which promotes this idea that what men today think women want and what women really want are very different. These men believe that at the most basic, instinctual level, each heterosexual female wants a dominant, strong, masculine men as based on our savage animal origins.

A central public celebrity which is brought up often to portray the stereotypical image of what is wrong with the American and/or Westernized women of today is Lena Dunham.

Lena Dunham has been vilified by many of these internet blogging men for being too self-accepting of the changes in the female figure. Weight has been traditional the issue/factor that the post-modern men and the post-modern female has the most contention over.

In this day and age where young girls are being constantly being exposed to images of strong powerful women who proclaim to be feminist, they are taught that it is okay to be overweight and not have the type of figure that men desire. Self-acceptance and being fully comfortable with one’s body is very important. In retaliation, the young heterosexual males find these type of women who prefer to stay “overweight” or “full-figured” difficult to find a relationship with stating that they want the old more traditional feminine type of women, which is obviously just a glorified fantasy of something which never really existed. .

Anger, Spite, and Venom has been spewed on both sides, sometimes going as far as threats of sexual assault and bodily harm. Of course, anyone can be sort of a problem as long as they hide behind a screen and stay in anonymity. A sense of self-entitled runs high on both sides.

However, now the issue of height has been brought up. This is where things get interesting. Lena Dunham has been branded a feminism of this modern age, which she seems to be comfortable with that label. When it comes to weight, she has almost no problems. She had taken pictures of herself naked squatting down holding a piece of cake before. She was being overly expressive in showing of the excess of her body to the world.

This recent story that has appeared suggests that she has to content with the other anthropometric measurement which is making her realize that maybe this whole movement of body acceptance is a little harder than believed.

Remember the basic tenet of trying to compare weight and height.

• Weight is something you can change with a little bit of effort, work and discipline
• Height is something that is almost impossible to change

What my point is that when people like Lena Dunham and other feminists are talking about weight issues, and body acceptance, they are focusing on the wrong thing.

There is no need to argue for or against any topic dealing with weight, because weight can be changed and molded to whatever level we desire. 

It is height that is what most important. Your level of stature is what is most important, which is what someone like Lena Dunham realizes she will always be inferior to. With her brand of feminism, she chooses to not wear high heeled shoes, which just makes her look even shorter to her female counterparts, who are trying to accentuate their “tallness”.

It is not the fat-shaming guy online that Lena has to content with (since she can easily dismiss those guy as losers) but another female, who happened to be taller than her, who chooses to dress in a classy way, with her tall female friends.

Suddenly you are put on the spot and realize just how “different” you look compared to the others, your own peers,, who you thought before was at the same level as you, only to see from a more objective point of view that they are much higher than you, literally. The other thing that you realize is that there is nothing that you can do about this factor, unlike weight which you can work on.

What do you do when you realize that you have been fighting the easy fight but have always shied away from the hard fight?

• To gain acceptance of weight is easy.
• To gain acceptance of height is near impossible.

If this girl was to really want body acceptance, she should have focused on height first and foremost and not even consider dealing with the issue of weight. I find it tragic that many modern feminists seem to be putting too much energy and focusing on the wrong thing in life. They should instead be working towards women and men finding body acceptance over their height, not weight.

I went to this conference for two main reasons. The first was to talk with a company that was selling a 3D Bioprinter. The 2nd was to listen to the lectures and presentations by the leading edge researchers in this field to see if anything that they are working on can be applied to what we are doing here.

Here is what I can say.

Every single industry, field, or niche has a few people who become very important in their chosen area of expertise. From this one conference, I did find out who are the main people we should be focusing on and following.

• Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Bonassar
• Dr. Anthony Atala
• Dr. Warren Grayson

It turns out that a Dr. Jason Spector who was a speaker at the conference giving his talk  “Tissue Engineering, Bioprinting, and the “Reconstructive Ladder”” alluded to the fact that he was working with Dr. Bonassar on research with MSCs (Mesenchymal Stem Cells) to develop cartilage, whether it be fibrocartilage or hyaline cartilage. When I was listening to him, the name sounded very familiar until I realized that I saw the name before and actually wrote a big post on the work being done by Dr. Bonassar’s team in Cornell where they grew an implantable spinal disc. Refer to the post “This Researcher Succeeded In 3D-Printing Spinal Discs Allowing Adults With Closed Growth Plates To Grow Taller If They Desired – Big Breakthrough“. Dr Bonassar’s work and his Lab should be one of the primary focuses for us.

The other speaker that spoke about relevant information was a Dr. Paul Gatenholm (talk was “3D Bioprinting of Human Cartilage and Skin with Novel Bioink”, who apparently was a protege/student of Dr. Atala. He has a company CellLink where his son works at which has produced a type of bioink that is used in 3D Bioprinters. This bioink acts as the medium that stem cells would go into which is something similar to Hydrogel/Alginate/Extracellular Matrix/Scaffold. It is made from a derivative of cellulose.

Dr. Atala is sort of a super-star in the field of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and cartilage generation. He has been alluded to multiple times in the conference and I had referenced his research before as well on this website. Refer to the post ” Increase Height And Grow Taller Through Bioprinting And Electrospinning“. If you read this previous post, you would see that there was a Youtube video of Gabor Forgacs, who explained the revolution in regenerative medicine. He was the speaker at this recent conference which started everything off.

There was a third speaker Rahul Tare (talk was  “Application of Custom-Built Acousto-fluidic Perfusion Bioreactor for Cartilage Tissue Engineering” who revealed that he was also working with MSCs to engineer cartilage tissue.

It turns out that this conference I went to has people associated with the big players in this field. Most people there already knew each other.

In terms of the technical, I realized that bioprinting cartilage tissue that can be implanted back into the body is an endeavor which is probably impossible. In a discussion with Dr. Michael Gelinsky, he did not think that bioprinting a hyaline cartilage was viable at least for a long time. However, the idea of slowly developing chondrogenic tissue from implanted autologous chondrocytes and/or MSCs into a scaffold is probable, if not very doable. If Dr. Teplyashin’s group’s results are any indication, this step has already been done.

The problem which the researchers were trying to solve was over vascularization. Vascularization was the main problem that people who want to bioprint organs need to figure out. It was the bottleneck.

The other problem is over regulations. It turns out that many of the most scientifically advanced countries who are working in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine will not allow organs be implanted into the patients body.

Here are the list of 3D Bioprinters that I found out about.

1. BioBots (3d Bioprinter)
2. RegenHu 3d Bioprinter
3. EnvisionTec Bioprinter
4. Organovo’s 3D Printer
5. Regenovo (China based)
6. Qingdao Unique Products 3D Bioprinter
7. Izumi International Inc (Deposition Machine turned into 3D Printer)

Some of the models were cheap but some were extraordinarily expensive.

Some others things I realized that I made a mistake on was to forget about the step of bioreactor. You need a bioreactor for the implanted cells into a culture or scaffold, with the growth factors, to proliferate in numbers. Dr. Spector revealed that to get the MSCs to differentiated into a tissue that is actually worth something, you need at least 200 million cells to work with. Anything less and the tissue that has been formed is not really enough.

So to make a correction on the steps, it would be

• 1. Biopsy of bone marrow to get MSCs/ Extract part of the iliac crest for chondrocytes
• 2. Use collagenase to dissolve the ECM around your desired cells
• 3. Spin the solution to separate the cells from the other compounds
• 4. Get the right type of cell medium (alginate, hydrogel, etc.) to put the cells in.
• 5. Instead of medium, it could be a scaffold shaped in whatever way you want.
• 6. Add some type of growth factor into the scaffold to help the cells differentiate or proliferate.
• 7. Put it into a bioreactor to make the cells proliferate.
• 8. Induce vascularization in the tissue (this is the tough part)
• 9. Take the scaffold/medium out and implant the grown  tissue back into the person’s body. Wait until vascularization occurs to connect the new implant with the rest of the patient’s body.

Notice how I did not say bioprinting anywhere. Remember that there is more than 1 way to get the stem cells/chondrocyte implantation to work.

There is actually 2 ways to do this.

1. You can use a 3D Bioprinter to bioprint a fully functional growth plate, with the chondrocytes inside in columnar structure form
2. You can put extracted MSCs or chondrocytes into a scaffold (hard structure) and grow it into a bioreactor. You eventually implant the scaffold between the bones and wait for the scaffold to slowly turn into a hyaline cartilage layer of tissue ala pseudo-epiphyseal plate cartilage.

The 1st way is going to be very difficult, but not impossible. The 2nd way is not as “clean” but it should work.

There will be more conferences in the coming months worth looking into. They are….

• 2015 4th Termis Tissue Engineering World Conference – Dr. Atala will be a keynote speaker there.
• Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering Gordon Research Conference – Dr. Warren Grayson will be a speaker there.
• Tissue Engineering, Synthetic Biology & Bioprinting (2016) – by SelectBio
• Innovations in Cell-Based Regenerative Therapies Conference (MSC 2015) –

What you sort of realize as you go down the list of speakers and attendees is that the same people was at this conference too. Eventually after so many conferences you meet the same 300 people over and over again.

It seems that there was another legitimate program that was developed back in the early 90s by a Russian doctor who claimed that he could help people stretch their back and body to make them taller. It is very similar to the A-Grow-Bics program that came out by the French Trainer a few years back. There was even a few interviews and media coverage that came out with his claims. Based on what Michael Goldreyer (Goldreer) said, the clinic seemed to have gone bankrupt very quickly after it opened up back in the early 90s. However it is still interesting to see that the rumors that was coming out of russia of a doctor who developed a program which the book “School of Height” (PDF available for free download in the free section) was based on real events.

This will be the first of maybe a dozen videos that will be uploaded, almost all in Russian (a few will be in armenian and arabic). I plan to release the rest over time in the coming months.

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