Why People Are Taller In The Morning From Waking Up After Sleep

I am quite surprised that one of the websites I regularly read, Business Insider did a video on the science of changes in height. The changes are indeed up to even 1.5-2 cms in differences.

What is so surprising is that the website is not a science or medical related news source, but a business related source. It is still kind of interesting to use

There might be a problem with the sizing of the video above so you can click here to see it in a larger size. The video may not be the most informative thing we would find, and is actually kind of wrong on the exact science, but they got the general idea down. I give the people who write semi-science informative posts some credit.

How South Asian American Keshav Mukund Bhide Blamed His Short Stature and Race On His Lack Of Success With Dating Women

When all the news about the killer Elliot Rodger started to just pour through the internet channels months ago, I chose not to say anything. The story that was been unraveled showed a deeply disturbed young man who had many things that kept on building up in his life. The number of things which made him upset eventually pushed him past a point of emotional no return. When Rodger wrote his super-long manifesto, he threw the blame on his unfair life on everything that he could…

• There was of course his height, which some people say can range from 5′ 6″-5’9″
• There was the fact that he was half Asian, or not purely “white”. He had huge issues with ‘race’.
• There was the issue that his mother and father divorced and remarried
• He resented his old friend and even younger siblings from getting relationships

I didn’t want to write just another piece on this kid since it would have been a waste and just collected dust along with the thousands of other articles written to interpret his actions and try to make sense of his intentions through reading his manifesto. To say the least, that thing was cringeworthy. Rodger was not able to deal with reality.

Since this website was created to help people with their short stature and height issues, the question to ask is this…

“If Rodger, was at a height which he considered acceptable, would he have reached the point where he would have gone through with the shooting?”

First, the young Elliot was very narcissistic, and felt extremely entitled. His self-absorbed attitude made him think that everything should be given to him in life. His delusion in thinking that he deserved to win the lottery showed that he was way out of touch with reality.

If Rodger was instead maybe 6′ 4″-6’5″, his sense of self-entitlement and self-worth would have been even worse, but he probably would have not been bullied on and picked on as much. People don’t go into shooting rampages because they have too much narcissism. They love themselves too much to do that, and would realize that they would hurt themselves later on, which they would have kept themselves in check. People go into angry shooting rampages when they 1) feel like they have been wronged and want to take revenge for some previous insult, or slight, and 2) when they feel like they have nothing to lose and/or live for. Rodger’s anger is a combination of more than just one thing.

• There was his bullying, and beatings
• There was his inability to attract the type of women he wanted.
• There is the envy, jealous, resentment, and spite he felt against his relatives and friends who got into relationships which made him even more angry.

What would have worked for a personality like Rodger was to find something in himself which he could have felt self-worth from. You use his own egotistical tendencies to block his anger. I believe that if Rodger was taller, he would have been able to at least latch onto his tall stature into his self perception of identity and ride that part of himself, to a state in his life where he would have at least not slipped further.

My thinking is this: if he was bigger, other kids his age would not have picked on him as much, and not tried to take advantage of his short stature and physically assault him so much. The beatings would have dropped, unless he was the type of idiot who would provoke other men of his age into confrontation. This meant that the anger and the desire to get revenge against guys who hurt him before would have not been there. With a large stature, his presence alone with have given him an edge at least in terms of first impressions. He would still have gotten angry at people of course.

That is why I believe, in my own very limited perspective, that Rodger’s actions could have been prevented if only he was taller (Of course I am biased about that issue). His actions could have also been prevented if he just accidentally “got lucky” and had sex just once or maybe even had just one kiss from a willing girl. If he lost his virginity, he would have stopped being so sexually frustrated. If he was bigger, a certain minority of superficial women would have at least looked past his horrible personality long enough for him to at least have sex. . Of course, we will never know now.

His problems are the typical type of problems any normal teenage or young adult male has to go through. In all the countries around the world, millions of young boys will through the exact same phase in life as he, and most of those young men will be struggling through the exact same set of personal problems just like him. Issues of sex, masturbation, acne & pimples, attracting the opposite sex, masculinity issues, etc. It is just that Rodger kept going deeper and deeper into the hole, and he did not have something to latch on to. Most guys who go through it find groups that they can join so share in that common bond. The out-of-date stereotypical high school nerd who went to college a virgin would find other guys like him, would become intellectual lords in university, find kindred spirits who shared their passions, and get a chance to meet women later in life. For Rodger, he just slipped past the cracks, and the multiple filters we put into society to prevent people from falling too far. There was nothing to catch him from falling. The truth is that in society, there will always be people who will fall through the cracks, and there is no system that we can create that will prevent that. There is probably millions of guys right now who feel the same way as Rodger, who have the same level of anger, frustration, and resentment, and feel that life is frustrated. Most of them will not be able to buy a gun, or get their hands on a weapon, or are too afraid to go through with an act of revenge. However, once in a while, when all the factors align just right in the most horrible way, a madman with the resources, motives, and will pops up.

This is how we come across another young teenager man who suffered similar issues as Rodger. His name is Keshav Mukund Bhide, a former student at the University of Washington. We found multiple articles written about this kid who posted on certain Youtube channels who believed that Elliot’s actions were right and wanted to repeat them.

Bhide’s problems stemmed from his identity issues as well, but much more so. For Keshav, it was his short stature, and his ethnicity. He also blamed factors that is out of his control in his lack of success with the opposite sex. He thinks that if he was just taller and maybe not south asian (maybe caucasian?), he would have achieved some success with women. His issues a South Asian-American Male is similar to what many other minority males complain about as well. Of course, when they are so young, there just aren’t that many options for them. (Thank god that the FBI and other federal enforcement officials caught this guy on time so that we don’t have another massacre.) If there was some type of miracle pill that would make them taller, of course they’d try to get it. But there isn’t. If there was some easy way for them to get blue eyes and blond hair, and change their skin color, they probably would do it too. I am sorry to say but often life is unfair. Feeling the overwhelming unfairness of life is quite normal, especially when you are young, have no money, feel powerless, and are filled with too much hormones and don’t know how to channel all that repressed sexual energy.

From what I learned in the one Gender Studies course I took in my undergraduate studies, many children of immigrant families as well as biracial children have huge identity issues. They find themselves often trapped in more than one identity, and more than one world. They don’t know how to balance the various aspects of their identity, obligations, and their responsibilities.

When they reach of the age where dating, hormones, and puberty starts, things get even more complicated. For guidance, maybe they only know from the culture that they were born into and raised in. They aspire to be or date what is considered beautiful in the movies and the media. Not everyone can be the outdated versions of beauty that was set in the USA 50 years ago, when most of everyone was “white” with blue eyes and blonde hair. Those types of people in the western nations are slowly being breed out of existence, as the older immigrant ethnicities intermarry with the newer immigrants. It is time for the Indians to date the Chinese, the Filipinos to date the Mexicans, the Iranians to date the Russians, the Jamaicans to date the Cubans, the Somalians to date the Thais. We have to expand our perception of what is considered beautiful in the world, because the honest truth is that we all have completely outdated facts and beliefs on how the world really is.

Look, I get why guys like Rodgers and Bhide feel the way they do. Some of these guys are just trolls who vent their anger and frustration out onto the internet and poison whatever they touch, but in the real world, they are too afraid to take action for what they threaten online. For a very small minority of others, they actually go through with it. That is when things get scary.

If I could talk to Bhide, I would tell him that being young, small in size, and part of a ethnicity which is not traditionally been considered attractive is something that will take time to accept. His desire to hurt women who would not give him the type of self-gratification he desires is not the right type of emotion to go to. It might be that these types of guys have also a problem with Impulse Control, which means that there needs to be programs in school to help younger people deal with their impulses. I would love to give these guys who might suffer from a body dysmorphic height complex an easy solution, but there is none. However, I will promise that I will be there for them and help them out whenever I can. That is why this website was created, to help and to give hope to those

This is a study that could have massive ramifications on height increase but the the exact mechanism is unknown.  But that cells that have the genetic material of growth plate cells are retained in adult bone is huge news.

Hypertrophic chondrocytes can become osteoblasts and osteocytes in endochondral bone formation.

hypertrophic chondrocytes<-full study

“Chondrocytes and osteoblasts are considered independent lineages derived from a common osteochondroprogenitor. In endochondral bone formation, chondrocytes undergo a series of differentiation steps to form the growth plate, and it generally is accepted that death is the ultimate fate of terminally differentiated hypertrophic chondrocytes (HCs). Osteoblasts, accompanying vascular invasion, lay down endochondral bone to replace cartilage.  [Can] HC become an osteoblast and contribute to the full osteogenic lineage? Here we use a cell-specific tamoxifen-inducible genetic recombination approach to track the fate of murine HCs and show that they can survive the cartilage-to-bone transition and become osteogenic cells in fetal and postnatal endochondral bones and persist into adulthood. This discovery of a chondrocyte-to-osteoblast lineage continuum revises concepts of the ontogeny of osteoblasts, with implications for the control of bone homeostasis and the interpretation of the underlying pathological bases of bone disorders.”

This is huge because it means that the transdifferentiated osteoblasts retain some of the chondrocytic genetic material which means they could possibly dedifferentiate back into chondrocytes!

“The expression of preosteoblastic markers in LHs before the formation of the POC raises the possibility that these cells may transition to an osteoblastic fate”

“HC-Derived Cells Are Present in Fetal, Neonatal, and Adult Bone.”

“The HC-derived cells, morphologically resembling osteoblasts, were found close to the chondro-osseous junction, on the surface of trabeculae, and in the endosteum”<-that means they are in a good position to be involved in neo growth plate formation.

“HC[hypertrophic chondrocytes] Derivatives Transit to the Primary Spongiosa and Become Col1a1-Expressing Cells.”<-the majority of HC derivatives become osteoblasts.

“HC-to-bone transition occurs during postnatal bone growth and that HC-derived cells may be long-lived within the mature bone”

Here’s an image of the HC lineage:

“The reversion of HCs to a prehypertrophic- like state in response to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress suggests that hypertrophy is not an irreversible state in vivo”<-Could we revert HC-derived osteoblasts back to hypertrophic chondrocytes back to pre-hypertrophic cells to reform growth plates.

(Michael: That actually makes a lot of sense if one thought about it. It can’t be all dead inorganic bone ECM matter where the physeal cartilage turns into bones (aka Primary Spongiosa). How would bone cells even be able to travel to that middle-region later on if the chondrocytes completely died out and the lucanae was covered by calcium minerals. For the smooth gradual transition from the hypertrophic layer to the vascularization/calcification layer to the mineralization layers to work out, there would be some minority of chondrocytes which would change identities. If all the chondrocytes died out and the layer of the lucanae was completely mineralized, I would not be sure that osteoblasts would be able to reach the primary spongiosa layer.

Here is what I have found years ago. (Source: Chondrogenesis just ain’t what it used to be) Prehypertrophic chondrocytes secrete IHH while the chondrocytes from the perichondrium secrete PTHrP, which effect the PTH/PTHrP receptors which are on the prehypertrophic chondrocytes. In addition, we have to consider the effects of the VEGF. VEGF is secreted by hypertrophic chondrocytes, and that it acts as a major inducer of vascular invasion.

The big thing is the following…

“…demonstrated that Ihh is not only required for chondrocyte hypertrophy, but also for expression of Cbfa1, a transcription factor required for osteoblast differentiation”

If the molecular biologist researchers have been able to identify all of the  major players which causes the chondrocytes to go into apoptosis, and also transdifferentiation, then we at least know which transcription factors causes the changes. I suspect it is Cbfa1.

Refer also the seminal work “Indian hedgehog couples chondrogenesis to osteogenesis in endochondral bone development”

That study proved conclusively that it is IHH that starts everything. IHH stimulates the Cbfa1, which causes the vascularization. I am going to make a guess that somewhere along the way, the two peptides also caused the transdifferentiation.

So how do we actually figure out what type of chemical would lead the osteoblast/osteocytes types to go in reverse and de-differentiate aka some type of reverse transdifferentiation?

We first have to assume that there is some type of external stimuli (mechanical, chemical, electrical) which would be able to even do the de-differentiation.

I propose this idea for Tyler…

Let’s assume that if we change the environment, the cell will start to change its identity. Remember the study which showed that the path which the MSCs will differentiate into can be determined by the shape of space that they are placed into? That suggest that if we change the environment that the osteoblasts/bone cells are in, maybe they will change as well.

Here is my first idea: I propose that we try to remove the calcium crystals/de-mineralize the area. To do that, remember that the PTH and the PTHrP balance from the parathyroid glands controls the level of calcium that is dissolved into the human blood (refer to “Chapter 5 – The parathyroid glands and vitamin D“)

“In bone, within 1 or 2 hours, PTH stimulates a process, known as osteolysis, in which calcium in the minute fluid-filled channels (canaliculi/lacunae) is taken up by syncytial processes of osteocytes and transferred to the external surface of the bone and, thence, into the extracellular fluid. Some hours later, it also stimulates resorption of mineralized bone; a process that releases both Ca2+ and Pi into the extracellular fluid. The Pi is rapidly removed from the circulation because the most dramatic effect of PTH on the kidney is to inhibit reabsorption of Pi in the proximal tubule and markedly increase its excretion“

Let’s increase the level of PTHrP in the local region, which is what I had proposed in a post I had written more than a year ago (The Connection Between Regenerating Deer Antlers and The PTHrP, PTH And IHH pathway for Cartilage Regulation, PTHrP Seems To Be The Answer (Big Breakthrough!)). Decrease the concentration of CA2+ from the ECM, and see what happens to the osteoblasts. Would they de-differentiate into chondrocytes if their environment changes?

It might be that the formation of osteoblasts and the increased levels of mineralization/vascularization/calcification is a positive feed back loop where each part feeds upon itself, which is initialized by VEGF. If we break the positive cycle at the process of mineralization, would the osteoblasts also go in reverse?

The Problems From Using Growth Hormone Therapy To Make Growing Children Taller

In a recent post that the heightism blogger Geoffrey Arnold wrote in the r/short subreddit, he made a point on the limitations of growth hormone therapy to treat idiopathic short stature. On a certain level, he is right. However, there is more to the science than just reading the Abstracts to PubMed articles, which I have found many people already do ie. Bodybuilders, and amateur researchers. He is well read, but not at a level of a person who has gone deeper into the details.

I refer to the post…

On his first claim, 99% of the time, he is correct, however there have been certain cases of individuals who did see a slight bit of increase in their adult height after using HGH, but it was almost always just 1 inch or so. I refer to someone actually well known in the online community, one of the founders/spokesperson of the website GoodLookingLoser.com The big muscled guy wrote in one thread that he did grow 1 full inch after he started to take growth hormones for his workouts to increase his muscle size. Many people responded saying that he couldn’t have since he was too old and his growth plates were fused, but he has stuck by his claims.

On his 2nd claim, he is only half right.

The thing is that children who are short statured which is caused by growth hormone deficiency will have a much more pronounced and dramatic boost in growth and final adult height from using growth hormones, but that does NOT mean that developing children with fully open epiphyseal growth plates who are short statured which is NOT caused by GH deficiency won’t see any height increasing results. That is where he is wrong.

The clearest example is to ask the question, for the hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people throughout history who has become giants from pituitary gland GH over-stimulation, did they also suffer from GH deficiency? From a anatomical point of view, radiologists looking at X-Rays and/or MRIs have shown that the pituitary gland have become enlarged, or has a unique tumor in the brain area. When it was found that this chemical called growth hormone was released mainly from the pituitary gland,  the link between cases of gigantism and the extra-stimulation and release of GH was clear.

The real question becomes, for a person to actually develop gigantism, is whether they have to suffer two different conditions simultaneously, 1) having growth hormone deficiency to make them more GH susceptible and 2) then have an overactive pituitary gland to develop into tall stature, or is it just an overactive pituitary gland?

I would guess the latter. Increased levels of GH that is coursing through the developing child’s system will make them bigger.

Now, the claims made are backed by studies, like the 2007 article “Growth Hormone Injections Add Height, But Kids Stay Short” In that article, it makes it seems like certain children are just destined to be short, and not even GH therapy would help them. The expensive, weekly injections would only give around 3 inches of extra height. The amount of money needed is stated to be around “Each half-inch in final height gained via human growth hormone therapy costs anywhere from $18,000 to $36,600“

Jackie Bryant, did make the point that even with with GH therapy, kids with idiopathic short stature would still be relatively short. However, we like to point out the word “relatively“. If Geoffrey took the time to look at the real data for the studies, he would see that technically the GH injections did make developing children taller, but maybe not as much as to change the fact that those children will not be the next Shaq.

We quote the article…

“Despite these findings, children treated with growth hormone remained short near the lower range of normal when compared to their peers.

“Genetic factors affect growth and final height, and parents should be realistic in their expectations about the potential effects of growth hormone,” Bryant said“

If a kid is only 4 feet tall and started to use GH on a weekly basis starting at 13, they are not going to be 6 feet tall by the time they are 18.

(Reference: Bryant J, Baxter L, Cave CB, Milne R. Recombinant growth hormone for idiopathic short stature in children and adolescents. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD004440. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004440.pub2)

The other big problem with GH which we agree with is that to much GH can actually accelerate the bone age and bone maturity, so that the children will have fused growth plates earlier. Growth Plate Senescence does accelerate due to GH therapy usage.

However, that is the main thing. Arnold said that GH Therapy would not even work on children, unless they have GH deficiency. That is not exactly true. Even if a child is not GH deficient, they will get some level of height increase from the years of GH therapy when they are still growing, even though it may be just an extra 1 inch of height.

When it comes to the science of auxology, Geoffrey Arnold is not that well informed on the exact specifics. Please, for the future talk about the sociological, psychological, and anthropological aspects of height, short stature, and heightism, but stay away from the hard sciences, unless one has the right type of educational (or research) background to talk about such issues.

You would make mistakes informing the readers on the wrong things and pushing them in the wrong directions. If we made a mistake, we would be sure to let it be known and correct ourselves and change our opinions and positions on whatever matters we are discussing.