Growth Plate Regeneration Update – Robert Ballock and Eben Alsberg Working Together – Getting Very Close!

I am sure that the regular readers of the website has already seen this grant that I have talked about at least half a dozen times already and linked to but this is the big news I wanted to say.

Tyler have said that there are two people who would be very helpful in our quest and they were Cory Xian and Robert Ballock. I fully agree, and I have wrote multiple article on Ballock. This guy was given an award more than a decade ago for being able to fully grow a functional growth plate.

(Source: http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_details.cfm?aid=8458506&icde=21045832)

I also said that people like Dr. Warren Grayson of JHU (with his 3-D Bone grafts) and Jean Welter of Case Western University (with his knowledge on differentiating MSCs into the chondrogenic lineage) would also be critical in pushing the effort forward. The recent news that maybe Alexander Teplyashin’s team based in Moscow might have already put their own created growth plates into human legs to lengthen them showed that some people have already taking it out of just the lab and into human clinical trials.

However, from certain russian sources I found on the russian search engines, it seems that Teplyashin’s team is being legally prevented from moving forward on their goals to get that stem cell tissue engineering technique to be fully researched. The government seems to have implemented certain legislative or legal rules to keep the stem cell research from being implemented to the full capacity.

I am happy to inform the readers that the grant that I had referenced before on Ballock had a key critical bit of information which I did not see in the previous times in looking at them.

It seems that Dr. Robert Tracy Ballock’s partner in the grant is a Dr. Eben Alsberg.

This Alsberg is the same Alsberg which wrote the seminal paper which got me super excited last year, entitled “Engineering Growing Tissue“. Refer to the year old post “Engineering Growing Cartilage Tissue In Vivo Through Chondrocyte Transplantation (Big Breakthrough!)”

Let’s recap some critical facts….

In the grant (Project #: 5R21AR061265-02) , Ballock writes the following…”Successful regeneration of growth plate cartilage architecture in vivo would have a transformational impact on the practice of pediatric orthopaedic surgery, providing for the first time not only the ability to replace growth plates irreversibly damaged by trauma, infection or irradiation, but also the possibility of restoring longitudinal growth in individuals beyond the age of skeletal maturity.”

So Ballock clearly realizes that what he is trying to get to work would have huge implications, and could be used to make people which completely fused growth plates to start to volumetrically grow in bone size again.

If you clicked on the “Details” Tab on of the grant link (Available Here), it is revealed the Alsberg is the other project leader of the project. That means that two of the biggest hopeful professional researchers, both of have successfully grown functional growth plates, have teamed up together to get the technical details and technical hurdles figured out.

Here is probably the most incredible news, which I didn’t share before. The grant was accepted and given money back in April of 2013. The project would be finished by the end of September 2014, which is only two months away the last I checked. So It could be that within 3 months, there will be at least 2 people somewhere in the Western World (not counting the Russians and the Chinese, whose military and government would never reveal their classified research to the rest of the world) who have proven that the regeneration of growth plates is completely viable and would be functional when implanted into humans.

As for anyone who is still hoping that a technology will be created that will “reopen growth plates”, I don’t think that is even theoretically possible, since the basic laws of physics and how matter works would be broken in some ways. I imagine the bone tissue like the tissue of a tree. Once the young, limber tissue of the tree turns old and semi-dead, there is no way to get that tissue back into its younger state. If you want a very specific section of the tree to turn back into its young morphological state, the easiest way is to make a cut into the tree and insert that young piece of tissue. I personally don’t think the technology to “reopen growth plates” will be something that will come about for centuries to come, and the only way for something that crazy to happen is from nano-sized robots which can stimulate each individual cells in the local area to go into transdifferentiation, and at the same time remove the hydroxyapatite calcium crystals and convert the inorganic compounds found in the bone ECM into the organic compounds found in cartilage ECM like collagen type 2 and certain types of proteoglycans.

If you want to find an alternative to limb lengthening surgery in your lifetime, hopefully within the next 30-50 years, this stuff that Ballock and Alsberg is collaborating on is where it is definitely at, which is revolutionary, and I suspect have all the technical kinks figured and worked out already. This is the future of bone remodeling.

Yes, the technique is invasive, and you can’t do that in the privacy of your home, away from prying eyes, judgement by your peers, and embarrassment that you would do something for a cosmetic gain. It would require that a certain part of your bone to be broken, if not sawed in a certain configuration and shape for the cartilage/growth plate implant. That is something which I don’t think we can get around with, at least in the coming century of biotechnology (unless some higher alien civilization is willing to share with us their insane alien medical technology)

However, you would be under the anesthesia. After just maybe 1 week after the growth plates become vascularized and they fuse with the surrounding bone tissue, and the cartilage tissue is tested to be able to handle the weight of the adult person, the surgical patient would be able to go home, and go about their daily lives, with maybe a few injections of MSCs, growth factors, and other chemicals to help modulate the bone growth.

For the perfect analogy, this stem cell & tissue engineering scaffold and graft implant techniques to lengthen bones and make one smaller compared to the older techniques of limb lengthening surgery with metal fixators or internal metal rod which slowly lengthen would be similar to the shift from the older cars using internal combustion engines (wither 4,6,or 8 cylinder) to the new electric, zero-emissions cars like the Tesla Model S (which I got to test drive yesterday). The shift from metal rods which forcefully pull the bones apart to cartilage implants which simulate the natural process of bone volumetric growth is such a shift in paradigm and biotechnological innovation that things will be forever changed, for the good.

In the previous post I offered proof that my current LSJL was working for my fingers(and reported anecdotal evidence of increasing my wingspan by a couple of inches without photographic evidence) but that the LSJL method for the legs was lacking.  So I’m revising the LSJL method to be more like what I’m doing for the fingers which I’ve gotten gotten results from.  With an emphasis on intensity rather than duration.  If anyone has any ideas on how to get a more intense clamp please suggest them.  This is only for people with closed growth plates, people with open growth plates should clamp similarly but much lighter as there is no need to try to use clamping to create a more favorable microenvironment for cartilage growth.

You want to clamp on the synovial joint between the tibia and femur.    Michael has suggested that you should load lower on the epiphysis rather than above.  However, I think loading the synovial joint is important.  The bone there is weaker and it’s easier to cause deformation of the synovial joint then it is the bone itself.  There might be stimulus from the synovial joint that stimulates neo-growth plate formation.  The synovial joint is connected to the growth plate area after all.  You want to clamp more on the femur than the tibia as the clamp will eventually slip to be closer to the middle.  You always want to start clamping more on the bigger bone so it slips to the middle.  If it slips to be clamping on one bone then restart.  Essentially:  Make sure you are clamping the synovial joint.

Now you want to use the Irwin Quick Grip(Irwin Industrial Tools 512QCN Next Generation 12-Inch Clamp and Spreader).  But any clamp that can generate enough pressure is sufficient as long as it avoids slipping.  Try to clamp as hard as possible.  Use both hands to get harder clamps.  Take breaks with the clamp still on and the pressure still applied and try to clamp harder.  This method is untested so I can not make any guarantees on the optimal pressure nor can I guarantee that you won’t suffer an injury.  Right now my goal is to generate enough pressure such that there’s a visual or feeling of increased blood flow.  The goal is to generate hydrostatic pressure to create a pro-chondrogenic microenvironment to encourage new growth plate formation.  With my fingers I could see visually increased blood flow and I could feel it.  The goal is to generate enough pressure in the synovial joint to encourage a pro-chondrogenic microenvironment.  Any clamping method that does that is sufficient.

Here’s another angle:

Me clamping between the tibia and talus:

Me clamping between the talus and calcaneus:

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I know people will want a video so I’ll work on that for Part III.

Michael: Here is what I would suggest. Get a 2nd clamp to clamp simultaneously for the knee area. We do have two hands, and the clamping area is on the legs. A easy position to get into. To get the frequency correct, squeeze both hands at the same time.

Fit the two clamps along side of each other, one on the angular part while the other is on the sides, which you suggest. Since load is just pressure (Force/area) to increase the load, we just get a 2nd clamp to double the amount. At this point, I would not suggest increasing the amount of force from one clamp, but put the clamps into series on the sides of the tibia.

How Muscle Tissue Is Lengthened – Bone Lengthening Will Not Be Limited – Breakthrough!

I have read so many posts and thread on the MMT and LLF discussion boards and so many people keep on suggesting that the real reason why bone lengthening over say 7-8 cm become particularly risky is because the muscle tissue can not be stretched beyond that limit before snapping apart. However, in my recent look back at the stuff that Dr. Dror Paley was working on, it seems that he has been putting the effort in since the early 2000s of looking into how to lengthen muscle tissue effectively. It seems that he might have figured out how to get past the major technical hurdles.

Since at least the 1994 year, Paley with a few collaborators have been applying for grants and getting money to do research on muscle tissue lengthening

Refer to his Curriculum Vitae – Source Here

2/94 – 6/01 – Co-Investigator , ASAMI-North America Grant , Muscle Lengthening , $12,500, Tetsworth K, Paley D, Herzenberg JE, Bhave A

7/98 – 6/03  – Clinical Mentor , National Institutes of Health Award , Effects of Passive Stretch in Skeletal Muscle , $438,574 , De Deyne P, Gonzales-Serratos H, Bloch RJ, Randall WR, Paley D, Herzenberg JE

7/00 – 6/01 – Co-Investigator , POSNA Grant , IGF-1 Gene Therapy of Muscle during Distraction Osteogenesis $14,400 , De Deyne P, Paley D, Herzenberg JE
J Orthop Res. 1999 Jul;17(4):560-70. – Muscle regeneration and fiber-type transformation during distraction osteogenesis. – De Deyne PG1, Hayatsu K, Meyer R, Paley D , Herzenberg JE.

It seems that Paley (along with most orthopedic surgeons with their decades of knowledge) seems to realize that the compound seems to have some type of muscle lengthening effect. That sort of makes sense when one thinks about how it is possible that the muscle striations keep up in lengthen with the lengthening of the bones during puberty, and especially when the person suffers from excess growth hormone stimulation and release.

If we remember the basics on IGF-1, it is a compound very similar to Insulin in the body which an activate and bind to the insulin receptor. That receptor supposedly would set off a cascade of molecular biological pathways which eventually causes the compound known as mTOR to stimulate muscle creation.

All those grants that Paley filed for to do research on was more than a full decade ago. The results of those projects would have been read and understood in their implications by Paley for over a decade.

Now, my focus for the last 2 years has been on bone tissue and cartilage tissue. That is what I know the best. I don’t know enough about the other types of connective tissue in the body, like ligaments, tendons, or muscles.

However, what I am taking away from the CV of Paley is that he has been trying to see how effective it is to get injections of IGF-1 to stimulate muscles growth

One might then ask the question, “What exactly do you mean by muscle growth?”

There is only so many strands of muscle tissue in the human body. Exercise makes the strands of muscle thicker. It doesn’t increase the number of muscle strands in any part of the local area of the body. The real question is to ask, “when I am referring to the fact that IGF-1 is injected into the body for muscle growth, does it only mean it makes the strands of muscles thicker? or does it mean that the muscles also get longer too?

Based on Paley’s grants, it seems that IGF-1 is probably just one of many chemical compounds which can make the muscle tissues longer.

At this time, I would say that muscle tissue is much easier to lengthen than bone tissue, even though its intrinsic nature is elastic, which suggests that even though it may be easier to lengthen, it would just as easily contract and become shorter. It is the addition of compounds like IGF-1 which makes the muscles longer.

The main thing I am trying to show is that the limitation set for and stated by so many people over the limitations of distracting bones to lengthen them should in theory be no much of a problem.

As you lengthen the bone using the metal distractors, the muscles are lengthened concurrently by injections of certain muscle tissue stimulating chemical compounds.

Did Dr. Dror Paley Get Paid $1 Million By A Rich Middle Easterner For His Services?

I don’t talk about the limb lengthening surgeons as much as some other websites do, like Limb Lengthening Forum or Make Me Taller but there was a thread that I remember reading where someone made the claim that Dr. Paley got in trouble with his previous employers because he was willing to be flown to some country in the Middle East, paid $1,000,000, for his services. (Source: Questions on Dr. Paley’s Legitimacy)

As for his background, he had been working for the Sinai Hospital of Baltimore since 2001. He is originally from Israel, speaks 6 different languages (I assume Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, Spanish,??), who immigrated to Canada, and then transferred to the USA. Back in 1986 (he currently seems to have double citizenship). For training, he was studying in the former Soviet Union and learning about the revolutionary new limb lengthening techniques. He also supposedly studied in Italy. He partnered up with a Dr. John Herzenberg back in 1991 and they ran the Maryland Center for Limb Lengthening until Sinai picked them up in 2001. Based on rumors, apparently the Baltimore clinic kicked him out because he went out of his way to perform for certain very wealthy individuals in the middle east, which might have broken certain types of medical ethics. He was the Director of the Rubin Institute of Advanced Orthopedics at the Sinai Hospital until 2009, and then he went off on his own and opened up the Paley Advanced Limb Lengthening Institute. If there is one point in time when he did get in trouble, it would have been in 2008-2009. The new place is located at St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida.

I am not surprised with this type of claim, and I am completely willing to accept that such a claim can be valid. In the curriculum vitae of Paley, it does show that he has spent quite a bit of time in the Middle East, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

In one of the sources linked, it seems that over the years, Paley stopped giving psychological tests for dwarves and teenagers. more than a decade ago, there seemed to have been a lot of conflict between Paley and a orthopedic surgeon at John’s Hopkins University, a Dr. Ain who is an achondroplasiatic dwarf himself, who did not believe in LLS. This might mean that Paley began to become more lax over the requirements to get his services more than a decade ago.

So did Paley do something wrong and sell his services to people who have the money to pay him?

Maybe, Maybe Not, but it seems that based on his incredibly long professional record, no one is rejecting him based on his skills and qualifications.

Here are some sources which mention his name in the past 15 years or so (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-09-02/news/0209020051_1_university-of-maryland-laramie-project-college-park). It shows how much this surgeon can change the human body, by lengthening it over 1 feet. Of course, with achondroplasia dwarves, bone lengthenings of over 1 feet is actually kind of common. (refer to story on Tiffanie DiDonato, who added 14 inches to her frame).

Baltimore doctor works wonders

I have been a patient of Dr. Dror Paley’s for four years (“No Summer Break,” Aug. 24). I was born with achondroplasia 16 years ago. When I found out about Dr. Paley, I knew he was my only hope. I have to admit the first consultation I had with Dr. Paley turned into a very long wait. But it was well worth it. I began treatment with Dr. Paley in June 1998, and I am now finished with my lengthening surgeries. Before my surgeries I stood 3 feet 9 inches. Today I am 4 feet 10 1/2 inches tall. Not only did I achieve added height but my lower limbs were straightened as well as my back. Dr. Paley is truly one in a million.

Kristen DeAndrade – Pembroke, Mass.

He might be slightly on the greedy side, but he does his job better than most other surgeons. I don’t understand why since the Mean Salary of Orthopedic Surgeons is already around $550,000 per year. Given his very specialized set of skills and training, he should be pulling in maybe $3-$5 Million a year, pretax. Does an extra million from some secret benefactor mean that he broke some type of ethical code with the people at Maryland?

Back in 2013, one source (http://palmbeachgardens.floridaweekly.com/news/2013-09-19/Healthy_Living/St_Marys_Medical_Center_staff_strengthens_ties_wit.html) revealed that he went to the Bahrain and Saudi Embassies at Washington DC to get more people from Washington DC interested in getting his services.

I find it very interesting that the writer of that source, wrote at the end…

“We wouldn’t have chosen dwarfism for her. If there was a magic pill that would “cure” her of achondroplasia, we’d give it to her. But there isn’t a magic pill. Limb-lengthening is an imperfect solution to a problem that is more the culture’s than hers“

I guess we all have the same type of thoughts. If there was a magic pill, we’d get it. But there is none. If you want to cure your child of say some stunted growth disorder like achondroplasia, paley is still the best option, even if he is extremely expensive, and only secret saudi and middle easterners can pay for his priority and focus.

source: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/03353628.asp

Specific Yoga Postures and Stretches Can Make Some People Grow Taller Permanently

There are always many constructive criticisms made by readers and regulars saying that they want me to give them advice on something that they can implement/do to increase their height. The theory and the science is not enough for them. The most common question is to ask what can they swallow to help them grow taller. I haven’t found much that would work for adults except 2-3 compounds, but they provide on average just a few millimeters of increase with the upper limit said to be 3 cm. Instead of just drinking something, I would recommend doing specific yoga postures and stretches to help the people loosen their joints out a little. That would be much more effective.

Now, I have already in the beginning of the website wrote multiple posts explaining which asana postures would work best. Here is an updated, more specific and advanced outline on which postures would give the best results. Some people would notice that they managed to increase their height quite permanently.

So how is it possible to increase one’s height permanently? – For a small minority of people in the population, their normal (sitting, standing, sleeping, running) posture which they have developed since they are young children is not actually optimized for height. They have the chance of gaining permanent height based on a term which I coined years ago called “Hidden Height”. For an example, refer to SkinTightFlash who has been a fan/follower of the Grow Taller Guru on Youtube. His unique body shape and posture meant that with just a short burst of stretches, he was able to increase his height by 3 cm, which has stayed with him for at least 2 years so far, which has not been lost.

In addition, it was found that a sizable minority percentage of adults have some irregular curvature in their vertebrate. They may not have full blown scoliosis but during their growth process, the vertebrate did not come out completely straight. In terms of their regular everyday lives, the curvature is almost never noticed and does not reduce the person’s overall quality of life at all. the curvature is very small and hardly noticeable.

A recent brief meeting with my acupuncturist (yes, I have been meeting an acupuncturist for the last month or so to try to treat a certain chronic medical issue) made me rethink back to the positive height increasing effects of yoga. I remember reading an article by this writer “Alex bon Bidder” who supposedly published an article in Men’s Health about a couple of years ago (Feb 2011), who was supposed to be some yoga instructor in NYC. He said that from doing yoga regularly (2-3 times a week ) for at least 1 full year would lead to an increase in 1 extra inch of height. Some sources like GymFlow100.com said that Alex might have even claimed one can get up to 2 inches of height, but I think that was an exageration. The same article was published on the Esquire.com website.

Here are the main yogic poses/asanas you want to focus on to make the spine/back area more flexible.

1. Supine Twist – aka Simple Reclining Twist
2. Cobra Pose

Some sources have said that one should also do the downward facing dog position and the cat pose, but I don’t think those postures would make the back more flexible.

Here are some advanced postures which would be much more effective in stretching out the back, while at the same time providing fitness and health to people who perform them. Yoga in general is just an overall low-impact, fat burning, core-strengthening type of exercise.

1. Tittibhasana pose
2. Dwipadasirsasana pose
3. Karnapidasana pose

All of the more advanced poses is based on the idea that you want to use the force of gravity to your advantage and flip either your legs or your torso over. What is probably the best posture when leveraging gravity is when you are using your upper limbs/arms to hold yourself above the ground. Arm length does not contribute to height, but leg length does. When you are holding your body up against gravity, the force will act on every other part of your body trying to push them down. The best option would in fact to just down a handstand to get the gravity to pull your body in opposite directions (or maybe with gravity boots or inversion table) but I’ve noticed that when you completely are in the upside down position, there is a higher chance for certain medical conditions to develop. The hip areas are also loosened by both Tittibhasana and Dwi Padasir Asana. I will be doing a post soon which will shown how loosened hip joints seems to have some really major anatomical effects on bone alignment.

Using Bionic Technology To Automatically Increase Your Height At Will

I thought this video on TED was kind of cute. The speaker Hugh Herr who lost his two limbs in a mountain climbing frostbite accident back in 1982 had to get his lower legs sown off to prevent more bacterial infection. The result is that he developed his own bionic legs.

In a rather funny demonstration of how he can just automatically change his height around, he shows to the audience how he will adjust his height to fit his changing moods throughout each day. If he is feeling down, he will just ratchet up the length of his legs so that he will look taller.

Bionics requires that three difference factors to all become interfaced together. This is what is described as Extreme Engineering, which is something that MIT seems to be working on currently in one of their labs. It is very tricky to get all the parts to work together as one, in a fluid process.

1. Mechanical Interface – How his bionic limbs will be attached to his biological body
2. Dynamic Interface – How to get the bionic limbs to move like flesh and bone.
3. Electrical Interface – How does the bionic limb communicate with his nervous system.

So how is his limbs actually attached to his body? – by synthetic skins which has something known as “stiffness variations” which somehow can duplicate how his biological tissue behaves under various types of mechanical stimuli.

Somehow, the people first developed a mathematical model of how his limbs are supposed to work. They took pictures of the tissue (bone, nerves, muscles) that is inside of his body using MRI. This is to figure out the geometries and locations of the various tissues.

Then they put a circular configuration of actuators that are pushed either simultaneously or in a certain sequence to his skin to measure for this factor known as “tissue compliance”. I am reminded of trying to buy Linear Actuators more than a year ago to build the LSJL device that Tyler wanted, so I have some experience with putting actuators together.

The images and the values for compliances are combined to create a graphical & mathetical image of how his limb is supposed to work. As Herr states, the future of bionic technology will not just be some assembly line manufactured limbs which are fitted to all people of various situations, but each bionic parts will be “data driven quantitative frameworks”

As for the dynamics interface (how it moves like his biological body framework), the normal physiology of how humans walk, stand, and run have been studied in university labs (MIT). They figure out what the muscles are doing and how the muscles are being controlled by the spinal cord.

For the electrical interface (how his nervous system communicate with the bionic limb), the electrical pulse of his biological body part is measured by electrodes attached. That electrical pulse signal is communicated to the bionic limbs. This means that when you think about moving your phantom limb, the robotic limbs will be able to automatically move in response. They used a control system diagram and figured how how the reflex system is controlling the muscles. That control system is then programmed/embedded into the chips of the bionic limb. The modulate the sensitivity of the reflex with a neural signal. For example, when you relax your muscles, you will get a decrease in torque and power.

While Hugh Herr already has a rather impressive mechanical-dynamic-electrical interface, they are going to go even further and try to integrate our biological tissue with the bionic limbs to a point where the organic and the robotic mesh together into one bio-mechanical system which works seemlessly, where muscle and nerve cells and tissue are working at the molecular scale with the microscopic pieces of the bionic limbs.

Refer to time period 2:30 (Guys, watch the TED Talk, it is absolutely amazing what this guys is showing us. When we are in our 70s and 80s maybe 50-60 years in the future, the technology will be there to save us from many of mankind’s greatest medical problems which were unsolvable even a generation ago.)