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Growing taller with psuedoepiphysis

The prevalence of pseudoepiphyses in the metacarpals of the growing hand

“Normally the metacarpals have an epiphysis at one end — distally for the second to fifth and proximally for the first. Pseudoepiphyses are notches or clefts that occur at the non-epiphyseal ends of bones where an epiphyseal plate would be expected and are common incidental findings in the metacarpals of the growing hand. We aimed to identify the prevalence of pseudoepiphyses on serial radiographs of 610 healthy asymptomatic children. Pseudoepiphyses in the form of notches or clefts were common, identified most often in the second metacarpal (15.25%), fifth metacarpal (7.21%), and third metacarpal (0.49%). Complete pseudoepiphyses, in which the cleft extended across the full width of the metacarpal, were seen in the first metacarpal (1.97%) and the second metacarpal (1.31%). Pseudoepiphyses are a normal variant of metacarpal ossification and should not be confused with fractures in skeletally immature patients. ”

<-Is there any way to form psueodoepiphyses to grow taller?  Normally in long bones there are two epiphysis but in the finger bones there is only one epiphyseal plate except a psuedoepiphysis is a secondary growth plate like that of a normal long bone.

second growth plateOne of these finger bones has a second epiphyseal plate that’s a psuedoepiphysis.

“supernumerary epiphyses appear as a separate node of ossification in an island of hyaline cartilage.”

“three basic patterns of formation [of pseudoepiphysis formation]. In the first, a central osseous bridge extends outwards from the metaphysis and then expands into a ‘mushroom-like’ osseous structure. The circular notch proximal to this structure gives the bone the appearance of an epiphysis. If this notch is displaced to one side, it can give the appearance of a cleft or partial pseudo-epiphysis. The other two patterns recognized were of an abnormal peripheral osseous bridge, creating an eccentric notch in the bone, and of multiple abnormal osseous bridging points. In each situation, the area that appeared to be a ‘pseudo-physis’ lacked typical cell columns and these were incapable of significantly contributing to the postnatal growth of the involved bone.”<-Can we create these osseus bridges?

Complete pseudoepiphyses with associated enhanced growth in hands and feet: a report of 2 siblings-case report.

“We present 2 siblings with multiple complete pseudoepiphyses in their hands and feet with associated symptomatic enhanced growth. Physical examination of the 6-year-old boy revealed long slender fingers and hyperplastic great toes. Radiography showed complete pseudoepiphyses in the first metacarpals, proximal and middle phalanges of the hands, and proximal phalanges of the feet. The patient’s younger brother had a similar phenotype with slightly milder functional complaints. Genetic analysis did not reveal an underlying syndrome in these siblings. ”

complete second growth platesNotice each finger bone has a second growth plate.  Psuedoepiphysis’ do not always increase growth.  Since many things do not show up in x-ray’s maybe what appeared to be psuedoepiphysis’ were actually something different entirely which would not show up on x-rays.

That these siblings both developed pseudoepiphysis’ makes a mechanical means of inducing psuedoepiphysis’ less likely but it’s still a possibility if they performed the same activities especially as they did not find a genetic link.  Although they could’ve missed it.  The two siblings were 5 and 6 year old boys.

Using The Law Of Attraction aka The Secret To Grow Taller And Increase In Height

Using The Law Of Attraction aka The Secret To Grow Taller And Increase In Height

I have no idea why in the last week or so the website has been getting traffic from some very unique and interesting websites and forums on the internet. There are people who have been on this forum called www.PowerfulIntentions.org (We are not linking to this specific website) which is an online community for people who believe in the Idea of The Law of Attraction aka “The Secret” which had been this New Age type of revolution sparked by the author Rhonda Byrne. I am guessing that the people are linking back to this website to validate the idea that making humans can use the Law of Attraction aka The Secret to grow taller and increase in height.

The fact that is I’ve personally written over half a dozen posts proposing the ideas that one could use their minds to make themselves taller. The ideas range form using positive affirmations to visualizations, prayer, NLP, autosuggestion, qigong, hypnosis, and whatever else we’ve written brought up. In every single one of those posts, I had concluded with the idea that a person can not make themselves taller through a change in believes or attitude.

All of these posts have one central idea that they claim, which is that if we change the state of our minds, or even our real ‘selves’ (whatever that means) we would be somehow be able to increase the length or volume of our bones.

Many people who have tried to find evidence to validate this idea that if you desperately want something enough, and just imagine it in your mind, often point to the case of Oprah Winfrey. There is a famous story often told by her about how she became completely fixated on the novel “The Color Purple” and how she desperately wanted to be in a movie about the novel. She played in the movie back in 1985. She became obsessed about the story. She moved to Chicago and got a call to audition for that exact movie. While that may be a very inspirational story, the problem is that due to law the average of large numbers, there is bound to be situations where strange coincidences happens like the one she mentioned.

The billionaire lawyer partner of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway is Charlie Munger. I personally own Munger’s book on mental models called “On Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger“. Munger has this brilliant set of mental models he uses to assess any business that reaches his desk to decide whether he wants to invest or not.

The best part of that books is probably the section where the book goes really deep in describing the set of confidence tricks, and self biases we all have to do to make our egos feel validated. As mortal creatures we often misunderstand how the universe really works because of bad judgement and ego defence mechanisms.

For example, the reason why we only hear from the winners in anything (like the local High School Basketball team who won State in a movie) is due to this thing called Survivor Bias. Oprah Winfrey is probably the clearest example of Survivorship Bias. If she thinks that her success is all due to her actions and her hard work, it would explain probably 20% of it all. Most likely than not, 80% of her success is determined just by dumb luck. No one ever tells the story of the group of people who tried their hardest to win or survive, but in the end failed or died. None tells the loser’s story, since there is no happy ending. When most people go see a movie, the need for a happy ending is derived from our human need to have hope. The key difference most people understand and fully accept is that real life does not mirror the movies. Sometimes bad things happen and we couldn’t do anything about it. Most people just don’t want to admit to ourselves that we are in denial and deceiving ourselves.

(For example, everyone can intellectually grasp the theoretical concept of death, and may be even able to hear the news of their parents being diagnosed with cancer. The fact is that in America, 1 out of 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. 1 out of 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer. None of us thinks that we will be in the half of the population which will get cancer. However, for a person himself/herself be diagnosed with cancer is the type of situation where people get a real reality check. No one wants to fully admit that they are going to die, even though we might be able to handle everyone else dying in front of us completely calmly. When death starts to knock on our door, we change and start to take notice. )

When we are the ones getting the universe’s bad mojo and horrible luck given to us, on something which we have absolutely no control over, we feel completely helpless. We create this imaginary image in the sky of a god to justify the unfairness of life. Just like how we can’t manifest what we want towards us, we can’t manifest what we don’t want away from our lives. 

Of course, it is absolutely true about the old adage ‘luck = preparation + opportunity”. If you plan ahead, create some type of life blueprint or map, set goals for yourself, and take action, you are more likely to get to where you want to be. Hard work, being smart enough to realize when there is a great opportunity in front of you, and taking the calculated leap or risk at the right time, is all on you. However, most of it, is just pure dumb luck. It is absolutely true that the most successful people only focus and work on the things that they actually have a control over.

However, there is no way that we can link our thoughts to the shape and form of our bones. It has been shown that extreme negativity and abusive environments can stunt a child’s growth, but there has been no evidence to show that happy, supportive environments in a child will lead to them being taller. There are hundreds of ways to stunt a child and make them shorter but there has been not a single easy way to make them taller. I would guess that a real clinical test would show no statistically significant increase in the overall adult height.

The Law of Attraction is a believe system which is really a repackaged idea which has been stated multiple time over in human history. Before Rhonda Byrne came out, James Allen wrote the same message in his book “As A Man Thinketh“. The Buddha stated in the Dhammapada in the first line that we are what we think about. The central message behind the Law of Attraction is that “Thoughts Become Things“.  This actually shows that our thoughts are objects, not processes. Our thoughts does not manifest into an object though. Just because we think of an apple doesn’t mean an apple will all of a sudden drop from the sky.

Similarly, thoughts do not change the physiology of our bodies. We admit that for some things in life, maybe we can trick ourselves and our minds to change our life slightly. With enough visualization and autosuggestion, we can trick our brains to help us run faster, or think clearer to do better on a test.

Happier thoughts may lower high blood pressure since the emotion inducing hormones are released by the brain to relax the muscles in the heart, but there are no changes with the bone structure. The bones are just too strong to mold. That is why I suggest to anyone who wants to try using the Law of Attraction to grow taller to stop doing it. It just won’t work.

Maybe There Is Nothing We Can Do And We Should Give Up

Maybe There Is Nothing We Can Do And We Should Give Up

We Should Give UpUpdate 3/9/2014: Over time I’ve received a few messages from people who have been so depressed about their short stature and have become so desperate to find some secret technique that they have hinted at committing suicide if they don’t get what they want. I respond by strongly suggesting to these people that they immediately seek professional help and get counseling to treat this extreme form of body dysmorphia. The height of a person is NOT their complete identity. Please seek help, find a support group, share your emotions, and allow people inside your lives.

I’ve been wanting to write up this post ever since the very beginning of the website, on the 3rd day that this website Natural Height Growth was ever created.

The first thing is, I are not here to lie to you guys. Everything that I write on here, I will not hold back on. There is no bullshit or half-lies. We are here to be as honest as possible. Some people think that I (or my partner) are sort of a scam, or at least use grey-hat tactics. People think we are selling something. Well, we are not a scam. We will not sell something which we don’t believe in. If we are selling something, it will be in the Store section.

(Currently I’ m planning on doing a few dozen reviews of back traction machines for that section, since there is nothing that we are selling of our own at this time. The links for the various back stretching, spinal & disc decompression machines are Amazon Associates Links which allows us to make a small commission if anyone buys something from Amazon by going through those links. The traction machines have been shown to provide upwards of 1-1.5 Inches of semi-permanent height increase.)

I want to let the people who read this website realize that sometimes we get hurt because we are putting our own skin into the game. So far, I’ve had to take on some legal issues with people who sell products which we believe are a scam. Those same people have emailed us and our hosting company to try to shut down certain parts of the website so that the negative reviews for the products they promote are available. We’ve had two DCMAs filed against this website, and I’ve personally had to respond with counter-DMCAs.

Here is something which I need all the readers to fully understand. The most likely outcome over what I (or Tyler) am trying to do is that ultimately we fail in this endeavor. We do get it. We fully understand our predicament and how insanely difficult this endeavor will be. No one has succeeded before us, and we can not be certain that we will succeed.

The Desire Never Goes Away, Even In Old Age

In the 8th episode (Guest Joel Talks About The Psychology Of His Lifelong Desire To Grow Taller) of the Natural Height Growth Podcast , I interviewed this retired man named Joey living in Minnesota who was about 70 years old who still wished desperately to become taller. It seemed that somehow this wish to become taller had stayed with him throughout his entire life, for maybe over 50 years. His partner couldn’t understand why he still had this strange fixation, even at the age where he was at the time.

  • How could something like this stay with a person for this long?
  • Can this desire to grow taller stay with a human for their entire life, which they never let go of?

It shows the incredible stamina that this almost universal desire has on people’s minds. This issue doesn’t go away. If you let this thing fester, the problem can fully consume your entire life, and spread throughout your entire value system until you can only view life through that one single viewpoint. What happens then is that we go to all the various internet forums and chat groups to complain about our problems (imagined or real) so that we can temporarily feel better about ourselves and not have to face the fact that our lives are mostly miserable, and filled with great disappointments.

We’ve seen this strange fixation on height manifested in even the most successful of individuals. Famous singers and actors seems to have this problem as well. No one is exempt from developing this desire. Probably half of the entire human population throughout history have expressed the desire to increase their height at some point in their life. Even the immortal superstar athlete of the past century Michael Jordan have expressed that his dream height was 7 feet tall in an old documentary. It seems that no matter how much our genetics and nature gives us, somehow we still want more. That seems to be the way we are all designed.

Most of our readers are men. They wish to be taller for multiple reasons. The most common one is over dating & relationships. The most common complaint about being short for men is that the opposite sex discriminated against them so they end up single and lonely. The word that describes this phenomena is known as Heightism/Height Discrimination. Heightism is absolutely real. It exists. I personally don’t believe it is a socially created construct since it is prevalent in every single culture I’ve lived in or had contact with.

This message below was one which I clipped from a thread off of the old Giant Scientific Forum. It had been started by the reader TrueHeightSeeker. The reply was also clipped.

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So how do we as height increase researchers respond to this type of soul baring,  visceral reaction, where the poster has lost all his hope? 

While I (Michael) personally have not looked into AlphaGPC, We fully understand why they feel the way they do. They had hope, and sustained that hope for years, nearly half a decade maybe. Over time, they noticed that no one was making any real headway, so their hope diminished. Eventually, all the young teenagers and people in their early 20s gave up, accepted that there was nothing that they could do, had their social obligations, commitments, and responsibilities increase, and decided to move on with their lives. Maybe they went to university, graduate school, got married, had children, had a high stress job, or got sick.

Eventually 99.99% of all the people who wished when they were younger to grow just a little more, to get the growth spurt which they never got, moved on. Those who stayed were left in a desert with no one else to talk to, to share their frustrations. I fully understand what these people are going through. Even though I may have almost fully accepted my height, I still enjoy the experience of doing research just for its own sake.

Ever since I left university after getting my engineering degree, I’ve desperately wished to go back to school, for physics, engineering, or medicine. Going to post-graduate school and getting a MD or Ph. D is a dream of mine. Since life has taken over, with so many financial responsibilities, I may never get a chance to go to graduate school or medical school. This website and the research I will be doing is just my struggle and attempt to complete a form of private education. I collect and categorize all the data and studies which I find and analyze. For me, this website represents more than just a way to possibly increase my height. It gives me a way to learn subjects which I may never get to learn about. Studying medicine independently has helped me learn more about diseases and allowed me to live a healthier lifeThat is why the website and the research will continue forward.

There have been other posts on the forums which share somewhat of a similar sentiment. They noticed that for the subject of height increase, the mega niche on the internet space, has completely stalled. There seems to be no traction in anyone’s effort or research.

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The answer to this guy is that the average intelligence of the internet user over time has increased. Obvious young teenagers have not stopped wanting to grow taller or stop trying to find ways. Where maybe during the 2000s-2010, it was possible for the average person to sell fake pills online and brand them as height increase supplements, that won’t work anymore. People have become too smart for that.

In the current day, 2014, to make people believe an put their faith into us and what this website stands for, we can only consistently put in the effort and commitment to push at the boundary on what we know. As long as we can show that we are willing to do things, and try out ideas beyond what others are not willing to try out, and take giant risks, there will be people who will take notice to what we are doing. Over time, I hope that we can build trust in the readers and develop a strong following.

Some people ask me just long must they wait before some alternative besides limb lengthening surgery for adult height increase would be available. I said that the most optimistic time range would be that it would take 20-30 years. Of course that would be a lie. Based on my guess (and I am being very generous) it is more likely that it would be another 50-70 years before scientists find some other way to do it.

The truth is that trying to find biomedical innovations for a cosmetic surgery applications is not on the top of any companies list. I don’t believe that there has ever been a real company created to study the science of how to potentially grow taller, at least in the USA. Maybe there is something in China or Russia, but I don’t know of their existence. Only radical stem cell researchers based in these former Communist, unregulated, moral-bending countries are willing to try out and test out experiments and ideas which people in the Western Countries would believe to be too barbaric or immoral. Remember, it was the Soviet surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov who after 3 decades, managed in the late 80s and 90s to show that distraction osteogenesis is even a viable surgical method. Medical innovation due to the nature of the work requires baby steps, since as humans we value the human species and the one body we are all given.

If I was totally honest with myself, In some ways, I get a sort of “engineer high” from knowing that I’m trying to tackle a scientific/medical problem which is easily defined, and easily quantified, and the solution to the problem can also be easily quantified. Of all the scientific problems that are around, this is one which a couple of guys or a team of researchers can figure out in a decade, if they put their minds and effort into it. We’ve already managed to prove that the major pivotal steps are possible or have already been done.

We don’t want to give the readers some type of false hope that after 10 years we are going to figure it out. We might fail. Maybe there is nothing we can do and we should give up. However, I’m not going to stop doing this website. If I stopped, I’d just be another American college educated engineer working the normal 9-5 job with a small family (and 2.3 kids) waiting for the weekends to go to Walmart, grill a BBQ, and watch the basketball game. Doing this sort of makes me feel somewhat special, and important

If we succeed, we will literally change the world for the better. If we don’t then we will have just lived a normal life as average people. Being average is okay, but that is a little boring. I don’t want to be boring. If it is solved, will have immediate ramifications to the entire world. It feels great to a guy who was trained to be an engineer to know that I am doing something that is important, which millions of people in the world wished for.

{I hope this post concludes with the statement that we should not give up and we should always try to increase our height.  In relation to every profession there are arm chair quarterbacks, why aren’t there more arm chair doctors for height increase?  Height increase is hard and involves a lot of science but we’ve come a long way.  We’ve gone a lot deeper than the old adage “your growth plates have fused”.  We’ve identified the Zone of Ranvier and the cells that make up the Zone of Ranvier as the key limiting factor to create these growth plates.  We’ve learned that mechanical stimuli is capable of changing cells to become more growth plate chondrocyte progenitor like. People are characterized mainly based on their height, ethnicity, job, weight, age, and cup size(for women). The way height is judged today there is no distinction made for quality or proportional height.  This gives a lot of leeway in height increase methods.  Societal view is it’s easier to pump out babies and some of them will be taller but that shafts the individuals along the way.  It’s easier to wait for a tall baby than it is to create a tall adult.  So height increase is under-researched, incredibly important, and likely can be induced by mechanical means only.  The cells in the cartilage are different from the cells of the bone in that the cells of the cartilage are exposed to more movement.  If the cells of the bone were exposed to the stimuli in the joint would they become more like cartilage? – Tyler}

Why Would Parents Purposely Stunt Their Daughter’s Growth?

Why Would Parents Purposely Stunt Their Daughter’s Growth?

Stunt Their Daughter's GrowthI found this most unique of stories recently from the CNN website. It seems that parents of a girl who had been born brain dead purposely chose to use chemical treatment to stunt their daughter’s growth. It turns out that the story had been a very old story, from back in March of 2008 entitled Disabled girl’s parents defend growth-stunting treatment on CNN.

I took the liberty of copying and pasting the whole story below. At this point, I’ve fully realized that often old links and old stories often disappear so most articles or studies will be referenced or posted to this website for safe keeping.


NEW YORK (CNN) — It’s been a year since the parents of a severely disabled child made public their decision to submit their daughter to a hysterectomy, breast surgery and drugs to keep the girl forever small. Today, the couple tell CNN, they believe they made the right decision — one that could have a profound impact on the care of disabled children worldwide.

The profoundly disabled girl known as Ashley, now 10, has achieved her full height, 4 feet 5 inches.

“The ‘Ashley treatment’ has been successful in every expected way,” Ashley’s parents told CNN exclusively in a lengthy e-mail interview. “It has potential to help many others like it helped our precious daughter.”

While unwavering in their belief in the treatment, Ashley’s parents continue to insist on anonymity. In the year since Ashley’s parents went public, not only did the hospital that sterilized Ashley admit it broke Washington state law, but also the doctor who treated Ashley committed suicide.

As scrutiny of the case deepens, so too does the chasm in the medical community: Is it mutilation, with doctors “playing God” — or, is stunting growth a liberating option for caregivers and the disabled children who will need constant care for the rest of their lives?

Ashley is now 10 years old and, at 4 feet 5 inches tall, has achieved her full height and weight, 63 pounds. The treatment permanently closed her growth plates and took more than a foot off her anticipated height.

“Ashley did not grow in height or weight in the last year, she will always be flat-chested, and she will never suffer any menstrual pain, cramps or bleeding,” say her parents, who felt it important to publicly address their decision after repeated interview requests, in the hopes of sharing their experience with other families.

They responded by e-mail only, to protect the family’s identity. (Read the complete interview)

Ashley’s current state — to them — is the definition of success.

She was born brain-damaged, with a condition described as static encephalopathy, or cerebral palsy. One of her doctors described her mental capacity as that of a 6-month-old, dependent upon her parents to meet every need. She does not walk or talk; she’s fed through a tube and wears diapers. When Ashley was 6, her parents approached Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, for the operations. They believed this would make it easier to cuddle and carry a child who can do little more than lie propped on a pillow.

Weight and height are the “worst enemy,” they write, for children such as Ashley, for whom they’ve coined the term “pillow angels.”

In 2004, Children’s Hospital performed a hysterectomy, removed Ashley’s breast buds and gave her high-dose estrogen to retard growth and sexual maturation — a procedure that has risks, but to date has not harmed her, her parents say.

While the “Ashley treatment” was first published in the October 2006 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, it wasn’t until the family posted its blog last year that a firestorm erupted in the blogosphere, with responses from “inhumane” and “perverse” — to “walk in our shoes.”

“If parents of children like Ashley believe this treatment will improve their children’s quality of life, then they should be diligent and tenacious in providing it for them,” her parents write. “We have a sacred duty to do what we believe is right for our children.”

But in Ashley’s case, what her parents thought was right wasn’t legal.

In May 2007, Children’s Hospital admitted it broke state law by giving Ashley a hysterectomy without a proper court review. To perform any such treatment today would require a court order, as well as review by a panel of experts in medicine and ethics and people with disabilities, says Dr. Douglas Diekema of Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics, the consulting ethicist on Ashley’s case.

So, will doctors stop the growth of more children like Ashley?

Right now, no growth-attenuation therapy is being administered by other doctors anywhere in the nation, according to pediatric experts. Supporters wonder whether another factor, the suicide in September of Ashley’s endocrinologist, Dr. Daniel Gunther, may have slowed wider adoption of the treatment.

“We know from reliable sources his treatment of our daughter was a source of energy and motivation for him,” Ashley’s parents write. “He was frustrated about being blocked from providing this treatment to other children in need. He strongly believed this treatment should be available to them.”

The family appears to be the lone voice with that opinion; CNN shared the family’s comment with Children’s Hospital, but did not get a response. In media reports, colleagues and family members were said to believe Gunther’s suicide was not related to the treatment of the girl.

Another complicating factor — some doctors remain adamant the treatment shouldn’t be available.

“Adults can consent. But for a child, we’re making decisions for them and hoping in our heart of hearts we are making the right decisions,” says Dr. Nancy Murphy, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Children with Disabilities.

Murphy will push for consensus among doctors at a pediatrics conference later this year, but acknowledges strong discord as critics continue to insist that keeping children small reduces them to a permanent infant-like condition, denying the basic human right to experience an adult body, adult feelings and adult relationships. But for Ashley, that may be moot.

“[This disability] shatters the reason we become parents: to watch kids grow, to be part of their lives and to launch into their own lives,” says Murphy. “When you have a child with lifelong dependency, you don’t get to launch your kid, and your caregiver options are limited.”

But like many other people with disabilities, 43-year-old Anne Rader, who also has cerebral palsy but in a much less severe form than Ashley’s, sees the treatment as dehumanizing — and perhaps most significantly — irrevocable.

“The parents are not seeing the potential of the child; they are seeing a baby,” says Rader. “People with disabilities have to look at the potential of our lives: of available new technology, new equipment, medical advances. Things can change so quickly now.”

Some ethicists, too, remain staunch in their assessment that the “Ashley treatment” is a violation of not only human dignity, but also of a physician’s oath to do no harm.

“I think mutilating surgery involving removal of breast buds is indefensible under any circumstances,” says Arthur Caplan, the chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “Growth retardation is not a substitute for adequate home aides and home assistance.”

Ashley’s parents remain convinced what they did for Ashley is the most loving choice they could have made for their daughter and want that for other disabled children.

“We feel that if our time and effort ended up helping a single pillow angel… then it is worthwhile.”

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(CNN) — The parents of “Ashley,” who underwent a controversial therapy to stop her from growing, agreed to speak exclusively to CNN about their daughter’s health, the controversy the therapy has engendered among disability advocates, the suicide of the doctor who pioneered the procedure and the future of more children like Ashley.

Ashley remains completely dependent, her parents say. She can’t talk or walk and is fed through a tube.

While her parents asked to remain anonymous to protect the family, they did answer CNN’s questions about Ashley via e-mail.

CNN: In photos from 2007, Ashley looks happy and engaged. What prompts her to smile?

Ashley’s parents: Ashley enjoys our company and our voices; when we sweet talk to her she often radiates with a big smile. She enjoys rich music, walks outdoors, a swim on a warm day, the swing, etc.

She is also very fragile; a sneeze can set her crying inconsolably for more than an hour.

CNN: You say Ashley is profoundly dependent on you. How so?

Ashley’s parents: Ashley is now and will always be dependent on us in every aspect of her life: On an hourly basis we give her a position change and prop her back on her pillow; we make sure she is well covered and pull her shirt down to cover her tummy; we wipe her drool, etc. Also there are diaper changes, tube feedings, dressing, bathing, teeth cleaning, stretching, entertainment, etc.

CNN: Has anything changed?

Ashley’s parents: Ashley’s tolerance and ability to sleep at night have improved considerably.

CNN: Does Ashley have interaction with children outside of your family — does she have peers?

Ashley’s parents: Given Ashley’s limited cognitive abilities, there’s not much interaction.

CNN: Has Ashley’s outcome been what you expected?

Ashley’s parents: Thankfully, the “Ashley treatment” went smoothly, and it has been successful in every expected way. Her recovery from surgery was quick and uneventful, the scars are barely visible. There have been no side effects to the estrogen therapy. Ashley did not grow in height or weight in the last year, she will always be flat-chested, and she will never suffer any menstrual pain, cramps, or bleeding!

CNN: What was your response to [Ashley’s endocrinologist Dr. Daniel] Gunther’s death last fall? People will inevitably ask, do you think your controversial case was a source of conflict or personal turmoil for Gunther?

Ashley’s parents: We were shocked and saddened for his loss and feel deeply sorry for his family. He was a kind, dedicated and principled person, whom we and many other families whom he helped have a lot of admiration for.

We know from reliable sources that his treatment of our daughter was a source of energy and motivation for him. We also know from conversations with him that he was frustrated about being blocked from providing this treatment to other children in need. He empathized with parents and with their children and he strongly believed this treatment should be available to them.

CNN: What do you consider Gunther’s legacy to be?

Ashley’s parents: From e-mails we received, there are many “Ashleys” out there, who form a new category of disability that we affectionately call pillow angels (see our one slide summary). We estimate that under 1 percent of children with disabilities are in this category. Outside a small community of parents and caregivers who have the direct experience of caring for pillow angels, society does not know much about them and their special needs. Based on the hundreds of e-mails and testimonies we’ve received from this small community, it is abundantly obvious that increased weight and height are the worst enemy for pillow angels.

Dr. Gunther’s legacy is that he had the knowledge, compassion, confidence and courage to be the first to administer this estrogen therapy to a pillow angel, which sped up the natural closure of her growth plates and kept her small. Given the overwhelming supportive reaction that we have seen from parents and caregivers of pillow angels, we strongly believe that this therapy should be an option for the rare kids like Ashley, and Dr. Gunther has secured a place in history as its pioneer.

CNN: Your advice to others contemplating this procedure for their profoundly disabled children?

Ashley’s parents: As parents we have a sacred duty to do what we believe is right for our children. If parents of children like Ashley believe that this treatment will improve their children’s quality of life, then they should be diligent and tenacious in providing it for them.

CNN: Do you consider yourselves a voice for any group? Do you consider yourselves foes of any group?

No and no. We’re simply passionate about sharing our experience and learned lessons with other families since we know it has potential to help many others like it helped our precious daughter. We feel that if our time and effort ended up helping a single pillow angel and her/his family, then it is worthwhile.

CNN: You’ve had more than 2.5 million hits to your Web site, and have processed thousands of e-mails. Why do you think those people who came out so strongly against you did so?

Ashley’s parents: If you look closely at the evidence, critics might be loud but they are a minority opinion on this issue. From the e-mail we received, for every negative message there were 19 support messages (see full stats in our first anniversary update). Also, an MSNBC survey with more than 7,100 respondents shows 59 percent in support of the treatment.

It seems that the treatment does not fit an ideology that has been developed by persons with disabilities and disability scholars. Even though this ideology might be serving the broader disability community quite well, it is clear to us that it was developed without considering the extreme case of pillow angels.

Furthermore, a lot of the criticism came from people who themselves have disabilities and was based on their feeling about how inappropriate the treatment would be for them. Clearly Ashley is in a vastly different category of disability than someone who is able to blog and write e-mails and can make decisions for themselves. A chasm separates the two, not a slippery slope like some fear or claim.

CNN: Do you think you changed any minds?

Ashley’s parents: More than 115 people e-mailed us explaining how their initial reaction was negative and changed to strong support upon better understanding. Their initial reaction was to sensationalist headlines and misleading reporting. They changed their minds once they visited Ashley’s blog and saw a happy and well cared for child through her photos, and then read the factual story. Many of them apologized for judging us without seeking the facts first.

CNN: Will you consider writing a book or doing a movie about Ashley?

Ashley’s parents: We are considering writing a book and/or telling our story in other ways, and we will do so only if we thought it would be helpful to other pillow angels and their families.

CNN: How has having Ashley at the center of a highly publicized, controversial medical story affected Ashley’s siblings?

Ashley’s parents: We’ve been successful at sheltering her younger sister and brother from this media frenzy. Thankfully the media and our community have been respectful of our family’s privacy.

CNN: Will you consider revealing your identity?

Ashley’s parents: At this point we feel that the blog and written interviews are a better approach, since we are dealing with complex and controversial issues that require carefulness and thoughtfulness. We will consider doing a quality interview only if we feel that it will make a material difference in helping other children and their families.

CNN: One year after going public with Ashley’s blog, was that the right thing to do?

Ashley’s parents: If we had our way, we would have chosen a more focused channel to convey our experience to medical professionals, caregivers and parents without looping the general public into the discussion; however, the story went public long before we published Ashley’s blog, and at the time we posted it there were already several articles and dozens of blogs with all kinds of misinformed opinions without the benefit of many of the facts and details of the story.

CNN: Your most important thought you’d like to convey?

Ashley’s parents: The Ashley treatment is relatively safe and has significant and lifelong benefits that can prevent serious pain and suffering and improves the quality of life for children like Ashley. The treatment was deemed appropriate and beneficial to Ashley by her parents, by her team of doctors, and by a multidisciplinary ethics committee in one of the best children’s hospitals, a committee whose mission and sole purpose is to consider what was in Ashley’s best interest. The treatment went smoothly and was successful in every way. More than 1,100 caregivers and family members with direct experience with pillow angels took the time to e-mail us with their support. Many included detailed testimonies (some are posted on Ashley’s blog) of why this treatment brings significant and direct benefits to these children.

We are in the unfortunate situation today where activists with political power and motivated by their ideology have successfully taken a potentially helpful option away from families whose pillow angels might benefit. 

A collective agenda/ideology is being shoved down the throat of all individuals with disabilities, whether it serves them as individuals or not. This is disturbing in a society that believes strongly in the well-being of children and in individual rights. Pillow angels should not be deprived of this treatment when their parents and their doctors have carefully considered the options and concluded that it would be of benefit.

Our Thoughts On The Story

Michael (This is only my own personal opinions, no one else’s): While the purpose of a website like this has been to always to look for new ways and ideas on how to increase our height, we almost never think about the reasons why any person would ever want the exact opposite effect, especially on a their own children. My initial personal response to reading this story was to raise the question “Why would any parents purposely want to stunt their own daughter’s growth?

The parents made their point that if they keep their daughter’s body in a permanent, little girl’s state, it would be better for her and they would be able to take care of her throughout their life. They note that she would always be flat chested, will never have to feel the pain of menstruation, cramping, etc. and will never go through the changes of puberty that almost all other kids will go through in their development.

Ashley’s unique situation is very sad: She can’t feed herself but is fed through a tube. She can’t walk or talk. She has never developed any of the necessary cognitive abilities to ever function properly in society.

Here parents have to do everything for her, including feed her, and change her. Her mind causes her to still be at the level of a baby, and the parents seem to only identify her as a baby. I am guessing that their reasoning is that if her brain is going to cause her to always be a baby, they should keep her body like a baby to stay congruent with her mind, to keep what they believe her identity is intact, for the rest of their lives.

In terms of the medical treatment that was done to her, she had a full hysterectomy done, had her breast buds removed, and given high dose levels of estrogen to fully ossify her bone growth.

We obviously don’t know the whole story so we are not sure if the suicide of Ashley’s endocrinologist, Dr. Gunther has any relevance to her condition. Did he feel so bad and morally responsible that he would take his own life through breaking maybe breaking the basic code of becoming a doctor, which is to do no harm? Maybe he later regretted his decision in going through with stunting the growth of Ashley so much that he couldn’t take the guilt he felt.

My opinion is that what the parents did, they did it to protect their daughter from more pain later in her life. However, I believe in the power of medical innovation. I feel that instead of trying to protect her, they should have let her grow naturally, and let her body go through the natural stages of puberty. Ashley is still young. She might live for a full 50-60 years more, even though her brain may not change much. In the next 50-60 years, there will probably be so many medical breakthroughs and changes, and people might figure out a way to help Ashley become more cognizant. If she gets the treatment and finds out that her parents 40-50 years ago purpose made sure that she would never get a normal sized body, she may hate and resent her parents for their decisions.

In the moment, when a person is a parent, the first thing they always try to do is make the decisions which will protect their children, to shield them from as much future harm as possible. The problem is that by shielding the child, they are also just pushing back the inevitable, where one day the kid they wanted to protect will have to be forced to face the real world. They should have instead focused on the future, focused on her potential, and worked on finding ways to regenerate her neural abilities, whether through stem cells or future medical research. They took the easier, and more cowardly way, because in the short term, it is the easier path to take. In the long term, it is likely that they inhibited the real possible ways for growth for Ashley for the long term, and they didn’t realize it. The way that medical breakthroughs and revolutions are made routinely these days, by the next decades, maybe there will be hope for Ashley to fix her brain.

I guess the only reason I wanted to repost this story is to give the readers something else to read and think aboutt.

How Bosnian Goalkeeper Asmir Begovic Is Still Growing At The Age Of 26

How Bosnian Goalkeeper Asmir Begovic Is Still Growing At The Age Of 26

Bosnian Goalkeeper Asmir BegovicI am not sure where I originally found this unique little story (most likely from one of the forums) but apparently the Bosnian Foutbol Goalkeeper called Asmir Begovic (currently associated with Stoke City) seems to be still growing in height, even at the age of 26.

That story was reported on the online website for the newspaper The Sentinel at http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Stoke-City-Asmir-Begovic-m-growing-26/story-19659225-detail/story.html

From various online sources, this goalkeeper has been listed at 1.96 meters, to 1.98 meters, to what is now being reported, 2.00 meters tall.

So what can we as researchers take away from this unique news? Is there anything useful which we can glean out of this story?

We might have to actually raise the upper age limit for when men can still possibly increase in height.

Something which I sort of figured out from reading from various height statistics websites has been that men who are ethnically from the serbian-croatian-bosnian-herzegovinian region of Europe are abnormally tall. There are even anecdotes that men from the Bosnian & Dalmatian region of Europe is even taller on average, than even their serbian and croatian neighbors. Since I’ve never been to that part of Europe before, I can’t validate this claim. We either take this claim at face value, be sceptical about it, or just keep that type of anecdotal claim in the back of our minds when we are doing our research.

This is based on personal experiences and looking at statistics on soccer players. I had this theory in my our mind that the reason why the men (and possibly also the women) seem to be so tall is because they have a longer time before cartilage ossification just last night. There was one study from PubMed which showed that prepubescent serbian (or maybe croatian) boys increased their height much more after taking a certain type of vitamin (Maybe Vitamin D??). The rate at which they increased was what surprised me, since between the age of 10 to 12, their heights shot up dramatically.

If we combine all those studies and stories together, then the idea that this Bosnian Goalkeeper named Asmir Begovic still having working growth plates doesn’t seem to be all that uncommon then. It could be that his genetics has some way to modulate (or in this case, decrease) the rate of growth plate chondrocyte senescence.

{Tyler – What’s interesting is from the picture is that he still looks skeletally and physically mature(He looks like he would have stopped growing from his facial structure)?}

I agree with Tyler that his body shape, being rather broad just that he seems to be filling out, horizontally as most men who are completely skeletally mature does during the early to late 20s.

There really is not much else we can personally say, or anything which we can recommend on how a person can change their own behavior or lifestyle habits to get the type of body physiology as this guy. It just seems to be very strange, and applies to only people who are of the serbian-croatian-bosnian descent. We’d have to do a meta-analysis study on the SNP groups for the serbo-croatian ethnicity groups of people to find anything of value, which would take too much time to do.

(Note: I am not political in nature, so I don’t wish to get into any type of heated talks about religion, politics, etc. on here about all the genocides and mass murders that was occurring in Yugoslavia-Serbia-Bosnia back in the 90s with Slobodan Milosevic & Ratko Mladić. We don’t get into those types of talks on this website)

Expectant Mothers Drinking Milk Results In Faster Growing Babies and Taller Teenagers

Expectant Mothers Drinking Milk Results In Faster Growing Babies and Taller Teenagers

Faster Growing BabiesThis post is a tip on what a mother can do to help her future children become as big as possible. A few things we’ve found before has been that babies who are born during the summer seems to grow slightly faster than babies born in the winter.

This post is a repost of multiple articles which came out in the end of last year (2013).

We refer to multiple news sites which published the exact same information

 

 

The study looked at groups of mother who drank more than 150 millilitres, roughly a quarter of a pint of milk, a day during the pregnancy compare to groups which drank less than the pint of milk. This equals to about 3 cups of milk a day.

The study is really interesting since the study managed to track most of the mothers up o a 20 year time period.

The study is entitled Maternal milk consumption, birth size and adult height of offspring: a prospective cohort study with 20 years of follow-up

It is noted by most people however that genetics will almost always overrule the effect of the milk.

What are the implications?

Something which has not been suggested by any of the journalists is the generational effect of this habit. Based on my personally experiences with meeting multiple people who have a milk allergy aka lactose intolerance, I’ve noticed that people who can’t convert the lactose in milk end up slightly shorter than their peers who can ingest the milk.

The result is that the already taller mother who can drink milk will on average have even taller kids while the already shorter mother who can’t consume milk with have her kids end up shorter. The result is that the the heights of the offsprings of the two groups of mothers, will diverge away, resulting in on group being noticeably taller than the other, as the generations go by. Of course, in the real world, you can’t segregate people based on height and we are sure that the two groups of offsprings over the generations will intermingle and mate together, normalizing out the heights so there is no bipolar distributions.