Sometimes I find new information from links that are made to this website and today was one of those days. It seems that there is a website called Good Looking Loser (which focuses on dating, fitness, making money, and lifestyle) has this forum where a person asked whether there was any other options besides Limb Lengthening Surgery which can lead to height increase after a person reaches adulthood and full bone maturity.

The link to the forum article is Topic: Limb lengthening surgery. Only way to get tall??

The guy was 26 years old, 5′ 10″, and wanted to be at least 1 inch taller.

It seems that as a response, two people did leave a reply which sort of made me think about the scientific implications when they mentioned that someone did seem to increase in height after HGH injections.

I took the liberty of clipping a pic and pasting his post below

A Little Bit Of History To Put Things Into Context:

I remember seeing this guy and finding the website Good Looking Loser maybe 6 months ago from clicking on a link where people were talking about fitness. From what I remember, this guy, the one who posted, is one of the founders of the website. This website is sort of like a No Nonsense Approach for American guys in their 20s who want to chase after the typical dreams of meeting and having sex with as many beautiful girls as possible, becoming physically fit and ripped, making money quickly, enhancing one’s mind cognitively through taking nootropics (which I talked about using Provigil), and living the sort of location independent lifestyle promoted by Tim Ferris in his book “The 4 Hour Work Week“.

I am fully aware of these types of guys who are trying to live the life that they want. I was one of them a few years back. My whole point is that, this guy is not one of those people who is going to lie about this type of strange medical anomaly. I personally believe in his unique story. I can’t find any motive or reason why this guy would lie about something like that. He seems like a genuinely honest, no bullshit type of guy who just tells it like it is, sort of like how he designed his personal website (and his personal brand) to be like.

The guy (don’t know his name) is obviously very big in terms of muscles but I have no idea what his current height is. He just says that he did notice his height increasing to over 5′ 8” after he started to use HGH Injections as prescribed by his doctor for treating some sports injury.

Now, this growth in height happened in the span of 3.5 months in the Summer of 2006. That was 7.5 years ago. If we were to assume that this guy is maybe 31 currently, then those increase in height happened when he was 23-24, which is quite late in development.

If this guy is anything younger, like even in the age range of 29-30, we should not take too much note in his story. He would have been 21-23. That is still a reasonable young age for a small percentage of men to still have active growth plates.

Note: We realize also after reading about diurnal variations in the longitudinal growth in lower leg bones (tibia) that most men and women experience the greatest amount of growth spurt in the Summer season and at night time during sleep, . (read the PubMed article “Is longitudinal bone growth influenced by diurnal variation in the mitotic activity of chondrocytes of the growth plate?“. That might further disprove this guys point, since maybe what really happened was that he experience one last growth spurt in his early 20s in those summer months, which would coincide with his point that the entire thing happened through 3.5 months. That would suggest his growth plate cartilage was still intact.

The 2nd thing we note is that Tyler also mentioned in my 2nd Podcast Episode (Listen Here) that he was doing bodybuilding and weightlifting in his mid 20s and after he stopped weightlifting, he noticed that his own height increased by about 1 inch (from 5′ 8″ to 5′ 9″) after he stopped. It might be that this guy who was doing a lot of weight lifting took some time off from his routine of weight lifting to heal his knee and that gave his body time to readjust and get back to its normal height.

The next questions we should be asking ourselves (or him) are…

• How old was he when the thing happened?
• How much HGH was he injecting?
• How much of a gain did he achieve?

Can we explain away this single case of height increase through HGH injections as a case of a guy going through a late stage growth spurt in his early 20s during the summer months?

Or does this show that some HGH usages, in at least the initial stages when the body is first adjusting to recombinant growth hormone, might lead to the articular cartilage or the tissue in the intervertebral discs to somehow go into hypertrophy and lead to maybe 1 extra inch of height for adults with epiphyseal growth plate closure?

[Tyler’s Notes: Well I believe that IGF2 is one of the key proteins to induce new growth plates.

You can see in this image that GH1(human Growth Hormone) is linked somewhat to IGF2 but far more closely to IGF1.

My current theory is IGF2 is key to forming the mesenchymal progenitor cell layer that forms the resting zone layer and that CNP is key to the other stages of growth plate formation.

More on IGF2 and GH1:

Molecular genetics of human growth hormone, insulin-like growth factors and their pathways in common disease.

“The human growth hormone gene (GH1) and the insulin-like growth factor 1 and 2 genes (IGF1 and IGF2) encode the central elements of a key pathway influencing growth in humans. This “growth pathway” also includes transcription factors, agonists, antagonists, receptors, binding proteins, and endocrine factors that constitute an intrincate network of feedback loops. GH1 is evolutionarily coupled with other genes in linkage disequilibrium in 17q24.2, and the same applies to IGF2 in 11p15.5. In contrast, IGF1 in 12q22-24.1 is not in strong linkage disequilibrium with neighbouring genes.”

“Both IGF2 and H19 are well-known imprinted genes with opposite behaviours: IGF2 is expressed only from the paternally inherited chromosome, while H19 is transcribed only from the maternal chromosome. This is because both genes share the same set of enhancers (which are located downstream of H19, about 100 kb from the IGF2 promoters) and, while H19 gene uses the enhancers on the maternal chromosome, on the paternal chromosome, the enhancers are used by IGF2”

In adults IGF2 is normally imprinted so the gene is silenced.  But as in some cancers it is possible for loss of imprinting of these genes.  Maybe somehow this person experienced loss of imprinting of IGF2 which allowed HGH to stimulate IGF2 signaling and induce mesenchymal stem cells into growth plate progenitor cells for neo-growth plate formation.]

In the last post we had stated that we can use spinal decompression therapy using a strange expensive machine like the DRX9000 for disk height increase. This device has been promoted by Chiropractors as a way to treat many forms of pain derived from the back. One of the main functions of the device was to stretch out the torso by stretching out the dorsal side.

Note: The DRX9000 has been a very controversial product where chiropractors and medical doctors with MDs are almost exactly divided on their opinion on the efficacy and legitimacy of the product. There are a lot of people who claim that the device is a scam product which does not work in treating lower back pain and sciatica symptoms. (source)

This issue of decompressing the spine got me thinking back to an old YouTube video I watched years ago showing this Chinese-Malaysian Bone Setting Doctor based from either Singapore or Kuala Lumpur who used the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (which some people just call TCM) to “straighten out” his patient’s backs by popping bones into place and fixing bone fractures. I realized that these bone setters might be just as good as any of these modern devices in spinal manipulation, with purposes for pain relief and maybe also the additional benefit of height increase.

From the Wikipedia article on Bone Setters, it seems that these more holistic, homeopathic healers were the predecessors to the modern chiropractors, osteopaths, and physical therapists. They were the people who would pop your shoulder or hips back in place if you twisted the joints and they popped out by accident.

Apparently from the Wikipedia article, it says that this form of bone manipulation is not just from the Far East Asian countries.

It is also practiced in the following countries (source)…

• Ghana
• Mexico
• the Balinese 2 of Indonesia
• the Lomi-Lomi of Hawaii 3–5
• in areas of Japan – In Japan, it is called Sekkotsu, which is also called JudoTherapy. From one source, “Judotherapists can treat injuries such as fracture,
  dislocation, bruise, and sprain in the Sekkotsu clinic”
• China
• India 3
• by the shamans of Central Asia 6
• by sabodors in Mexico 7
• by bone setters of Nepal 8,9
• bone setters in Russia and Norway 10.
• Nigeria (source)
• Ancient Greece
• there is no clear evidence that bone setting, which is also known as manipulation therapy might have also happened in Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, and possibly also Egypt.

The point is that if we are looking for some height increase, it might be reasonable to suggest that instead of going to see a chiropractor, we could also try to see a bone setting doctor. The practice is almost never practiced in the USA or most Western Countries. The closest we might come to these things is if we took a trip to southern Mexico.

Based on what we see of the listing of countries we find, I am note willing to recommend that people go to some of these countries due to concerns over a person’s health.

I personally don’t think that the bones setters one might find in Malaysia or China is somehow better or safer for a person but there seems to be a lot more documentation and at least anecdotal stories of people having medical benefits from going to these Oriental Practices of Medicine.

These Malaysian Bone Setters you might find in Singapore uses something called Nei Gong Tuina. Tik Dah, Zhenggushu, Zheng gushu, or Dit Da. We note that Dit Da might be a Hong Kong variation or Cantonese translation of a much more general form of Chinese Osteopathy (aka Chinese Bone Setting) different from the modern Mandarin way of pronouncing stuff.

From the article on Chinese Zhenggushu Bone Setters, there is supposed to be some orthopedic clinic called Luoyang Orthopedics Hospital, the largest of its kind in China, which treats patients with at least small fractures using non-invasive approaches. We quote the following below…

“Doctor Zhang, with the help of two assistants, gently manipulates the angle of the fractured bone with his hands and then suddenly pushes the bone. In the X-ray room, it is clearly seen that the fragment has been relocated to its normal place, and this was done in a flash of push.”

What is really amazing is that you can actually see how effective this bone setters are. They flash this X-Ray (or some type of medical radiological device) on the doctor’s hands and the patients area of the body with the broken bone. As the doctor readjusts the body right in front of you, you can see in real time through the X-ray the bones being popped back into place.

From the article….

“The practitioners refused to give up the time-honored therapy without a fight. They decided to operate the therapy by exposing their hands under X-rays and replacing the bones with the guidance of images. They believed this was the most direct way to improve the accuracy and effect of the ancient therapy. To protect the doctors from strong radiation, the hospital offered special lead gloves to them….”

The article mentions two very old bone setters named Guo Zongzheng and Guo Weihuai who were among the last of a long line of bone setters. I guess if we are going to be seeing any more really well qualified bone setting doctors, we should go now before that practice is lost.

Currently these special doctors seems to only be found in either Hong Kong or Singapore.

My personal opinion is that these bone setters are probably slightly more effective in spinal manipulation that the most chiropractors we meet. If they are better and more effective in spinal manipulation, they probably adjust the spine for a greater amount of height increase than a trip to the chiropractor.

I am not familiar with Oriental Derived Medicine and have never tried acupuncture myself although my Korean girlfriend seems to really enjoy Chinese Foot Massages which is known as Reflexology. I don’t doubt in the efficacy of certain Oriental Medicine in treating certain illnesses.

We have known for a long time that if we tried to do some types of physical therapy and chiropractor techniques of decompressing the intervertebral discs, we can gain some temporary height, but I have recently started to believe that some of that height we gain might not be temporary, but much more permanent. When I did research on the words “spinal manipulation height increase” into Google I found some old sources I had used before as well as previous articles that I had written about the subject of decompressing the spine. The article “Can you grow an inch in a week?” Revealed that after a women went through various types of techniques

1. She gained 1/2 of an inch after 3 sessions using Pilates
2. She gained 1 full inch after 3 inches using the Alexander Method
3. She gained 1/4th of an inch after going to the chiropractor.

There is a website called the Cox Technic which claims that by using their chiropractor machine called the Cox Technic Flexion Distraction and Decompression you can increase the disk height by 17%.

There was the older post I wrote “Increase Height And Grow Taller Through Non Surgical Spinal Decompression Using Spinal Decompression Therapy” which I showed that the whole process is completely legitimate, at least for temporary effect. However the question was always over how effective was it for long term success.

I would find another source Here which revealed that the disk height increase after spinal decompression would be 1-2 mm for each lumbar vertebrate bone.

In the study Radiographic disk height increase after a trial of multimodal spine rehabilitation and vibration traction: a retrospective case series the experimenters used a type of rehabilitation therapy technique known as lumbar vibration traction in the spinal decompression therapy.

There was only 6 patients involved and 1 of them was actually removed to make the data set more smooth. The result was “…achieved improved disk height in 3 of 5 lumbar disks on plain film radiography”. What was shown from the table of disks height was on average an increase of around 1-2 mm for each vertebrate.

The member at the Make Me Taller Forums also made the same theoretical pitch which they called the Intra-Spinal Treatment.

What I am currently proposing is that if we used something like the DRX9000 Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression Machine, (which most medical physicians think is a over-expensive scam product. It might not work at all) to achieve the 1-2 cm of temporary height increase it can definitely do, we might be able to combine it with oral consumption of the compounds…

• Hyaluronic Acid (aka Hyaluronan) – Dosage: Unknown at this time
• Glucosamine Sulfate – Dosage: 1000-1500 mg daily (Buy it from Amazon here)
• Chondroitin Sulfate – Dosage: 1000 daily

This compounds are in the family of the type of organic compound that the GAGS (glycoaminoglycans), Aggrecan, and Proteoglycans are made of which are found in the cartilage and tendon-like tissue found in the intervertebral discs. They are the compounds that make up over 90% of all of the extracellular matrix in cartilage tissue and tendons, forming the Collagen Type 2 and Collagen type 10 (ColX) found in hyaline cartilage.

A recent commenter did note that after they took glucosamine sulfate (either 1000 mg or 1500 mg) for 3 months, they increased their height by 1/2 cm, which is quite a increase just from oral consumption of a supplement. I spent over half an hour trying to track down that comment made on this website from the hundreds of comments made this recent month but could not find it, clip it, and paste it here showing the actual comment as complete proof. I personally am taking 2 pills of glucosamine sulfate at 500 mg every day myself. What I can show you guys is a picture of my right hand holding the Glucosamine Sulfate 500 mg that I have been taking 2 a day which I bought in Korea –Buy it (at 1000 mg) here from Amazon to help fund the website (I’ll get about $2.50 as an affiliate if you buy the supplement from Amazon)

The combination could lead to upwards of a full 1 cm of permanent height increase which would not go away unless one drastically changes one’s lifestyle and exercise routine. It might sound like much to get just 1 cm but it would a start. This is the real thing.

Just something quick to reveal today. After getting back a little to the research, I did manage to find a rather new Patent filed back in 2008 from a Korean researcher, Myung Keun Ji, which wrote up and filed a Patent entitled “Apparatus for Stimulating Growth Plate” which I found from Google Patents. It seems that his idea for using pulsing electrical currents to stimulate growth plate cartilage is very similar to what Brighton talked about in his patent (Method for non-invasive electrical stimulation of epiphyseal plate growth, US 4467809 A), which we have already referenced and reviewed quite extensively. Myung Keun even makes sure to reference Brighton’s patent since his patent seems to be an extension of the older patent. We clipped and linked to the specific patents he references in his Patent. The other patent is Modification of the growth, repair and maintenance behavior of living tissues and cells by a specific and selective change in electrical environment by John P Ryaby

From the Abstract…

An apparatus for stimulating a growth plate is provided. The apparatus for stimulating a growth plate includes a controller, a current supplying unit, and at least one growth plate stimulator. The controller outputs the driving command signal in response to an external input which determines at least one of an amount of the current and a frequency of the current. The current supplying unit supplies a current corresponding to the driving command signal to the growth plate stimulator. The growth plate stimulator stimulates the growth plate by using the current supplied from the current supplying unit

From a quick Google Search, I also found that it was listed on Patent Scope. From the website…

“…a growth plate stimulating apparatus capable of effectively stimulating a growth plate of the knee even in an asleep time”

So it seems that the device that this Myung Keun Ji has stated might be capable for stimulating the length of the legs closer to the knee area for kids while they are sleeping.

From the Product Description section….

“…The increase in length of the bone is a result of changing a cartilage bone at a distal end of the bone into hard bone cells. If the number of new bone cells is increased, the length of the bone is increased, so that the height of the child is increased”

“…Conventionally, as a growth plate stimulating apparatus, shoes for stimulating the growth plates are mainly used so as to stimulate the ankles or the bottoms of the feet.”

Analysis: What this Korean Medical researcher has revealed is that maybe in traditional Korean medicine, to help young kids become taller, they put on some type of bone lengthening shoes. However he does does in the description that the conventional ways of wearing electrically stimulating shoes to stimulate the growth plates close to the ankle areas was probably not effective.

His approach is to stimulate the growth plates in young kids in the knee area.Refer to the pictures below. At some point, we will be breaking down the patent into something much easier to understand for the lay person within the coming months.

Update #8 – Working On A 2nd Project – November 1, 2013

This last month was spent doing three different things, none of which was related to trying to gain height.

• Traveling – took a short trip to Shanghai, China
• Building assets which lets me earn what is known as passive income
• Building a resource on the internet on giving breakthrough ideas and treatments for unique medical disorders and the various chronic pains that result from them

It is absolutely true that my passion is still on trying to go into this endeavor but I also understand that there should be something else in my life.

This website is NOT going anywhere. It is here to stay, and I will be back at some point to focus more on the research. My guess is that based on the other obligations in my life, it would take at least until Jan of 2014 before I start to go back into the research in a consistent fashion.

Changes that have been happening

• Tyler has become a huge contributor to the website, in revealing multiple new insights and discoveries.
• I have started to share a percentage of the profits that this website earns with him, so this website is turning more into a side business with business partners.
• I do wish to produce a book some time either in the coming year, or the year after that.

As for my height, nothing has changed. Maybe writing these monthly reports on updates and changes about the website is pointless at some point if I do not actively get back into increasing my height.

Bmpr1a is downregulated by aging in bone marrow.  LSJL upregulates Bmpr1b but expression of Bmpr1a is modulated by normal mechanical loading.  BMP-2 interacts with Bmpr1a.  LSJL upregulates BMP-2.  Cells in the perichondrial groove express Bmpr1a.  Persistent upregulation of Hoxa2 which causes short stature downregulates Bmpr1a.  Bmpr1a is upregulated in a fractured tibia.  These facts are consistent with the observation that bmpr1a could play an on/off-switch in neo-growth plate formation.

BMP Receptor 1A Determines the Cell Fate of the Postnatal Growth Plate.

“Embryos deficient in Bmp receptor (Bmpr)1a or Bmpr1b in cartilage display subtle skeletal defects; however, double mutant embryos develop severe skeletal defects, suggesting a functional redundancy that is essential for early chondrogenesis. In this study, we examined the postnatal role of Bmpr1a in cartilage. In the Bmpr1a conditional knockout (cKO, a cross between Bmpr1a flox and aggrecan-CreER (T2) induced by a one-time-tamoxifen injection at birth and harvested at ages of 2, 4, 8 and 20 weeks), there was essentially no long bone growth with little expression of cartilage markers such as SOX9, IHH and glycoproteins. Unexpectedly, the null growth plate was replaced by bone-like tissues, supporting the notions that the progenitor cells in the growth plate, which normally form cartilage, can form other tissues such as bone and fibrous; and that BMPR1A determines the cell fate. ”

“During endochondral ossification, the progenitor cells committed act as the stem cells that replenish the pool of proliferative chondrocytes in the resting zone of the growth plate. The resulting daughter cells exit the cycle and undergo maturation via prehypertrophic, hypertrophic and terminal hypertrophic processes, followed by calcified cartilage formation. The vascular invasion then leads to the removal of cartilage, formation of bone marrow, and new bone formation and growth.”

“Is [there] a molecule that initiates and guides the progenitor cell in the resting zone of the growth plate, which solely differentiates chondrogenesis?”<-We want to find this molecule and induce it in adult bone.

” The failure of long bone growth indicates that there is no new progenitor cells added after deletions of Bmpr1a gene by one time injection of tamoxifen at newborn stage.”<-This is bad news that there may be a fixed pool of progenitor cells that is used up.  However, other stem cells could become progenitor cells after the right mechanical stimulus.

“The work with a one-time injection of tamoxifen to remove Bmpr1a in cartilage at birth, which leads to a lack of long bone growth postnatally, raises the possibility that the progenitor cell number might already be present in the growth plate at birth with no more new progenitor cells added. This observation may explain why the rodent growth plate remains unfused during the animal’s lifetime but there is essentially no long bone lengthening after 28-30 weeks. In fact, in the 5-month-old control mouse, there is very limited cell proliferation in the growth plate compared to the early stage ”

So the goal in a bone lengthening program is to alter cell morphology of stem cells to be more like the progenitor cells present in the zone of ranvier and then to upregulate bmpr1a expression to encourage a chondrogenic fate.

This fixed pool of progenitor cells is also supported by s1p-ko mice which can form new growth plates from this pool of progenitors.

IGF-2 could play a role in priming MSCs to be more like the progenitor cells that form new growth plates.  IGF-2 has been used to induce longitudinal bone growth.  The LSJL scientists have also suggested that IGF-2 injections may be beneficial to LSJL lengthening.  CTGF is linked to IGF2 and is another target to increase for supplements as well as HMGA2.  IGF2 is downregulated almost 1000-fold during senescence which further links IGF2 to the creation of progenitor cells.

I couldn’t find any supplements that increase IGF-2.  There’s a supplement called IGF-2 but that just seems to be the brand name.

Epigenetic consequences of a changing human diet.

“The ultimate methyl donor for epigenetic-methylation reactions is S-adenosylmethionine that is produced by the methylation cycle and it has been reported that periconceptional folic acid use alters the level of methylation within IGF2. A larger study of human pregnancy also observed an effect of folic acid use on IGF2 methylation in the offspring but the effect was restricted to folic acid use after 12 weeks gestation when women are not recommended to take the supplement. Late gestation use of folic acid was also associated with reduced LINE-1 methylation and altered paternally expressed gene 3 (PEG3) methylation. Three of the four significant associations with folic acid use and folate status were negative and one was positive, suggesting that it may be naive to assume that this is a simple substrate limitation effect or that the supply of nutrients involved in the methylation cycle will affect all genes equally.
Imprinting occurs before fertilisation but changes in imprinting methylation in animal models in response to nutritional exposures have been demonstrated into the early post-natal period for IGF2, after which the imprint is apparently fixed”

Choline can result in hypermethylation of IGF2 in the liver.  Liver production of IGF2 is not stimulated by GH in adult mammals.  In adult mammals, IGF2 does not seem to respond to physiological status or vary with growth rate.

Expression of bone-related genes in bone marrow MSCs after cyclic mechanical strain: implications for distraction osteogenesis.

“In this study, a single period of cyclic mechanical stretch (0.5 Hz, 2,000 microepsilon) [for 40 minutes] was performed on rat bone marrow MSCs. Cellular proliferation and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity was examined. The mRNA expression of six bone-related genes (Ets-1, bFGF, IGF-II, TGF-beta, Cbfa1 and ALP) was detected using real-time quantitative RT-PCR.
The results showed that mechanical strain can promote MSCs proliferation, increase ALP activity, and up-regulate the expression of these genes. A significant increase in Ets-1 expression was detected immediately after mechanical stimulation, but Cbfa1 expression became elevated later. The temporal expression pattern of ALP coincided perfectly with Cbfa1.
The results of this study suggest that mechanical strain may act as a stimulator to induce differentiation of MSCs into osteoblasts{but could be chondrocytes with increase in bmpr1a levels}.”

This was the load applied to the cells during the study it’s reasonable to expect that the load is similar to that which is applied by LSJL.

“The transcription profiles of IGF-Ⅱand TGF-β were similar. Both genes reached maximum transcription immediately after mechanical strain and mRNA levels then decreased with time, except for a slight increase at 6 hours.”

The age of rats is not given and is vital information given that IGF2 is an age related gene.

It’s conceivable that LSJL modulates Bmpr1a expression given the study that shown it can be modified by mechanical loading and that LSJL modulates IGF2 expression given the study above that showed that it was upregulated by mechanical loading.

But still finding supplements that upregulate IGF2 and Bmpr1a would be exceptionally helpful.