Since the last post was on James Bond 007 and the area of government espionage field agents, I decided that this post was appropriate to follow suit. It seems that about 8 years ago the british security and intelligence agency MI-5 decided to impose a height restriction on potential applicants who decide to go into active field duty.

We see articles from sources like The Telegraph UK , a 007 forum, another James Bond 007 website, and also CNN who basically use the source as their story. We get the small entire story from source #1.

From source 2…

Alec 006 wrote:

The short/tall thing is a funny consideration.
Because MI5, and unofficially MI6 have height restrictions on officers, they do not want their people to be too tall. Standing out in a crowd is a disadvantage in the real world of the Secret Intelligence Services.

This is not strictly correct.  Whilst there is a restriction on the height of surveillance operatives (frequently referred to as ‘Watchers’ in novels) so as not to stand out in a crowd, 5′ 11″ if you’re interested, this does not apply to intelligence officers which 007 would be classed as.

From source 3…

New guidelines for MI5 – the UK`s domestic intelligence service (whereas James Bond `works` for MI6) – stipulate that Britons applying to be field agents should be no taller than 5ft 11ins (1.8 m) so they don`t stand out, Britain`s Sunday Telegraph reported.

“You should be able to blend into the background. Applicants would ideally be no taller than 5ft 11ins for men and 5ft 8ins (1.73 m) for women,” the application form reads.

Britain is recruiting 1,000 new spies over the next few years to MI5 to bring the service`s numbers up to 3,000

Personal thoughts: From an intelligence and security point of view, I would say that it may be a reasonable idea to keep applicants below a certain height. As most people realize, many countries in the world have height average below what you would find in man European nations. If you were to bring a male at 6′ 3″ who would be considered tall in the USA or UK to a place like Bolivia, Mexico, Pakistan, or Turkey who is supposed to be in hiding, it would probably be not such a good idea since most people in developing countries, especially in south american or asian countries are on average shorter. This would make the person trying to blend in look extremely big and draw more attention to themselves.  In general, when people walk down the street, there is four types of first impression qualities which would cause people who have never seen you before and just walking by you to stop and want to do a possible 2nd or 3rd take on your face, body, or clothing.

1. You are in the extremes of stature, too tall or short. – I know that every time I see a really tall or really short person I have a momentary focus on them.

2. You are extremely attractive. Being attractive and trying to blend into a crowd is close to impossible. – I would recommend that potential espionage agents who are in the filed trying to blend in be average in facial attractiveness.

3. You are of a different color or face than the people you are surrounded by. ie. If you are a white caucasian in a crowd in North Korean, which is around 99.999% pure blood korean.

4.  You have some clear disfigurement which makes people stop. ie. a limp in walking, a missing arm, a missing eye, a big scare across the face.

The requirement the MI-5 set was for people to be no more than 1.80 meters tall which is 5′ 11″ which is probably the exact height of the average native caucasian UK male. This means that they are most likely to be overlooked if in a crowd. While obviously it is not a big deal in the UK to maybe find agents who are up to the 6’0-‘6’1″ range, I would say it is not a good idea to find anyone taller if they plan to try to blend in with locals if they are going to go into the field in many developing nations.

Last night while I was watching the old James Bond movie Quantum of Solace (starring Daniel Craig) on YouTube I came across a section of the movie which I found rather interesting. As a height increase researcher and a height analyst I have realized that I always seem to have my focus and awareness on any mention of height or height increase suggestions.

In James Bond 007 literature and lore, the origin of Bond and his first love was linked to Vesper Lynd. In the movies his origin is described in the movie Casino Royale where Vesper at the end reveals that she had betrayed him and eventually kills herself in guilt. The movie Quantum of Solace continues on directly from the end of the story line from Casino Royale with many of the same characters. Rene Mathis is the friend who James calls on again to help him get a passport and working credit card when M decides to cancel all of his documents due to what she felt was his intolerable, indefensible actions in his job. It is here where the video around the 12:00 time range portrays.

On this YouTube section, around the 12:00-12:20 section, you can hear the other man, an espionage agent who is a friend of Bond ask him whether he wants to take a pill, either a sleeping pill, a painkiller, a pill that let’s you forget, or a pill to make you taller.

Obviously this is just a movie with fictional characters with fake cars and extremely improbable situations however the comment the other man makes about the pills I found really interesting. We know that there are pills to help you sleep and remove or decrease pain.

However the other two types of pills are what we can definitely say has never been materialized. If I was a betting man I would say that Mathis’ claim that he had pills which would let Bond forget, he was being very serious. Mathis is aware that Bond is still suffering inside over the death of Vesper.

Somewhere in the middle Mathis says that he has pills that can make Bond taller. Bond reacts with a slight chuckle in laughter which I am not sure is to show that he understands that Mathis is “just joking” or maybe he is amused that the espionage agent has such a pill that would work.

What I see when I personally look at Mathis’ face is that he is not smiling or smirking, which would indicate his “height increase pills” claim may not be a joke, but he is being serious about the existence of these magic pills.

The subtitles of the YouTube video translate it to “Jag har piller for allt” which I would guess is maybe German or something germanic in origin.

If it was just a joke to break the seriousness of the moment, I would have used something funnier. Maybe it is my serious side but I am slightly wondering whether this fictional government agent in a movie was really serious that he had height increasing pills.

So the question I wanted to ask is “Do government espionage agents have pills to make them taller already at their disposal?”

It could be that I have watched too many spy action movies like the Mission Impossible series with Tom Cruise and the Jason Bourne Series. In the Mission Impossible series the IMF agents have at their disposal a face changer. the face can be easily changed through a 3-D printer which molds a plastic face you can stick to your real face in minutes. Who is to say that the governments of the world nations has not been able to develop height changing technology for reasons of espionage agents who can even alter their height to deceive agencies in covering their real identity when they are in enemy, dangerous locations? Just something I felt is worth thinking about.

The link for the YouTube video is HERE.

The segment from Quantum of Solace is embedded below. Due to the video uploader’s option request, I was not able to embed the actual video to this post so you would have to go see

I think I’ll go and inform everyone who is reading this that the website HeightCatalyst.com has been reactivated and is coming back.

So far there has been two comments to the website today with one of them being…

“Josh or anyone who is concerned about clearing up the past, feel free to come to heightcatalyst.com.”

Since the person has not given a name I could say the person is probably associated at some point with the now down forum GrowTallForum.com.

I don’t believe that in this type of huge endeavor we are working on we should be getting into any form of competition or drama or personal bickering so I will always promote any really good websites and resources that do become available for the height increase seeker. Like I said in the last podcast with Hakker, no one is smart enough (at least I know I am not) to be able to figure all of this stuff out by themselves so it is more important that we put our heads and brains together as a group/community to figure this thing out. I know I can’t always be around to continue to do the research. There are so many other areas in my life I have to deal with and have responsibilities for.

The website from a quick check is running on a nice simple WordPress based platform theme. From a internet marketing (IM) point of view, I wil help the website out with rankings and getting traffic by giving it a back link. There is however a big discussion forum linked to the website so that could be a good place for where Height Increase Seekers can gather around.

So far there is no content on it yet but I hope to see great stuff like research and breakthroughs in the coming months. I’ll check up on the site from time to time and if it does seem to have great content, I’ll put it in the Resources page. If however there is not much content, I’ll just let it be.

Email: heightincreaseforever@gmail.com

IP Address: 67.159.56.166

In my previous Mind Hack post “Mind Hack XVII: Decode Patterns Of Success With Cal Newport At Study Hacks“I mentioned to you readers about this amazing blog Study Hacks, Decoding Patterns of Success written by a former Ph.D candidate at M.I.T. (and current Georgetown University professor) Cal Newport.

Today I wanted to reveal to you the reader this most important pieces of study advice I think is the most helpful actionable advice that really does work. I was watching a YouTube video where Cal gives a presentation on the patterns of effective study habits one needs in school entitled “2012 Texas Regional Project, “Study 30 Minutes a Day, Get a 4.0 GPA!”. I have taken the liberty to imbedd the video to the post and the most important section begins at 18:25 until 22:35. So, a little over 4 minutes of insanely powerful, useful information and insight. There is some also good study until the 24:30 time point.

If you wanted a full summary of what I consider THE MOST USEFUL STUDY ADVICE I HAVE EVER HEARD then here is my own personal summary and interpretation of his talk.

There are many different ways to prepare for a test but only a few work well. This is just one of those ways that almost always will work well. This is a tactic, not a strategy. This tactic was at the core of all of Cal’s “A”s at Dartmouth and MIT. It works for any subject. When Cal did surveys on Phi Beta Kappa students from all across the country, while researching for his 2nd book, this tactic was the one that showed up the most often on those surveys.

Ready, get excited….

The Key, in what is probably the most effective study technique you can implement and use is….

• Explaining a concept out loud in complete sentences, as if lecturing a classroom, without looking at any notes.

• Cal calls this known process “Active Recall“

This is in contrast to passive recall , which is just exposing yourself to information. (ie. rewriting your notes, reading silently your textbooks, highlighting things, this is all passive recall). This passive recall approach is a terrible, inefficient way to learn material.

When you are in a 40,000+ student university and have most of your classes in large lecture halls with 300-400 other students sitting 50 feet above and away from where the professor/lecturer is speaking lying in a lethargic/indifferent posture in a comfortable chair, you will not learn much at all.

My suggestion:

1. Stop going to lecture – it is a HUGE waste of time to walk 10 minutes back and forth to classes just to sit and passively absorb information from a lecturer. replace the time you would spend in lecture with the time you meet your mastermind group.
2. Form a 3-4 mastermind study group that meets in a very quiet study room only 2-3 times a week, consistently and with commitment. – The time you spend there is not to read the material and books but to be active, discuss, argue, and fill in the areas of lack of understanding you might have from only passively reading and trying to learn the material yourself.
3. Time study interval: 120 minutes of real Active Recall studying for the group. If you meet 3 times a week, go with 90 minutes. If you meet twice a week, go with 120 minutes.
4. Make 5-6 really tough questions on the material which you force other members to answer without textbooks or notes. If this is a science/mathematics/ problem sets type of course/curriculum, pick the hardest questions for them to solve.
5. Pay another person who goes to lecture a small cash amount to inform the mastermind group of any important notices, messages, and notes the lecturer might decide to say during the lecture (ie. change in exam times, change in assignment due dates, stuff like that.)

Remember: Anthony Robbins in his talks reveal that when you only listen to a person talk, like him or a professor, you can recall maybe only 10% of what he said if you are asked about his talk 3 months after the event/lecture/speech if you are asked by another person about the specifics of the event.

However, if you write down the notes and ideas, your ability to remember and recall goes up to around 40% around the 3 month time if you are asked. However, if you can get your body into the program by jumping, getting excited, screaming at the top of your lungs, clapping, dancing, hugging your neighbors, the brain neurology creates new pathways of neuronal connection. The ability and likelihood that this experience will get imprinted and embedded into the deeper recesses of one’s memory increases dramatically.  This means that the learning from at least Anthony Robbins events like Unleash The Power Within results in the people go attend these seminars being able to at least remember better, but not necessarily learn and understand this principles he teaches better.

Active Recall, in contrast means that you are actively trying to understand, synthesize, and explain a concept without any help from any notes or any sort of textbook…

3 Main Points of Active Recall…

• It is devastatingly effective – if you can successfully do an Active Recall on a concept, you will understand that concept, you will remember that concept, and you will still remember this concept many months later on a midterm or final exam on this concept and be able to answer that question.

• It is incredibly time efficient – it takes much less time to do an active recall on a concept than it does to reread over that concept many times over hoping that it “sticks”

• Active Recall is difficult. It is mentally uncomfortable. When you are doing it, you are straining. Your brain is also straining because it is trying to pull together these different things that it has learned before and try to put them all into a shape that it can understand. The brain is also trying to express the completely new shaped concept.

[Note: This is the “catch” about Active Recall. This uncomfortable feeling is absolutely unavoidable. This is the actual process of learning. This is the exact same analogue as lifting a weight at a gym. Remember what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Robbins say about gaining increased muscle mass and size. You have to go pain the normal limits, beyond your comfort zone to a region of pain. It is only at the last rep of a “pump” or even the one beyond the last rep where you will truly see the real results of your effort.]

Top students tend to break up their studying into 1-2 hour chunks of active recall spread up to a week or two before an exam actually starts.

• Active Recall is the only study time that counts.

This seems to be the only or main tactic the best students in the country use to learn new ideas and concepts.

Strategy: Eliminate any study time that is not active recall or preparation for active recall. (Minimize the latter.) As Cal likes to say it, “Fear passive recall like the plague”

• Main Take Away: If you are not actively explaining without looking at your notes, you are not really learning. 

Definition of a “Take Away”: If you take nothing away after reading this post, at least just remember and apply this 1 rule in your studying habits.

What the next Mind Hacks post in the series will be about: Mind Hack XIX: Procrastination

Here is something that I think I finally feel comfortable enough to reveal to the readers after working on this endeavor for enough time.

There apparently is system in our head which I learned about years ago from my study of personal development and interpersonal relationships. It is called the Reticular Activating System (R.A.S.) . From the Wikipedia article on it…

“The reticular activating system (RAS), or extrathalamic control modulatory system, is a set of connected nuclei in the brains of vertebrates that is responsible for regulating arousal and sleep-wake transitions. As its name implies, its most influential component is the reticular formation.”

Many areas of study like therapy and NLP practice borrow and speak about this connection of brain parts in their work. I personally define the concept as what a person chooses to focus on, it will become what they will notice and only notice in the world or surrroundings around them when they are focusing on it.

Defined in another way…“RAS is what filters out information you don’t need and focuses in on what you DO — so that you’re able to tune into the things that are both most valuable and most threatening to you, and keep yourself alive.” (source)

Here is my hidden never spoken of height obsession secret:

I am always, constantly, never stopping comparing myself in height to every single person I see that I walk by everyday. As I walk down the street I actually have my RAS turned on to only or mainly notice the height of the people who walk past me at every single second. It is really strange but I really don’t seem to notice anything else, not facial attractiveness, nor deformity or disfigurement, not clothing styles. For example, when I am walking with my guy friends and they notice an attractive girl, they will notice that and ask me whether I also saw her but I would never see that. I am focusing on the height of people. I always am comparing myself to others. I wish I can stop but I can’t.

When I see some girl or guy who is abnormally tall, I have to turn around everytime just to first make as good of a guess as I can on how tall they are and also check that they really are as tall as they appear to be from a first glance, since they could be wearing high heels or thick heeled boots. For the tall men, I admire them and secretly feel jealous and envious of them. For the tall women, I wonder whether they would be willing to date people shorter than them and whether they only have tall children.

I think the worst example is what happened to me about 2 months ago while I was going down on an escalator in the Subway of the city I currently live in, Seoul.

I saw my old girlfriend with her new bf on an escalator. She was the same girl who left me, and started dating this guy on the exact same day. Immediately I tried to guess how tall he was. She is around the 5′ 5″ mark and when they were facing each other, his eye level was around where the top of her head was. Since I know that for most people, the height difference between their eye level and the top of their head was around the 4-5 inch mark. Plus, he was also standing one step below the escalator to her. Most escalator steps are around the 7-8 inch thickness mark. If we add those difference up that means that he is most likely a complete feet, 12 inches taller than her. That makes him around the 6′ 5″ height mark, maybe even 6′ 6″. I am finally going to admit that I am currently living in the country of South Korea, in the capital Seoul, in the area of Gangnam, which Psy made famous with his YouTube sensation song. My ex is Korean and her new korean bf is at least 6 inches taller than me. If he is then he is insanely tall in the country since the average height of South Korean males is around 5′ 9″. He is at least 3 standard deviations away from the average. She didn’t see me but I recognized her.

I’m around the 5′ 11″-6’0″ mark which makes me not really short but quite average, but when I saw how much taller he was to her, I immediately felt an extremely painful sinking negative feeling inside of me. It’s really strange. Of all the things a person can change about themself, their height may be the last thing they just can’t change or do anything about, at least without some extremely drastic actions.

Main Theme: I can’t stop noticing the height of other people and I can’t stop comparing myself to them in height. This is my never spoken obsession, which I can’t stop. It seems that my sense of worth is somehow connected to my height, and when I see people taller than me, I get upset and jealous.

Note: If you don’t want to read about my past and my personal life, read no further and ignore the story below. I am again trying to exorcise the demons inside of me.

A Personal Confession – It has nothing to do with height, but only what I feel are my deepest insecurities.

I am finally going to admit that I feel always tormented by the fact that this girl who left me and who I still love at some deep level has found a guy who seems to be an upgrade on every level. He went to one of the best Universities in the country, in the same school she came from. He has a better job in a Fortune 100 company. He wants to eventually go get his MBA and work for Mckinsey which means that if he does succeed he will be making probably around the $2-3 million per year mark within 10-15 years. His office is located in one of the biggest, tallest, most impressive building in the entire country of South Korea. Hell, it can be argued that he is better looking than me. I am finally revealing to everyone who reads this that in the last year, my deepest insecurities and fears have been realized.

• She decided to go through with an abortion which I never wanted. I wanted the baby but I was scared I would loss her is I rejected the abortion so I said yes.
• We were separated due to school reasons for an extended amount of time and she started to spend so much time out with her friends who she never told me about.
• She became distant and started to get upset at me more trying to incite me to get angry.
• She left me over the iPad I bought and gave her as a gift. I spend over a week to ship to her but I did it out of love and wanting to get her something nice.
• Apparently the day that she left me, she started dating this guy she was already meeting but “only as a friend.” whom she never told me about.
• She says she is sorry but she also says that she is not a nice person.

I broke down completely, felt suicidal, and had nightmares for months afterwards over what happened. I tried to convince her otherwise by going to her home but she seemed so cold and indifferent. Last night I had a nightmare of her and “him” and it was one of the most vivid of her in a very long time. It has been almost 1 entire year (we were together for a little over 1 year) but I still don’t know what to do. I’ve been to the therapists, multiple actually. My family has been harsh in criticizing my bad choice in romantic partners. My friends have been extremely supportive and wanted me to meet other girls. I did that and met someone else rather easily, and dated her but I could not stop feeling insanely horrible inside so I had to end that relationship. Today I am dating another girl, and this new girl is so nice, so sweet, so generous and hard working, but how can I tell her that I am still in so much pain from someone else.

• I’ve been fired from many jobs before.
• I’ve had family members die before.
• I’ve failed school and entire grades.
• I’ve had multiple people hate me.
• I’ve lost a lot of money from people who deceived me.

At some deep level, I don’t see how anything worse could have happened to me. I think the loss of neve having my child is something which I will never be able to get over

Warning, NSFW: Right at the beginning, XRunner starts talking about the subject of masturbation, which is a sensitive topic for some people. This makes me conclude that he (I assume XRunner is a guy) is talking mainly to guys about this topic. 

About two days ago I got in the website email a message from a guy “Eliot” who sent to me a .docx file which seems to be a collection of posts this person on other height increase forums calls Xcrunner211. The name is only familiar since James/Hakker said in the last podcast episode, which I took down, that there were a few big players in the now dead GrowTallForum.com website one being this guy XRunner, another being Alkoclar, and a few others.

It seems that XRunner had his own ideas, his own theories, and routines on how to grow taller.

I looked at only the first few pages only so from what I am interpreting of his routines, they are supposed to be used mainly for teenage males who are still growing. He suggest using a combination of IGH-1 and Ghenerate with also Glucosamine/Chondroiton/MSM thrown in there as well. We can see that the ideas from the MENS routine is mentioned since growth hormone secretagogues, melatonin, and niacin are all mentioned. He does say that lithium only works for people who have open growth plates.

On a side note: I actually took Lithium when I was around 16, when I was still growing and I can absolutely attest to the fact that Lithium made me go from a weight of around 170-175 to 205. As for height, I never noticed whether it had any affect there but I (and my parents) all noticed a dramatic weight increase from using the precription.

I would say that XRunner is quite knowledgeable on the possible routines and mechanics on HOW to grow taller. He mentions two compounds which I have heard about Folic Acid, and Folinic Acid. Sam-e is also mentioned.

His advice on playing basketball I felt is not needed. In general, we must remember that people who play basketball don’t become taller. It is more likely that people end up playing basketball from peer or social pressure because they were naturally tall from the beginning. This is where people think correlation is causation, which it is not. I would rather suggest going for swimming since the load is removed from the body and the bone density of swimmers I’ve found from swimmers are far less than still growing teenagers who play other sports like soccer. We then must remember that in general, being tall and having longer bones has some correlation to having lower than average bone densities. With this weak link of logic, I would say that swimming leads to lower bone density, less compressive loading on the bones, and leads to possible greater overall height.

The ideas on masturbation has no scientific basis. There are studies which show that high levels of stress during the young growing years might have some form of growth stunting effect. Since the act of masturbation and orgasm causes stress levels to drop from the dopamine release during orgasm, we would infer using inductive reasoning that masturbation may be a good thing helping to lower stress levels, thus maybe leading to more normal levels of growth. Of course, this is all just complete guess work and I can be completely wrong about this.

XRunner, if you are a reader of this website, I hope you are willing to come forward and give your opinions and thoughts on what you wrote before on the other height increase forums and boards.

Conclusion: From what I can tell, some of the ideas make some sense and do seem to have a real possibility of working for teenage males who are still growing in possibly increasing their height growth rate. He is willing to claim that this stuff would work for people with even closed plates in their early 20s and obviously I can’t back that claim up.

If you really wanted to look at the file, I decided to put it as a link below. The file is a .docx file so if you have Microsoft Word of any of the newest version it should be no problem in opening the file. This file will also be uploaded to The Library section.

Click Here –> XRunner Research File <– Click Here