On a previous post, I had only briefly talked about the only device that seems to be out there right now that people can buy commercially that employes the LIPUS (low intensity pulsed ultrasound) technology.

The device is called Exogen. The website that sells Exogen is located HERE. The commercial use of the device to to increase the healing rate of bone fractures and decrease the time needed to heal bone fractures. Included with the device is gel that goes with it in application.

I did some more research and people claim on other sites that the device will cost a person around $300-$600.  I am not sure about what insurance will cover on it but it looks like something I would be willing to try on fractures and also in possibly adding height.

I will post below what is stated on the website HERE. If you would like a brochure of the Exogen Device click HERE

*Summary of Indications for Use: The EXOGEN Ultrasound Bone Healing System is indicated for the non-invasive treatment of established non-unions^† excluding skull and vertebra.

In addition, EXOGEN is indicated for accelerating the time to a healed fracture for fresh, closed, posteriorly displaced distal radius fractures and fresh, closed or Grade I open tibial diaphysis fractures in skeletally mature individuals when these fractures are orthopaedically managed by closed reduction and cast immobilization.

There are no known contraindications for the EXOGEN device. Safety and effectiveness has not been established for individuals lacking skeletal maturity; pregnant or nursing women; patients with cardiac pacemakers; on fractures due to bone cancer; or on patients with poor blood circulation or clotting problems. Some patients may be sensitive to the ultrasound gel. Full prescribing information can be found in product labeling, at www.exogen.com or by contacting customer service at 1-800-836-4080.

^†A non-union is considered to be established when the fracture site shows no visibly progressive signs of healing.

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Faster healing for broken bones

The EXOGEN Ultrasound Bone Healing System is the clinically tested, FDA-approved treatment for indicated* bone fractures. Using painless ultrasound waves, EXOGEN may help heal broken bones by speeding up your body’s natural repair process. In just 20 minutes a day, you can help ensure healing for stubborn-to-heal* bone fractures or an indicated* freshly broken tibia or broken radius. It’s faster healing for broken bones — and less hassle for you.

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Why EXOGEN?

A broken bone slows you down. Whether you’ve fractured your leg or your smallest toe, you know life won’t be normal until you heal.

But did you also know there’s a way to help accelerate your healing process? It’s called EXOGEN, and it could get you back on your feet — or your toes, or your leg — sooner.

The details

EXOGEN uses safe, painless ultrasound waves to activate cells near the site of your break. The waves stimulate your body’s healing cells, speeding its natural repair process. And it works in just 20 minutes a day, so you can help your fracture heal on a tight schedule.

The data

Clinical studies have demonstrated that EXOGEN accelerates the healing of indicated* fresh fractures by 38%.^2,12 It has also been shown to heal 86% of non-union* fractures¹ — stubborn breaks that are not healing and might otherwise require surgery.

EXOGEN has been demonstrated to improve fracture healing in people who are older, obese or use tobacco.^11,18,27 People who have these conditions are more likely to experience delayed bone healing. EXOGEN may accelerate the healing process by as much as 50% for patients who smoke.¹¹

The difference

EXOGEN is the only bone growth stimulator available today that’s approved to treat indicated* fresh fractures. It also has a demonstrated heal rate of 86% for non-union* fractures,¹ and it offers a fast effective daily treatment time: just 20 minutes daily.

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To understand how EXOGEN works, first take a look at your body’s process for healing a broken bone.

When a bone breaks, your body sends white blood cells to the fracture site. The white blood cells remove debris^9,28 in the area and create inflammation — the first step in broken bone healing.

Next, your body creates a callus around the fracture to bridge the break. This callus is really just fibrous tissue, and it hardens over time.

The final step in healing a broken bone is remodeling, when your body replaces the connective callus with new, more compact bone. Remodeling makes bones stronger.

EXOGEN: Helping speed each step of the broken bone healing process³

To help heal bones faster or simply start healing bones that won’t heal on their own,* EXOGEN emits low-intensity, pulsed ultrasound waves at the site of your break. Demonstrated in laboratory tests to jumpstart your body’s natural healing process, these waves move through your skin and soft tissue to stimulate critical cells.

EXOGEN has been shown to work at every stage of healing³ by:

• Encouraging your cells (osteoclasts and macrophages) to remove bony debris and bacteria^9,28
• Stimulating immature bone marrow to produce the bone and cartilage cells necessary to heal broken bones^5,7,29
• Speeding up the maturation and solidification of formed bone²⁸

EXOGEN is approved by the FDA, so you can trust that it’s both safe and effective. It has been demonstrated to help accelerate the broken bone healing process for indicated* fresh fractures. It has also been demonstrated to effectively help heal broken bones that have stopped healing, known as non-union* fractures.

Evidence shows that it’s never too early or too late to use EXOGEN to help heal bones.³ Talk to your doctorabout EXOGEN today.

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Where can I get EXOGEN?

 

The EXOGEN Ultrasound Bone Healing System is available by prescription from your physician or surgeon. To get EXOGEN, ask your doctor if the system could work for you.

You may want to print and complete the EXOGENBone Healing Discussion Guide and take it with you to your next appointment. This tool can help you and your doctor better evaluate your situation and the benefits of EXOGEN.

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How fracture healing happens^{2, 3, 12}

Bone fracture healing is a complex process with four steps. All bone fractures must go through this process.

	Step 1: Inflammation When a bone fractures, white blood cells move in to the area to clean up debris created by the break. This creates inflammation, which triggers the growth of new blood cells — the first stage of healing.		Step 2: Soft callus As blood cells divide and multiply near the break, new blood vessels develop to fuel the repair process. The body also begins to create cartilage around the bone fracture to bridge the gap in the bone. Called the soft callus, this cartilage is simply fibrous tissue.
	Step 3: Hard callus Eventually, the body replaces the soft callus with a hard callus, connecting the bone fragments more solidly. This stronger callus, which creates a bulge at the site of the fracture, can generally be seen in X-rays just a few weeks after the bone fracture occurs.		Step 4: Remodeling In the final stage of bone fracture healing, the body replaces old bone with new bone in a continual process called remodeling. Remodeling makes bones stronger and more compact and blood circulation in the bone improves.

When a patient breaks a bone, doctors take measures to encourage strong, quick repair. These measures include:

• Setting and immobilizing the break. If necessary, a physician will move bone segments back into place before immobilizing the fracture using a cast or brace.
• Surgery. Some patients may need surgery to set and stabilize a fracture — a process that can involve metal plates, screws or nails. If fractures do not show signs of healing, additional intervention is necessary. Some doctors choose to perform additional surgeries; others turn to devices like EXOGEN.
• Bone growth stimulation. To help heal fractures, many doctors prescribe a device like EXOGEN — the only stimulator that uses ultrasound waves to stimulate the body’s natural healing process, helping boost bone growth.
• Therapy. If a patient is in a cast for a long period of time, he or she may benefit from physical therapy to regain full use of stiff or weak muscles.

Patients can also take measures to speed healing. While healing is happening:

• Avoid tobacco products, which can slow the healing process.
• Eat a well balanced diet for the energy and nutrition healing bones need.
• Increase your intake of calcium, which helps build strong bones.
• Only take pain relievers as directed. Certain anti-inflammatory medications can inhibit your body’s ability to heal breaks.
• Get plenty of rest. Your body is working hard to heal and needs recovery time.
• Follow your doctor’s instructions to give yourself every opportunity for successful healing.

Want one more way to help speed bone fracture healing? Learn how EXOGEN may accelerate the processand whether it’s right for you.

Throughout my long search for any possible oral supplement that can be taken to increase height, the most commonly used formula is always related to a type of protein, whether it is a hormone, or steroid. Proteins are made of amino acids. This seems to suggest that if a person can just ingest the right amount and type of amino acids, that should help increase their growth rate and height.

In the research, the four type of basic amino acids that are suggested the most are

1. Arginine, usually L-Arginine

2. Lysine, usually L-Lysine

3. Orthonine, (L-Orthinine)

4. Glutamine

5. Glycine

This is from the old (now gone) Easy Height website (source HERE)…

As I was sitting in my room about a week ago, I reach a rather startling conclusion about the real cause of the senescence of the growth plates. It has to be because of some elementary physics principle.

And what could that elementary physics principle be? I would guess that it is not just one elementary physics principle but from a few.

If we remember what I talked about in a previous post about the aging process of the entire human body, the theory was that it was not just telomere shortening that lead to agin  but also the work of free radicals in the environment around us. Free radicals are just molecules or atoms that have a single electron in the cloud instead of the needed, more stable 2 (or sometimes 8) full electron band. When you have molecules that have 1 missing electron, they will try to react with any possible other molecule or atom to collect the extra electron to satisfy the rule which was derived years ago by Pauli.

If one have ever taken a biotechology course before, they would have heard that nearly every part of our bodies function can eventually be reduced down and explained through either genetics, evolution and the need to adapt to one’s surroundings, or physics principles. If one really tired to understand what it is that allows us to hear and how the ears really word, we would realize that the vibrations of the ear hairs in the canal as well as the slight tremors the ear drum receives both send signals to a certain lobe in the brain to process. The air hairs and how they vibrate the the ear drums and how they vibrate can both be easily described from using basic physics principles learned of oscillators, vibration, frequency, and resonance.

Since free radicals are produced all the time all around us, it is inevitable that we would get old, just from statistical mechanics and randomness. The current theory for the free radical idea is that the free radicals get into the energy centers of our cells, the mitochondria and disrupt the mitochondria dna replicating process somehow.

I didn’t know that our growth plates went through senescence too, but only until may be a few weeks ago when I was sold of the phenomena by tyler. I always thought that after a certain point, when we the near end of puberty, the thyroid glands in our body decide once more to release a large set of Estrogens towards our estrogen receptors on our growth plates and tell them to increase the rate which chondrocytical apoptosis happens.

I guess just like senescence in general, the process of growth plate senescence is caused by more than one phenomena. Tyler did state in a post I put up today that “”Estrogen and it’s receptors are highly inefficient targets even though they are involved in height growth. Estrogen receptors have different effects based on differentiation stage and in gender””. So even if we did find a way to block the estrogens from binding to the receptor or inhibiting the release of estrogen or inhibiting the aromatization of testosterone, the growth plates will still start to disappear.

So the real question at this point is this, “If there is no estrogen to cause the growth plates to close, what is the other main cause that lead to growth plates senescence?”

My guess is that it is from a simple principle of physics, which is that the growth plates are having reached a threshold on their loading capacity. In general, the relation of a human’s weight and height is correlated but not linearly, As a person increase in height , their weight increases more in a faster rate path. Once the human have reached a certain height, the weight exerts a certain amount of force/area on the growth plates, which are only cartilage which is elastic. The cartilage being pushed at such a high level may cause the ossification and calcification layer to slowly over time creep into and overtake the hypertrophic layer, mainly due to the effects of the downward force of gravity. Of course we have to remember that the cartilage are not that weak. If it was that weak, humans would lose their ability to walk because the cartilage would break or slip. The effect would have to be very slow and gradual. This gradual process will eventually speed up with the estrogen flooding in around the end of the puberty stage.

Remember that people who are obese or overweight earlier in life tend to become shorter than their counter parts who are not. That would kind of back up this claim that more weight and more loading on the still existent growth plates will lead to the senescence of the growth plates to be faster.

I remember once watching this conference for people who were trying to slow down or even reverse the aging process and the main host and speaker stated that the real reason for aging was calcium. Calcification was the real cause for the multiple symptoms we see in people late in life. That was his claim. So it could also be that the loading is also helped out by the fact that over time, more and more calcium starts to seep into the cartilage and the calcium being crystals can act as seeds which germinate and have other calcium crystals develop around it as a form of calcium build-up.

Of course the next question to ask is this, “Why is it then that some people or ethnicities than have growth plates that can withstand more loading per square area than others?”

That may be due the fact that the growth plates can stay around longer if they get the right amount of nutrients to them to keep the proteins, collagen, and proteoglycans healthy enough. Note that calcium and vitamin D does indeed make bone density increase and make bones stronger. The glucosamine and chondroitin seem to help decrease the rate of articular cartilage lose at the long bones ends from a few studies.

Getting the right nutrients through food which have shown to help the density and strength of cartilage should be able to extend the cartilage slightly longer. This is the diet and nutrients factor, which explains why the asian countries which have been traditionally of short stature are now increasing in height from better food and nutrients. Besides that the only other factor would the person’s genes and the controlling signals Some people probably have genes that can create stronger and more resilient chondrocytes and collagen than others. Some people have genes that allow for more calcium and vitamin buildup in the bones than others. Some people have less estrogen receptors in their growth plates than others. And other people have more GH receptors in their Liver which leads to more IGF-1 production.

The senecence of growth plates can also be controlled by genes, but I would guess the main trigger for their senescence is the amount of loading that is over time exerted on them from teh increased height and wieght of the growing individual. Of course, this is just an idea and theory I came up with which can be totally wrong.

A story I found recently when I was doing research for another website was the fact that the nation of Vietnam has decided to try to implement programs in its national health program to possibly increase the height of its population.

The population of Vietnam has increased very little in average population height compared to its other asian nations neighbors. The main reason is from either a lack of food, and not getting the right type of food to eat to gain the nutrients that are needed to promote proper growth. about 30% of ll vietnamese youths have their growth stunted from the lack of right nutrition. For the 16-18 years old range, they are only getting around 60% of all the needed nutrition they need.

The average vietnamese men is around 163 cm and the average height of females is around 153 cm. The government hopes to increase the average height of the vietnamese people by 4 cm by the year 2020 through a $30 million program. The government recently put about $180,000 into the program to jump start it again.

From LookAtVietnam.Com …

Boosting the height of Vietnamese a tall order

When I was doing my post on the function and identity of growth hormone secretagogues I learned that a type of common GHS is Ghrelin. I would suspect then that it is possible that Ghrelin can help contribute towards height and growth. I used wikipedia to learn more about ghrelin and this is what I found (from HERE)… (as always the most critical parts are highlighted)

Ghrelin is a 28 amino acid hunger-stimulating peptide and hormone that is produced mainly by P/D1 cells lining the fundus of the human stomach andepsilon cells of the pancreas.^[1] Ghrelin levels increase before meals and decrease after meals. It is considered the counterpart of the hormone leptin, produced by adipose tissue, which induces satiation when present at higher levels. In some bariatric procedures, the level of ghrelin is reduced in patients, thus causing satiation before it would normally occur.^[2]

Ghrelin is a potent stimulator of growth hormone from the anterior pituitary gland.^[3] The ghrelin receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor, known as thegrowth hormone secretagogue receptor. Ghrelin binds to the GHSR1a splice-variant of this receptor which is present in high density in the hypothalamus, pituitary as well as vagal afferent cell bodies and vagal afferent endings throughout the gastro-intestinal tract.^[4][5]

Ghrelin plays a significant role in neurotrophy, particularly in the hippocampus, and is essential for cognitive adaptation to changing environments and the process of learning.^[6][7] Ghrelin has been shown to activate the endothelial isoform of nitric oxide synthase in a pathway that depends on various kinases including Akt.^[8]

Me: It turns out the Ghrelin is a type of hormone/ peptide which we could call a growth hormone releasing hormone or GHRH, which is what the hypothalamus released to tell the pituitary to start releasing its own GH. From another section in the wikipedia article it seems to promote fetus growth. It is associated with leptin which has shown to be involved in height increase.

Interestingly Height Quest has already looked at the link between ghrelin and height HERE. He claims…

“Ghrelin promotes osteogenesis of intramembranous bone and improves the repair of calvarial bone defect in rats in vivo..”  “Ghrelin is actually a chemical that can be modulated.  Any activity that makes you hungry increases Ghrelin levels and any activity that makes you satiated decreases Ghrelin levels. Ghrelin being located in the proliferative zone of the epiphyseal growth plate means it very likely has height increasing effects.  Other Ghrelin effects related to chondrocytes are promotin cAMP accumulation(along with sulfated proteoglycan & hyaluronate synthesis), regulating chondrocyte metabolism(increases proteoglycan synthesis and programmed cell death), upregulates chondroitin sulfate type IV(LSJL also upregulates chondroitin sulfate type IV), and decreases fatty acid uptake by chondrocytes.”

Me: My argument would be that ghrelin is both a cause and an effect. you can cause it to rise in level from certain actions, but it can also cause you to act in a certain way from the hunger trigger. In general, eating more leads to obesity which high levels of ghrelin is seen in. Given the eating patterns of humans and growth patterns, I would claim that Ghrelin is important for height gain during the puberty stages when the person is still growing but it has a negative effect after the person has reached physical maturity. From this study HERE  you can see that low fasting levels of ghrelin is correlated with Seckel Syndrome which is a type of primordial dwarfism which can be helped out a little with GH injections. In my own personal experience, I would say that overall, people who are big eaters throughout their entire lifetime tend to be slightly taller than other people. Their overeating habits from ghrelin levels may have caused them to be overweight at adults and ultimately lead to height loss from loading issues. Compare this to people who became overweight only after having an overeating problem in adult hood and we can say that during the early years of development, Ghrelin may be critical in growth and height.

Ghrelin release has been shown to be related to morphine injections which suggest that it can be released from behavior that positively feedbacks on pleasure seeking behavior at least in childhood.

Study cited is below.

Growth hormone treatment, final height, insulin-like growth factors, ghrelin, and adiponectin in four siblings with Seckel syndrome.

I have been wondering recently whether I should write a real book on the subject of height increase but for parents who would like to help their kids increase in height the natural way through using certain exercise, nutrition, sleeping, and psychological hacks. A lot of what I have learned can not really be applied to the physically mature adult since their plates are fused. However, many of the techniques that don’t work on them will work on people who are still young.

There are even a few methods to possibly restore a little bit of the cartilage in the growth plates so the period of growing can be extended. I know at least 30 types of food that can help with the growing process which most nutritionist would not consider right for the growing child. I also would suggest certain exercise routines which the child can use to make the growth process extend slightly longer than they are supposed to.

I know there are probably a lot of other books out there which talks about how to make your kids grow taller, but I would guess they don’t go into the latest studies done by researchers to show what types of sleeping, foods, and exercises most benefit GH and IGF-1 release.

It is clear that the younger generation are getting taller and taller and I would guess you as a future parent would want your children to have as many advantages to succeed as possible. People are becoming smarter, faster, and healthier. It is also getting far more competitive in the professional world. Everything is now global and the people you will have to work with and compete against are not just from your own country, but from across the world.

And being slightly taller, even if it is by say only 2 inches, may be the critical element that helps them get that prestigious job or attract the attention of a possible mate. I would assume that you want to your children the slight advantage over their peers.

So what do you think. Would you want a real guide for height increase for any future children you would like to have?