Tag Archives: Genetics

There Is No Magic Bullet

When I sometimes lie on my bed late at night after writing as much as possible all the topics that pop up in my head, sometimes I try to imagine what my audience, the readers, YOU are thinking. I always go back to this fundamental question “What do they REALLY want?” …and I mean REALLY WANT.

If they were being completely honest with me, where all the bullshit is finally dropped and just told me the ugly cold truth to my face, what would they actually say? I was taking a shower about 30 minutes ago and I figured it out.

You want the “Magic Bullet”.

When I finished showering, I was amazed at just how stupid and ignorant I was that I did not see the issue earlier. It always was bugging me when I used to search for a method or path to my own secret desires to gain inches to my height. I never fully did find the solution I was looking. I realized that I had done the same thing. I wanted to believe in a “magic bullet”.

I don’t even know whether the concept of a magic bullet even exists in contemporary or everyday communication or psychology but the general concept of a “magic bullet” is that the magic bullet is basically a secret or “magical” solution to a very big problem in our lives that is causing us a lot of distress, anxiety, and mental pain. Years ago I had spent over a year learning the skills and techniques on how to attract and be more successful with the opposite sex. I remember that the term “magic bullet” was thrown around a lot and now I realize that the term can be used very appropriately for this situation too. During the time the axiom thrown around was that “there is no magic bullet” and I agreed.

However when it came down to this secret little wish inside of me, I guess I could not accept that idea. Now I understand myself far better now, but I think (or at least I hope) that I also understand the readers and audience better too.

I would assume that 90% of you who read this blog/website came here hoping to find some solution to your most vexing of problems, your desire to grow taller. Sure, there are those of you who came here by accident and thought my writing was funny and decided to spend around 3 minutes of their life reading this odd website in the middle of nowhere on the internet. However, I would bet that most of you got here from going to Google (or some other search engine) from typing something like “How to grow taller” or “How do I grow taller” into that empty input box.

Well, that is my theory of how you initially got here, how you originally found this website.

And you probably choose to click on the “Height Increase Guide” tab or the “Techniques” tab first to see what techniques there are to increase height. At this time, the “Height Increase Guide” has not even been edited or have anything on it yet. I of course will get to it hopefully within some time in the next 7 days.

Anyway, depending on your emotional state, you are actively searching. You want to find something. The fact that you even decided to go to the google main page and type something in means that you are “searching”.

So the obvious question to ask is “What are you searching for?” Again the answer is that you are searching for a magic bullet. This magial solution to your problem will be easy, simple, quick, and painless. That is what we all want.

This is the scenario that I am guessing you would like to happen. You come to this website, and you read on one of my articles that I am talking about this new FDA approved oral drug that is supposed to be able to stimulate the pituitary gland to release excess HGH and also be able to reopen back up your growth plates and turn all those close epiphyseal lines into cartilage again. Somehow through the magic of science and technology, the scientists and geneticists have gotten together in some hidden underground laboratory and come up with this new “magic pill”. They have given the licensing rights to a multinational pharmaceutical company who will market the pill and now it is in every Walgreens, CVS, and Right Aid in the country with a price tag of $15.99 for a pack of 4 pills. The instructions say that all you have to do is take 1 pill once every Monday morning and after 4 weeks, you will gain 3 inches.

So you go to your local pharmacy, shell out $16 for this drug that doe not EVEN need a damn prescription!! That’s how it is! You go home, chug it down with some water, and go back to your life of doing whatever you are doing, with no regard to a healthy lifestyle like proper exercise, heathy eating, or good sleeping habits. 3 days later you grow impatient and decide to measure yourself. You do and you find that you just grew half an inch! Damn, this shit works!! You jump up in joy, go to your rooftop and dance with giddiness. So you do the waiting, and you measure again the first week is over and you are up another half an inch. You are amazed that the pill actually works. You take the next one at the specified time, and you gain a little less than 1 inch of growth the 2nd week. After 4 weeks, you are indeed 3 inches taller, give or take a few milimeters. You are over joyed at your new body, with your new long legs, and even your arms and torso grew a little. when you go to the bathroom and strip down to look at your new body, you are amazed that the drug had extended your limbs and torso perfectly in proportion, and hell, you even look more muscular now… No stretch marks, no growing pains, no side effects.

You are super happy to go out to the mall and buy completely new pants and clothing becasue hey, you are now completely transformed. You then meet your friends and they are absolutely astounded that you have changed so much since they last saw you. All you do is smile, knowing your little secret. You now notice that cute guy you have been interested in for the last 6 months is giving you the “look” and with your new found confidence you walk up to him and start to flirt…can I end this story with a “and they lived happily ever after?”

Simple, clean, pain free, work free, no hassles. This is the dream, that magic bullet we are searching for. Of course, we all know that there is nothing like that. Hell, even with our weight issues, like trying to loss 20 lbs to fit into that damn dress for say your prom is a massive internal struggle as the internal desires and forces fight it over.  I mean if we can’t even control and master something a thousand times easier like our weight issues, how the hell are we supposed to master our height issues?

Again, there is no “magic bullet” solution. Life and things will never be that easy. For everything that is worth it in life, it requires a lot of damn work to obtain. Sometimes we do get lucky and something great just falls into our lap. Yes, it does happen, like if you were sitting in a coffee shop and a cute, charming, normal guy walks up to you, compliments you, does some flirting, and proceeds to get your number.

However,when it comes to something like our bodies, we are the only one’s that are responsible for it. If we want to shape it or do something to make it better, we have to do the hard work.

I am right now sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of the Gangnam-gu area in Seoul, South Korea. Every time I go into the subway system, I see these pictures that are ads by plastic surgery clinics offering their services. And they all promise that you do not have to “settle” or just “live with” the face or body you were born with.

Yeah, that’s right… not even your genetics and inborn DNA have any power over your life anymore since if you don’t like the way your nose or eyes look, you can just plop down $4000 clams and get that changed to whatever celebrity’s nose you would like. If you happened to have a eating problem and you are now over 250 lbs with flesh slipping out of your pants and shirt, now you can just go to that clinic by the Paris Baguette on the corner and in less than 4 hours, all the fat your have been eating and accumulating for the last 15 years are removed in an instant through liposuction. If you happened to be getting older and balding, they now have these plugs and implants you can get that basically act just like real hair. Well isn’t that just simple and easy. You didn’t have to do any work. If you happend to be getting wrinkles, just go for  quick touch up by getting poison (Botox) injected into your face until you don’t even look like a real human anymore.

TRUST ME, there are some people who I walk past everyday these days whose face are completely expressionless because they have injected so much poison in their face that they can’t even move it anymore. Super scary.

It indeed feels like we are living in a society where we are always wanting everything at this instant, and can not go without instant gratification. We have lost our ability to just wait and invest for the long term. The concept of hard work is gone since we now have all the technology to get everything we want. Have we become so mentally weak in terms of willpower and endurance ability? Can we still put up with any sort of slight pain or discomfort?

Well for this issue, our desire to increase our height, their is no magic bullet. Their is no painless easy, simple solution. Even the most obvious strategy which is to get surgery and do limb lengthening is filled with complications immense pain, and time and money lost. Maybe, just maybe for this one specific area in our life, we can not just throw money and technology at the problem and hope it goes away. We actually may find for the first itme in our life with a problem which we can’t seem to be to solve no matter what we do.

My whole point is this: There is no easy simple solution to this issue. It is time to sit down, roll up our sleeves, and get to work to find a solution. It may not appear for even say another 50 years but if you truly want this, if you truly believe in this endeavor, you are willing to put in the effort to stick it out to the end.

The Genetics Of Height

If we really wanted to get the ability to change our height and grow taller without going through the painful options of limb lengthening surgery, HGH daily injections, or crazy hours spent exercises, our only option may be some form of manipulation of our genetics. I am sure I have not considered all the options out there yet but eventually I believe I will be able to get through all the stuff.

I honestly believe that one man can accomplish this large task of taking all of the research and pathways of this very small niche of human endeavor and place it all in one place, one resource which you all can go to to learn about everything that is new that is being developed.

This is why I have decided also to devote a large portion of this website/ blog to discussing and analyzing genetics and possible genetic strategies to our goal of height increase. If any of you have ever studied genetics, whether in high school, college, or graduate school, I am sure a lot of the stuff is just review to you but please put up with me just for a short while until I get to the real stuff.

So let’s begin….

There is 23 chromosomes pairs in each of the nucleaus inside the cells of us humans. In each chromosome there are millions (or even billions) of nucleotidic base pairs that go together in 3 base pair codon groups that goes on (and collect together) to form our actual genes. The only job that these genes do is to make proteins. Referring to having a gene for a trait is no longer the scientifically accepted usage. In most cases, all people would have a gene for the trait in question, but certain people will have a specific allele of that gene, which results in the trait variant. Further, genes code for proteins, which might result in identifiable traits, but it is the gene, not the trait, which is inherited. (Reference Link)

From the scientific research done at Washington University at St. Louis it has already been shown that in terms of the social-anthropological concept of “race”, there is almost no difference between the so called labels which we have been putting on different looking people. We can organized and classified into groups like Hispanic, Latino, Black , African American, Native American, Middle Eastern, Asian, etc….

Well from the link HERE the conclusive results say that even though we have all of these phenotypical differences, we are essentially “exactly” the same and that the concept of “race” does not exist becasue the the geneticists who tried to find any specific gene that determines a “race” was never found. So the idea of race can not exist.

Well, one might then quick to ask “How does all this talk about race have anything to do with height?” Well, Race and height only has a weak correlation. When people make the comment like “asian people are short” or that “black people are big”, they are trying to link the anthropologically created concept of “race” and place a correlation of it with a phenotypical aspect of the group that they see.

Many people would be quick to then throw out a derision at such a politically incorrect statement however if we do look at the stats of say a chart of the average height of different nations around the world, we can sort of make a weak correlation. There is usually some small truth in the off of the cuff, unscientific statements made from just simple observation in our everyday life experience. Stereotypes exist for a reason. They are usually in the majority of the cases (like 51% of the time) true.

From the Wikipedia article on Race and Genetics found HERE,

“”A study by Tang et al. in 2005 used 326 genetic markers in order to determine genetic clusters. The 3,636 subjects involved in the study, from the United States and Taiwan, self-identified as belonging to white, African American, East Asian, or Hispanic (=self-identified race/ethnic group (SIRE)). The study found “nearly perfect correspondence between genetic cluster and SIRE for major ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%.”[13] “”

I realize that it is only 1 study but let’s see that the implications are. The study implies that for all of our outer differences like skin color, nose shape, hair color, or other features that determine our “race”, we are still 99.9% exactly similar in our genome structure. (Note: I am not sure whether the 99.9 % similarity refers to the number of nuceotide base pairs in the genome or the number of number of genes, becasue the two numbers have a difference of  up to 5-6 magnitudes!) However, if we remember that our genome has over thousands of genes which are made of millions and billions of nucleotide base pairs, we realize that still means that there are a few genes out there will does determine our outer appearances.

The Human Genome Project which was completed in 2003 and the entire human genome was “supposedly” completed sequenced. That means that the basic infrastruture of the average human dna is understood. A good analogy is to think of each humans as each individual brand of car. The sequencing in a way allowed us to figure out in general, where each part of the car is supposed to be, and where to look if the car starts to have a problem. So the project allowed us to get a very good general idea on how the basic human genome and DNA structure is supposed to be laid out. However, in each individual, the genes will be slightly different, but only in say 0.1% of all the genes.

From the Human Genome Project website, I quote this passage

“”October 2004 findings from The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, led in the United States by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the Department of Energy (DOE), reduce the estimated number of human protein-coding genes from 35,000 to only 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species (7). Consortium researchers have confirmed the existence of 19,599 protein-coding genes in the human genome and identified another 2,188 DNA segments that are predicted to be protein-coding genes.

In 2003, estimates from gene-prediction programs suggested there might be 24,500 or fewer protein-coding genes (1). The Ensembl genome-annotation system estimates them at 23,299.

When analysis of the draft human genome sequence was published by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium on February 15, 2001, the paper estimated only about 30,000 to 40,000 protein-coding genes, much lower than previous estimates of about 100,000. This lower estimate came as a shock to many scientists because counting genes was viewed as a way of quantifying genetic complexity.

Studies since the publication of the draft genome sequence have generated widely different estimates. An analysis by scientists at Ohio State University suggested between 65,000 and 75,000 human genes (3), and another study published in Cell in August 2001 predicted a total of 42,000 (4).

Although the exact number of human genes is still uncertain, a winner of GeneSweep was announced in May 2003. GeneSweep was an informal gene-count betting pool that began at the 2000 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Genome Meeting. Bets ranged from around 26,000 to more than 150,000 genes. Since most gene-prediction programs were estimating the number of protein-coding genes at fewer than 30,000, GeneSweep officials decided to declare the contestant with the lowest bet (25,947 by Lee Rowen of the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle) the winner (1). “”

So far the geneticists have found only 1 gene that has been shown to have some correlation to the height of the individual. However, the guess is that there is probably up to 20 specific genes that actually determine our height. What the research at the current time point at is that the height genes seem to be on the X chromosomes at numbers 7, 8, and 20 (remember that we have 23 chromosome pairs in each nucleus of our cells except red blood cells). In 2007, scientists did discover the 1st gene that showed to have an influence on one’s height after testing it through genetic manipulation on lab mice. That is the HMGA2 gene. Apparently, getting two of the “tall” type of the HMGA2 gene let’s one get an extra 1 cm in height compared to not having the gene. (Reference Link)

In conclusion, remember the study and search in genetics for the genes that determine height is still ongoing. I decided to post a last link that sums up very eloquently the effect that our genes have on our height, but also how it is connected to other factors.

“” Actually, height is what is called multifactorial. Not only are there many genes involved, such as genes for growth hormone, genes for the receptors on the outside of cells for growth hormone, genes for bone proportion, genes for the timing of the release of hormone and other growth factors; but there are also many interactions with the environment, including nutrition during gestation (while the mother was pregnant) and during the growth years, exposure to things such as cigarette smoke and alcohol before birth, birth order (generally second children are taller than first) and general health during the growth years. With all of these factors, it appears that we are born with a genetic potential for height (not all of the genes have been identified yet) and then the environment exerts its effects as we are growing. (reference link) “”

To get more information about the Human Genome Project, click HERE and HERE.

Torso Length To Leg Length , A Personal Theory

As I was watching and listening to the Summer Olympics in 2008 where the phenom Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals for 8 events at Beijing, many people began to question why he was so good at the sport of swimming. 4 main reasons cited by the scientists and commentaries were

1. His long arms or wingspan, which was 79 inches in length compared to his height which was 76 inches. Compared to most other Olympic swimmers, Michael Phelps is of average height.

2. His abnormally large feet, shoe size 14.

3. His reported legs and ankle which were supposed to be double jointed giving him a greater range of flexibility, allowing for his feet to give strong bursts of propulsion.

4. His disproportionately long and large torso, compared to his legs. Supposedly he had the torso of someone who was more 6 ‘8″ and the legs of someone who was 6’ 0″. (Reference Link 1)

Now that the Summer Olympics are back and Michael Phelps swimming prowess are again mentioned, along with Ryan Lochte this time. We could talk more about his swimming accomplishment but lets focus on his height and length, which is what this site is about. I used to also be a huge swimmer as well so I guess I could be more authoritive on my swimming analysis but no one really wants to hear about that.

One thing that is clear from the start is that professional, Olympic ranked swimmers are usually very tall (Reference Link 1). However, the point that I wanted to emphasize about the swimmers build is over reason #4, that the torso seems to be far larger and longer than the legs.

I realized long ago that my body was of the same shape as Phelps, but not as tall. My torso is abnormally large and long compared to my legs. During the Summer of 2008 I really was doing 2 main things. Going to swim early in the morning for 2 and a half hours. Then, coming back home late in the afternoon to watch the Olympics, specifically Phelps to swim. Unfortunately of all the races, the one I missed was his 7th swim, against Michael Cavic which was definitely the most exhilirating swim match I have ever seen.

When I saw the amount of food that Phelps ate and compared it to myself, I wondered about this theory. What if the portions of a person’s torso to their legs is mainly determined by their eating habits when they are young?

I know that I used to eat the same amount as 2, maybe even 3 normal sized grown adults. My stomach would always be stretched out and I could feel my entire upper body ,the torso being expanded as much as possible. My mother noticed early on that my upper body seemed to be far greater than my legs. In terms of genetics,  I do have some height in my family. My Grandfather from my mother’s side of the family was supposed around 6 feet tall during a time when the average male of his country was probably 5’4″-5’6″. My male cousin is on my mothers side is also rather tall, but his height seems to be from his legs. My father’s side of the family is on the short side with rather average to short length legs.

When all this information is combined, I form this theory in my head.

1. The size and length of our torso is mainly determined by the amount of food and the nutrition value we gain when we were younger while still growing. So if you eat a lot when you are younger, you will grow taller because your torso, vertebrate, and skeletal structure will be increased in size.

2. The size and length of our legs , and subsequently, our arms and limns are determined by our genetics and the heights of our relatives and ancestors.

So that is it. My theory is really something I have thought about but never tried to prove or disprove. You can choose to accept it or not but it was something I wanted to put out there for others to think about.