Recently the commenter who goes by the name Matheus from Brazil gave me a lot of studies which showed the effects on longitudinal bone growth by a multiple of chemical compounds. His research has been very extensive and broad and it took me many hours to figure out what exactly he was saying and to condense all that information into a format that the average reader can take and understand.

I had talked about his research in Podcast Episode #11. Click on “Natural Height Growth Podcast, Episode 11: I Review And Outline All The Research And Studies Matheus Has Shown To Me” to listen

Some of the compounds he talked about I am aware of since some of his references are to posts I had written months ago. However there was a few compounds which I have never heard about and seem to be rather important in either epiphyseal growth plate cartilage physiology or in the endochondral ossification process.

The first compound I wanted to do more research on is something called Matrix Gla Protein.

From the podcast post I had listed this about Matrix Gla Protein

MGP (Matrix Gla Protein-derived K2) which is produced by Vitamin K2 – inhibits the calcification of tissues and cartilages – is the major inhibitor of human body tissue calcification and seems to have much influence on chondrocytes. (Coordinated expression of matrix Gla protein is required during endochondral ossification for chondrocyte survival)

The study: Coordinated expression of Matrix Gla protein is required during endochondral ossification for chondrocyte survival

Summary of the study:

So first a little background on this compound. It weighs on average around 14 kiloDaltons, which is considered average size for proteins and peptides. It is part of of the family known as Gla which has the function of binding to minerals. There is two primary functions that is listed, both in terms of decalcification of specific types of tissue. So the Matrix Gla Protein inhibits…

1. extracellular matrix calcification in arteries
2. extracellular matrix calcification in the epiphyseal growth plate

MGP binds calcium ions and hydroxyapatite via its five γ-carboxylated glutamic acid (Gla) residues

Other things that show how the MGP regulates or functions within growth plate is noted below from the study…

“…the epiphyseal growth plate is disorganized in the MGP-deficient mouse, in that the proliferative chondrocytes fail to form regular palisaded columns and hypertrophic chondrocytes are absent. In this situation, it is unclear whether the aberrant calcification causes disruption of the normal proliferative chondrocyte zone architecture, or if MGP has a direct influence on chondrocyte maturation. However, misexpression of MGP in chick embryo limb buds has been shown to inhibit the formation of hypertrophic chondrocytes during endochondral bone growth…”

The location where this compound is expressed seem to be in two regions that are not next to each other, at the proliferative and late hypertrophic chondrocyte zones. In vitro studies showed the same pattern of biphasic expression pattern as in vivo. There is supposed to be a type of compound known as MGP anti-serum which seem to have the reverse effects as the MGP. When the anti-serum is used for the proliferative chondrocytes that are expressing the MGP in that zone, the chondrocytes started to die much early that they were supposed to be.

From the study, we learn that the Matrix Gla Protein has 4 main types of effects when either overexpressed or underexpressed in specific regions. They are…

1. overexpression of MGP in maturing chondrocytes induces apoptosis
2. underexpression of MGP in proliferative and hypertrophic chondrocytes induced apoptosis
3. overexpression of MGP during the hypertrophic phase has no effect on chondrocyte viability
4. overexpression of MGP during the hypertrophic phase does reduce mineralization.

If we combine all the effects of changing the expression level of MGP together we realize that increase of MGP expression is a good thing for epiphyseal cartilage health, in not becoming mineralized too fast. However it might be important to also control the expression level of mature chondrocytes so that they can go through the necessary steps for apoptosis in the ossification layer.

Ever since I found out about this unique vitamin known as Vitamin K2 which Dave Asprey from the Bulletproof Executive has claimed can sometimes even reverse cavities and fill in teeth dentin cracks, I have wondered whether it might be possible to use Vitamin K2 as a type of supplement a person can take to either increase height or at least prevent too much height loss later in life.

I personally have tried searching for the Vitamin K2 supplement and in the US when going into a GNC, I have managed to find maybe only 1-2 bottles with Vitamin K2, which is also known as Menaquinone. Compared to the much more popular and easier to obtain Calcium & Vitamin D combination or Glucosamine Sulfate w/ Chondroitin combination, Vitamin K2 is a much rarer compound. I personally have not found any places (at least in the major department stores) which sell Vitamin K2 supplement pills in Seoul, South Korea.

So the question is “Does taking Vitamin K2 help increase height?”

From the forum section in the website for the National Osteoporosis Foundation, Support Community there is a linke to a post where some people have claimed that from taking Vitamin K2 they actually increased in height. The website is called Pheonic Rising, which is a website dedicated to providing information and support to people who suffer from (or know someone who suffer from) ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The actual thread asks “Has K-2 (mk-4 and mk-7) Helped You?”

Some poster claims that Vitamin K2 and other soluble vitamins in fat cause inflammation of their tendons.

There was 3 studies that were referenced which gave me some evidence that there might be a link between Vitamin K2 intake and some effect on final adult height. They are…

• Effects of the blood coagulation vitamin K as an inhibitor of arterial calcification.
• Menaquinone-4 enhances testosterone production in rats and testis-derived tumor cells.
• Inhibition of matrix metalloproteinase expression by menatetrenone, a vitamin K2 analogue.

The really interesting study that got my attention was

Vitamins D and K as pleiotropic nutrients: clinical importance to the skeletal and cardiovascular systems and preliminary evidence for synergy.

Since I did research just today on the possibility that pleiotrophin might be used to increase height, the fact that Vitamin D and Vitamin K2 both are pleiotropic nutrients shows that there is a link.

From the thread, on the third page, in a post written by a poster named “Asklipia” who has been commenting on the forum for a long time, they state a very interesting story of increased height. The original post was written in July 19, of 2012…

Hi Dannybex,

You want to know it all!!!

This is how it happened :

By 2001 we had identified ingestion of MSG and glutamates as being at least a switch to our sickness episodes (now convinced it is more than that). It took 4 more years until we could avoid glutamates entirely (man-made glutamates that is). Very long story.

Once we were successful, we got huge improvements and then could not improve further.

Then we lived in Japan-Korea-Hong Kong and wondered : how do all these Japanese eat so much MSG and are still alright? The place was like a special MSG hell. The answer is : they are not. Next question : What do they do about it? Answer : they take all kinds of supplements on the sly. In Tokyo executives start their day with a bottle of an amino-acid drink, chockfull with B12 and taurine (a known MSG antagonist).

At a massage spa a lady told me about menatetrenone. Generics selling in spas in 2000 pill bottles. One wonders why if it is a prescription drug for old ladies with brittle bones!?!
I did some research as you can imagine. A lot of research, including using Google translate to find out about Japanese and Korean research. A lot of thought has come from that.

Since one of the virtues of menatetrenone is the mopping up of extra glutamates, I thought it was worth a try.

So we started on menatetrenone 15 mg a day. A small dose to fight let’s say osteoporosis. Which I was starting to suffer from on top of the rest. My husband did not but he had what they had diagnosed as a deficiency in growth, meaning some of his bones never grew totally (happily it doesn’t show from the outside). For osteoporosis in Japan, the dose is 45 mg in three doses a day for a lady weighing 45 kgs. So we reckoned 15 mg was peanuts for us.

No way could we take the 45 mg. Immediately I felt a general improvement on all kinds of symptoms, but at the same time we could feel our livers were having a hard time. Not too bad, but I thought we should wait before taking more. From time to time we tried taking a second dose, and it took 6 months before we could ramp up to 30 mg then 45 mg per day.

Strange things started to happen :

I grew up 2 cms then a third and last cm at 58 years of age. This has now stopped. Might mean that I too had a deficiency in growth. My jaw which had osteoporosis, especially around one of the articulations (if I yawned it would pop out), filled up and I did not need to have extra bone added to it as the dentist had planned. I stopped having teeth problems and periodontal problems. My face became wider, it seems the bones under my eyes filled up and became more round as in a youthful look.

My husband did not grow in height but in width. He suffered a little every night for months from growing pains behind his heart as his ribs grew to make a wider thoracic cage. At that place on his back he had a strange red spot which at the moment is still there but a different colour. A calcified place at the top of his lungs (which doctors had said was caused by TB) has now turned normal and he can use his lungs fully. We had to give away all of his suits and shirts. The cuffs did not reach the wrists by 10 cms. He has not put on any weight though.

All this is only for bones.
I am not ready to explain all of my theory. Not that I want to keep it a secret or that I want to make money from it. It is just that writing this down takes a lot of energy. Also diving into the murky waters of deceit to retrieve these pearls of discovery is very intense. The more I find out, the more I find out and it all falls into place. It is huge and terrible. I am so small.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.
Matthew 10:8

For the moment let’s call it Fake Folate Poisoning.

I hope this answers your question.
Lots of good wishes,
Asklipia

Hi Lou, sorry I took so much time to answer, I was away.

There are no miracles most probably, just things that work in a way we don’t understand yet!!!!!

My growth was documented. When I got a passport at age 19 the police measured me with a big wooden gauge (I don’t know how this is called in english) and the result was 1m 69. I was measured in the same way every time I had to get new identification, the last time when I was 32 with the same results. After that they did not measure me anymore and just copied the 1m 69 on my new passports. When I was 58 I went for blood tests in a hospital where they wouldn’t let me have the tests if they were not prescribed by a doctor. The nurse “prepared” me for the doctor by taking down my weight, blood pressure and height too with the same kind of wooden gauge. She found 1 m 70. I thought she was wrong and she did it again. At that time I had already started taking MK-4.

Six months later I went to another hospital for blood tests in another country and I was similarly measured : result = 1 m 71.

So I am sure I grew 2 cms and it is documented. Well, I have not changed my passport and I am a bit weary of disclosing my growth to the authorities because nobody will believe me and this will cast a doubt on my identity with potential problems.

I do not know if I have grown more since then. I did not feel the change when I grew 2 cms and this did not make a difference in my clothes etc. Maybe I have. I am not ready to rush to a hospital that provides this service to find out!

This cannot be a result of better posture because I have been a strong swimmer (1 km a day until I was 35) and my back was perfectly straight, maybe be less so nowadays, which would have contrary results on my height.

Analysis On This Height Growth By Vitamin K-2 Story

So let me summarize just what the critical facts are. The first time she had her ‘adult’ height measured definitively was when she was 19. Some guys used some wooden gauge and found she was 1.69 meters tall. All the subsequent measurements she needed to do to get ID got the same height. At the age of 32, her height was still 1.69 cm. Then at the age of 59, she had to see a doctor to get some blood work done and she was measured at 1.70 meters, which is only a 1cm of increase. She started to take MK-4, a type of Vitamin K2. 6 months later, she got another blood work done and her height was measured again. The height now increased to 1.71 meters tall. She states that it is note from a better posture. She has been a strong swimmer in all of her younger days adn her back has always been very straight.

In terms of the actual supplements she has been trying out over the last few years she states the following…

So she and her husband, both suffering from bone growth issues like osteoporosis found out that ingestion of MSG and glutamate is really bad so they spent years trying to find diets and lifestyle ways to avoid easting man-made glutamates. They lived in east asia like Japan and they founf out that the Japanese don’t eat MSG, but take a bottle of amino acid drink which has B12 and taurine in the morning. Taurine she states is a MSG antagonist.

A person she talked to got her to start taking Menatrenone, which is supposed to remove excess glutamate. She started to take 15 mg a day and then slowly increase the dosage to 45 mg/day (3 pills a different times of the day).

This resulted in her being 2 cms taller, her jaw bone being strong again, joints becoming stronger and filled out, her teeth & periodontal problems went away, jaw got wider. Her husband did not increase in height, but his bones seemed to have gotten much wider since his wrist got wider .  It seems that the chest region of the husband became much wider, as his ribs grew out (note that there is cartilage tissue in the sternum area in adult humans). Liver problems came and went away.

—————–

The study Vitamin K2 supplementation improves hip bone geometry and bone strength indices in postmenopausal women gives a slight suggestion that maybe the key in the efficacy of Vitamin K2 is its ability to increase the thickness of long bones and make them stronger by creating more appositional growth forming a stronger area.

I would look for other sources and websites that link Vitamin K2 (MK-7) to increased height. One source states…

MK-7 intake significantly improved vitamin K status and active osteocalcin levels, and decreased the age-related decline in bone mineral concentration (BMC) and BMD at the lumbar spine and femoral neck. It did not increase either measure at the total hip. Bone strength was also favorably affected by MK-7 – a key determinant of fracture risk. Lastly, MK-7 significantly decreased the loss in vertebral height of the lower thoracic region at the mid-site of the vertebrae.

The website Life Extension mentions the same study which showed that taking of MK-7 seemed to reduce bone loss in post-menopausal women. The article is entitled “Vitamin K2 supplements reduce bone loss in women”

Update Nov. 24, 2014: I can’t explain what is going on, but it seems that at least 3 new people have left comments on this post expressing that they noticed this phenomena. They, being females who have gone through, or are going through pregnancy, have noticed changes in their height.

So more and more females are coming out and telling us their unique individual stories

First, obviously this phenomena is NOT a common thing. It probably happens to just 0.01% of all women who go through pregnancy, and that is a guess on the high side. However, just the fact that more than a dozen females have claimed this phenomena makes me really wonder what is going on.

I have had a recent new idea, which is that the irregular bones in the feet might have grown larger appositionally pushing the overall female skeleton higher up. However, that is a real stretch.

The connection and theory that all this increase in height is due to the chemical relaxin however is still the most viable theory.

Refer to one of the most explosive posts I have ever written on this website – “The Chemical That Would Make Adults Grow Taller Has Been Found”

However, the recent claim made by my own girlfriend that she grew 1 full cm herself made me wonder whether this phenomena may be due to more than 1 main human physiological process.

One thing that is very obvious however is that about 98% of all the claims ever made about growing taller in adulthood (which I will assume to be around the age point of 21-22_ has been by females. Is there something within the human female bone physiology which makes them more likely to grow slightly taller?

Update Feb 14th, 2014: It seems that just in the span of 24 hours, two women have come forth and sent messages to the website expressing the fact that they either have open epiphyseal growth plates at the age of almost 30 or even later.

Case Study #1: This women went to get X-Rays for her ankle bone area/ distal tibia after a fall and she noticed that her bones had scars across the ankle bones. She messaged me and commented that she apparently found out that she still had growth plates. The post that she commented on is “A Theory That Epiphyseal Growth Plates Never Fuse For Certain People”

Case Study #2: This 2nd women commented that apparently she has grown by about 4 inches in the last of her 2 pregnancies, out of a total of 5 pregnancies. This case is extremely unusual because most cases we have found have the mother increase in height during the first and/or the 2nd pregnancies. The fact that this women is in her late 30s is absolutely amazing. I would suspect that her bone maturity is very unique, but possible due to cases I’ve found before.

There is now too much evidence coming through in the form of anecdotal stories, forum postings, cases and instances where adult females who went through pregnancy have noticed that they increased in height. Me and the follow researchers will focus much more on this pressing issue in the future. Currently, I have documented at least 11 cases of women who went through the phenomena. At least one of these women have found this website and contacted me personally through the website email and we have exchanged messages. The latest case has a women increase her height by 3 inches from 5′ 2″ – 5′ 5″.

Update 8/13/2013: It is noted that another commenter who goes by the name of guiselka wrote on the post “More Evidence That Pregnancy Can Increase Height, WOW!” recently wrote the following comment…

I used to be 5’2.5″ before pregnancy. I was just measured at my doctor visit and I am 5’5″. I am amazed! I also have many back problems now though. I’ve always had some issues but after pregnancy they became unbearable. I have a total of 4 hernias and 2 bulging discs among other problems.

Update 7/28/2013: I became aware that there has been at least another case where a pregnant women noticed that she gained height from her pregnancy. The source of the case is from the news website Reddit on a thread entitled “Has anyone else noticed a increase in their height during pregnancy?”

• She noticed that her height increased from 5′ 2″ to 5′ 3″. 
• Her feet increased from shoe size 5 to 6. 5.
• The length from her elbow to her wrist is supposed to be the same length as her feet. After checking, it was the same. This implies that her forearm might have lengthened as well.
• She was born at a length of 16 inches.
• Husband is 6′ 2″ and born with a length of 23 inches.
• The baby has been much lower in her pelvis

Some responses to the original post has been rather insightful and forced me to rethink some issues between the link of pregnancy and noticeable increases in height.

A visitor recently came on the website to leave a message which shows that there is more cases where an expectant mother might actually have so much stuff going through her body that she increases in height.

She (named Stacie) noticed that her husband/father of the baby is noticeably shorter from looking at pictures and she informed me that at 5′ 10″ already she does does not wish to be any taller.

I have written about this idea in multiple posts before where in certain rare cases of females, they notice from pregnancy they end up 1-2 inches (sometimes even 3 inches) taller. 

Main Post: Analysis On The Possible Cause For Height Increase During Pregnancy

Some other results from Google on places where mothers and expectant mothers notice that they ended up taller than before.

• http://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/48132386.aspx
• http://www.justmommies.com/forums/f449-january-2008-playroom/951090-growing-taller-during-your-pregnancy.html
• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_it_possible_for_a_woman_to_grow_taller_while_pregnant
• http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080330121816AAnAzC7
• http://www.cafemom.com/group/3019/forums/read/14437087/Height_growth_during_pregnancy
• http://www.babycenter.com/400_can-you-get-taller-during-pregnancy_11662458_831.bc
• http://www.mothering.com/community/t/986965/getting-taller-during-pregnancy
• http://www.thepregnancyforum.com/general-discussion/6401-possble-woman-grow-taller-after-having-baby.html

These questions asked on the various internet forums, blogs, and websites on the internet seems to validate what Stacie is saying. She is noticing that her partner/husband/father of the baby is looking rather shorter than average lately. The message was short and she wrote at the end that she was going to go to the doctor, whether normal family physician, gynecologist, or endocrinologist, about her noticing that she might be taller than before.

The conclusion that was reached by Tyler was that the cause was from this muscle relaxing protein called Relaxin, and his claim has a little bit of validity. We both found a study in PubMed which showed that the hip wide and hip size of heifers (young female cows before giving birth) seemed to have have gotten bigger from before the first pregnancy and after it.

Could it be that from pregnancy, the hip bone in some women are twisted or bend open in such a way to actually stretch out the pubis symphysis?

Could the Pubis Symphysis be pulled in a way during the pregnancy and during the labor when the women is actually giving birth to make the alignment between the hip joint socket to the overall skeletal structure straighter, thus allowing for increased height?

Possibly but the height increase should be a few millimeters at most due to how the femur is attached to the hip bone. 

If we note that the epiphysis region of the proximal end of the femur is not attached to the hip bone in a vertical fashion, but horizontally, then it would not make sense to say that the stretching of such a small cartilage area in the middle of the hip should be able to cause the women to grow 1 inch, let alone 3 inches as reported by one person on an internet discussion board.

However we do have to note one thing that is well medically established. The documented phenomena of pregnant women who notice that their feet and hands and fingers becoming wider and even longer has been well observed.

This article from Discovery News indicates that the feet in pregnant women do get bigger and the increase in feet size never goes away.

“…Researchers measured the arch height and foot length of 49 women during their pregnancy and five months after they had given birth. On average, the women’s arch height decreased, and in turn, their foot length increased between 2 and 10 millimeters (about 0.1 to 0.4 inches) — during this period.

Overall, about 60 to 70 percent of the women had longer feet and shorter arches after childbirth, the researchers said. Eleven of the women reported changes in their shoe size, the researchers said”

So it seems to show that for the feet, they get longer by upwards of even 1 cm, which means that during and after pregnancy the women would could go up 2 shoe sizes. I guess that means it is time to go back shoe shopping to buy a whole new set of shoes.

The thing that is more interesting for us as height increase researchers is that the feet arch height is supposed to be decreased. The foot arch is the arch in the middle of the feet that gives the the feet its unique structure at the bottom. Most human feet at least in young kids have an arch. Older people from decades of walking and standing upright have flatter feet. So it seems that pregnancy causes women to have flatter feet.

So does having a shorter feet arch translate to a shorter overall height? It DOES.

The structure in the human feet that determines the overall height is composed of at least 4 small irregular tarsal bones. They are…

1. The navicular bone
2. The talus (aka ankle bone)
3. The calcaneus
4. Cuboid Bone

These four irregular bones are the bones that are in the dorsal position of the feet. I chose to focus on these bones and NOT the tarsal bones in ventral side because these are the real bones that would be the main factors on determining height. If we look at the rest of the feet, we realize that how far up the human body is is slightly determined by how high the ankle is above the ground level. If the feet has a higher arch, it would be slightly taller, maybe by even 1 inch.

So this means that pregnancy should in fact then make women shorter then with slightly flatter, longer feet. The case where women get shorter from pregnancy seems to happen to the majority of women who go through pregnancy and notice any type of height variation.

The occasional case where women get taller should make no sense.

From the same article…

“…between 30 to 60 percent of women who had been pregnant at least once said their shoe size had changed.

The change in foot size may be due to the extra weight women carry around during pregnancy, which puts greater stress on the feet, and, thus, may flatten the arch, the researchers said. In addition, pregnant women produce hormones that increase the looseness of the joints and ligaments (tissue that connects bone to bone), possibly making the foot structure more malleable.

Most of the women involved in the new study who experienced changes in their foot length and arch height were first-time mothers. Women had given birth to two or three children did not experience such significant changes.”

So what is exactly going on then? 

Tyler’s explanation currently is that from the type of hormone known as Relaxin released during pregnancy, the women develop looser ligaments and tendons so that when they stand up straight for say a height measurement during their annual physician checkup, the measured height goes up. That is plausible. However the logic would not explain why a new mother staying at home after giving birth, walking around with a regular posture, not stretching out completely for any height measurement, would notice that her husband/partner looks shorter than before. She is not stretching out her now looser ligaments for anything on purpose. This should mean that looser ligaments would do nothing for a women in average posture walking around in the privacy of their own home.

Humans in general are very good at noticing height changes between themselves and other people.

My explanation is that the same hormone that causes the tarsals to grow wider is also causing the cuboid, navicular, talus, and calcaneus to grow wider and bigger from appositional growth. The growth of the bones in width, since they are NOT long bones, but irregular bones, means that the feet should be getting taller if you measured the ankle protrusion relative to the ground level from before by upwards of even 1-2 cms. However this would not be enough to explain why any women should be able to gain 2-3 inches in extra height. That difference is too large.

Other than this explanation I would have no longer idea on how pregnancy makes some women taller.

Tyler’s Comments:  If appositional increased as a result of pregnancy, it would have to be a huge increase to get a noticeable increase in height.  I haven’t found any anecdotal accounts of people who would have potential for significant increases in appositional growth to have height increase like weight lifters, strong men, etc.  Bone deposition can occur even on the longitudinal ends of long bones.  Here’s a related study on non-periosteal bone growth and a study I mentioned here related to subchondral plate advancement.  If bone apposition increased enough to increase longitudinal bone growth significantly enough to increase height then it would produce noticeable effects in terms of bone width.  For example, did these females have to get bigger shoes because of the foot length or their foot width?

Here’s a recent study:

Anthropometric foot changes during pregnancy: a pilot study.

“Women’s feet change during pregnancy owing to hormonal and anatomical changes, thus having a strong influence on the decrease in their quality of life during pregnancy. This preliminary study aimed to value the anthropometric and positional changes that affect their feet. Methods: Ten pregnant women were measured during their gestational period to analyze the anthropometric changes in their feet from the 12th week of pregnancy. We examined the changes that occured in foot length, forefoot width, arch of the foot height, and the fixed position of the foot by using the Foot Posture Index, and we analyzed three intervals corresponding to pregnancy weeks 12, 24, and 34. Results: The most significant finding, with a reliability rate of 95%, is the decrease in internal arch height, which descends 0.65 mm (0.0394 inches) on average at the final stage of the pregnancy period. This change happened in 18 of the feet analyzed, tending toward pronation according to the measure provided by the Foot Posture Index, with a change of 3.78 points on this scale. Conclusions: The foot of the pregnant woman tends to flatten during gestational weeks 12 to 34, taking a more pronated posture, and the anthropometric changes in late pregnancy result in increases in foot length and forefoot width, changes that seem to be moderate.”

Will go back and look at this full study for additions but foot width does increase indicating that there may be more appositional growth but the change is said to be moderate so unlikely enough increase in appositional growth to be increasing height.

Also, the bones in the feet are different from typical long bones.  For example the toe bone is not covered by articular cartilage.

Here’s my comments on relaxin and height in pregnancy and prolactin and height.  Other potential hormones involved in the height increase could be HcG or HPL.  According to this study(Suppression of streptococcal cell wall–induced arthritis by human chorionic gonadotropin), HcG can increase circulating TGF-Beta levels.  However, the study Human placental lactogen directly inhibits rat cartilage growth processes in vivo and in vitro., found that HPG inhibits cartilage growth although it could be a different story for human cartilage.

I have often written about the size and height of NBA players or basketball players in general since I have been a rather big basketball fan for a very long time. Maybe one of the reasons I have become so obsessed with the issue of height and how to possibly become taller and increase height was is from my childhood watching so many super sized humans play the game of basketball. Someone once said that all that basketball really is, is a bunch of “tall sweaty millionaires running up and down a court”

Clearly the sport of basketball is dominated and represented by a group of people whose bodies don’t look anything like the normal sized humans which most of us are accustomed to. While I am fascinated by how humans reach large stature, I prefer to watch basketball games that are good. I would definitely want to watch a game that is played by highly skilled and talented players than tall statured individuals who can barely even move.

When I look at something like the NBA draft and see just how much emphasize NBA team managers put on the measurements like height for prospective NBA players, I want to slap my face with my palm since it is clear that being big is not enough, and should not be the main thing that basketball managers should focus on when selecting players. I wrote about this issue in the post “Is Being 7 Feet Tall The Fastest Way To Get Rich In America?”. The article I had copy and pasted showed that if a guy is over 7 feet tall, he has over a 17% chance that he would get selected to play in the NBA. This shows just how crazy the numbers work out for a person who happened to win the genetic lottery and ended up taller than 99.99% of his peers. Here is the problem with the NBA draft and all of the team managers who are so crazy about focusing on the issue of height and wingspan.

I understand that the rim of the standard basketball hoop is 10 feet tall, and that being closer to the height of the hoop means it would be easier for one to put the ball through the basketball. However, I would say that these days height should mean less and less. Almost every single NBA player not only has the ability to touch the rim, but dunk the ball. This means that nearly every single professional basketball player can reach at least 10′ 8″ , which is the distance off of the ground to account for the height of the rim and the thickness of the ball.

While it may be that some professional basketball players who play the point guard position is just around 6 feet, almost everyone in the league can can at least touch the rim and dunk. If the rim height is not going to be raise, and almost every one can reach and dunk the ball, why do we need to have taller players, who reach over 7 feet tall?

There are some players like Yao Ming who barely need to even jump to reach the rim because they are so tall, and their height actually becomes a huge problem. What is noticed from analyzing the career of players over 7′ 3″ is that they don’t play very long because the amount of weight on their knees and other joints is so high that injury plagues their basketball career. Many of the biggest big men have had severe knee problems like Andrew Bynum and Greg Oden. This means that over a certain height, the extra height would actually be a huge disadvantage.

The current record for the highest reach of any basketball player that I am aware of is by Dwight Howard who managed to touch the incredible height of 12 feet 6 inches (source). Dwight’s official NBA height is 6′ 11″ with a reach of 9′ 2.5″. If he can touch 12 feet and a half, that means that he managed to get off of the ground 3 feet and 3.5 inches. In comparison, the retired NBA center Shaquille O’Neal had a jumping reach of 12′ 5″ when he was tested early in his NBA career.

This ability to jump higher is one trait which I feel is much more important than one’s height. The higher one’s vertical jump is, the more likely that another player’s short will be blocked as they release the ball.

15 years ago, when Michael Jordan was the king of the league and winning three peats of championships, someone was asked to design the perfect basketball body and they used the measurements of Michael Jordan, at 6′ 6″, 220 lbs with insanely large hands.

Compared to Kobe Bryant, it is stated often by the Coach Phil Jackson that the key physical advantage Jordan has over Kobe was the size of his hands. (source) Those hands were the size of baseball mitts and could pick up the basketball easily with one hand. From my own playing days, I know for a fact that larger hands means much better control of the ball and how you want it to spin. I would say that hand size i one of the biggest, most critical factors that most team managers should start to really take into consideration. When we look at the reason why say Rajon Rondo has been so versatile as a player even though he is 6′ 1″ is because of his larger hands.

Now in 2013, when analysts are asked to design the perfect basketball player’s body, they have changed the dimensions to that of Lebron James measurements at 6′ 8″, 250 lbs, with 9.5″ hand length. (Interestingly Britney Griner has  a hand size slightly larger than Lebron James)

Now we all know that weight is a variable that can change a lot, so let’s ask ourselves just about height alone. Assuming that the official height of these two players are correct, does it mean that the ideal body for the NBA player has increase by 2 inches over the last 15 years? Or does it mean that the best player consistently rated by analysts today just happened to be 2 inches taller than the guy who was considered the best player in the league 15 years ago?

We have seen enough draft flops like Kwame Brown, Darko Milicic, Greg Oden, Michael Olowokandi, who were definitely tall and scouts felt that their extra few inches in height could compensate for their rawness and lac of basketball skills. It is true that one can’t teach “height” but it is also well known that one can’t teach better coordination, how to change the habitual movements of people, and how to change a person’s way of dealing with stressful situations very easily. Andrew Bynum may be 7 feet tall, and even 7′ 1″ from some sources, but his wingspan is not very large in comparison to his height. (Interestingly Britney Griner has a arm wingspan that is longer than Andre Bynum’s at 7′ 3.5″).

These guys who might have been born and grew up always taller than other people their whole lives might NOT have the mental toughness to have the drive to push themselves. When a person is given a clear path to wealth and success based on a factor that they had no control over, like genetics and the resultant height, they might not work as hard and appreciate just what they have so they don’t try that hard. People have been talking about the mental toughness of Bynum and Dwight Howard and say that they still view everything as a game like little kids. These men with so much physical talent and gifts start to relie too much on their size advantage and don’t work as hard as the smaller guys.

To get the better, more perfect basketball player, I would actually suggest that one chooses the smaller player, who may not be the tallest guy in the room.

The factors that should be focused on are the following.

• Arm Wingspan
• Maximum Jumping Vertical Reach
• Lateral Quickness
• Hand Size (width & length)

The arm defense is important due to defense. The longer the reach usually translates to mean the more space that a person can defend and block off.

The maximum jumping vertical reach is also due to defense. The higher one can jump, the more likely they can block shots and intimate potential shooters.

The lateral quickness is important for offense and defense. For offense, lateral quickness means that a player can more easily change directions, while in defense it means that player can more easily change in reaction to player’s movements.

The size of the hands are the last component which I feel is important because it means that the player has better control of the ball that is in their hands. The control of the ball is increased.

These 4 elements are what I would say are the most important factors in a NBA draft, based on my own amateur opinion. Height should not be considered too much, if at all. Sure, a person being 4 inches taller than another person would probably be able to see over their heads and usually have longer arms but that is not enough to actually make a good player.

If a team really wanted to find the best players in a draft, look for players that have the highest grades of the following 4 qualities, and create a system on how to evaluate these traits, and not worry about height so much.

Someone today left a comment on the website linking to a guy named Lee Lazelle from the UK who had a DailyMail UK article entitled I Can’t Stop Growing written about him back in 2001 saying that even at the age of 30 he was still growing at a rate of 1 inch per year.

Now he would be  42 years old. Someone did ask what happened to this guy (source) who was said to have some type of incurable condition which makes him not have the ability to stop growing. If he kept up that rate of 1 inch per year, and after 12 year later, since 2001 to the current 2013, he would be 8 feet 3 inches now, a serious contender for the world’s tallest man.

This guy is clearly visible from being so tall, and if he did grow to anywhere close to the tallest man in the UK record, which stands at 7′ 7″ – 7′ 8″ right now, he would have been noticed buy anyone who saw him and the Guinness Records people would have found him, or at least a few new channels would have done at least another story about this guy.

I think the overall conclusion is that Lazelle did actually stop growing and if I was to guess, he ended up with a height around 7′ 4″- 7′ 5″. There is no more information on this British guy that I found anywhere else from doing a quick google search on his name.

The reason why I give this guy another 1-2 inches of his reported height back in 2001 is actually based on the height/ growth pattern seen in Yao Ming, another giant. China’s past record on falsifying their Olympic athletes’ ages aside, lets assume that Yao Ming’s real age reported when he was drafted as #1 to the Houston Rockets back in 2002 was true. Currently Yao is 32 years old. He was born in Sep of 1980. Back in June of 2002 when he was drafted, he would have been almost 22 years old. Yao’s growth pattern shows that over the span of the last 2-3 years of his growth, he averaged about 1 inch of extra growth each year. In the 2000 Olympics Yao was first noticed and his height looked to be around 7′ 4″ – 7′ 5″.

Most males stop growing taller around the age of 18-20. Yao’s genetics meant that he probably had another couple of extra years of open growth plates. He was listed at 7′ 5″ when he came into the league but his height was elevated another 1 inch around the end of his NBA career to 7′ 6″. There is only anecdotal stories and evidence that Yao grew taller by 0.5 inch from the age of 21 when he got drafted to maybe 22-23 when he supposedly stopped growing taller.

I am going to try to take the growth progress of Yao and transpose it to the growth of this british guy and this is why I say that he grew at most 2 inches. The other thing to recognize is that this guy had severe bone pain in his body. It seemed that he was suffering from arthritis, which is a symptom in mainly people who are much older. If I was to guess at his condition, it seems that he went through an accelerated rate of growth earlier in life. My guess is that this guy suffers from a similar condition like that of Zech Devits. I wrote a post about the connection between Zech Devits, Matt McGrory, and Siah Khan in the post The Connection Between Matt McGrory, Siah Khan, Zech Devits, And The Tallest Filipino Leads To Proteus Syndrome And Much More (Important!)

The bone pains is NOT from growing longitudinally in the bones. This is what most people would think is the pain but it is not. People who experience growing pains usually are the type who grow 8-10 inches a year, not the type of person who grows only 1 inch a year. His pain is coming from a result where he is said to not even be able to hold onto a cup from hand cramping. Hand cramps can come from either from muscle problems or joint problems. It could be that he could not send the electrical signal to tell the muscle in his hands to close down on a cup. I would guess the better reason is that the joints in his hands could not move in the right way without pain. The joints became locked and stiff. This signals the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, where he is lossing articular cartilage in the synovial joints of his hands. This is the same things as what happened to Zech Devits. Devits also had extreme problems with bone pain and advanced aging of his bones.

So why do I think that Lazelle stopped growing?

I refer to the PubMed article Fundamental limits on longitudinal bone growth: growth plate senescence and epiphyseal fusion. The study/ article shows that at least one of the primary reasons why humans stop growing is due to simple physics and mathematical principles. Over time, the number of cells/chondrocytes that are possible to be used for hypertrophy slowly drops and there is only 1 inevitable ending, where all the cells are used up.

There is one other possibility on how it is possible that this Lee Lazelle guy could have grown. This is if he had a serious problem where the chondrocytes in his growth plates did not have the estrogen receptors, either alpha or beta. There have been three studies written and posted in the PubMed database which show this type of medical disorder where it really is possible for the person who has it to still be growing. It is due to the fact that the cartilage in the long bones have not been able to go through the chondro-osteogenic process yet.

I wrote a post The 3 Men Who Lacked Estrogen Receptors Who Did Not Stop Growing to show that it is possible.

However for the 2 cases of men who were around 6′ 8″ around the 30 years old range and still had open growth plates, the main negativity that resulted from their disorder was that they were sterile and could not have children. However the article on Lee Lazelle showed that he had a 12 year old daughter back in 2001. If this guy had a daughter when he was 18 years old (he was 30 years old when the article was written) then he clearly did not have any problems with child bearing, so he was not sterile like the medically documented cases.

The thing about having the estrogen receptors being inactive or gone in the other cases showed that it would have been close to impossible to have children. This shows that Lee Lazelle did NOT have the problem where he was suffering from the same condition, where his growth plates could not close due to him lacking the receptors or the receptors not functioning.

He was a normal guy going through the normal endochondral ossification process. He just happened to have growth plates that stayed around a lot longer than average, just like Kosen and Angus. So why did his growth plates stay around even at the age of 30?

It was due to another endocrine system mechanism which I do not know of right now, although I suspect that it happens to a lot of people who have pituitary adenoma. Kosen was said to be around when he grew again another 2 inches. Angus grew until she was around 29 years old, when the weight on her body caused the vertebrate to curve, reducing overall height and removing any phenotypical evidence that excess GH in her body resulted in adult stage height increase, even if it did happen.

So did this Lazelle continue to grow taller even after being in his 30s? No, he stopped growing.

However, the most interesting thing for us researchers is to find out what mechanism or endocrine process could have caused his body to be able to prevent full growth plate closure until he was in his 30s. That would be a very helpful thing to know.