The idea of using the growth factor FGF-2 and the need to understand how we can induce articular cartilage regeneration has been a couple of consistent topics I have brought up over and over again in this website. The FGF-2 aka Fibroblast Growth Factor has been one of the best candidates that is known at this time which can help the human body in vivo generate some type of cartilage-like tissue which we would definitely need to be added into the bone to remodel it in any way longitudinally. I wanted to summarize 4 PubMed studies I’ve found which show in either a direct or indirect way how effective using the FGF-2 growth factor is in getting cartilage to be formed.

Study #1: Differentiation of chondrogenic precursor cells during the regeneration of articular cartilage

• Y. Hiraki^f1, C. Shukunami, K. Iyama, H. Mizuta

• Department of Molecular Interaction and Tissue Engineering, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto; Departments of Surgical Pathology and Orthopedic Surgery, Kumamoto University School of Medicine, Kumamoto, Japan

Abstract

Study #2: One day exposure to FGF-2 was sufficient for the regenerative repair of full-thickness defects of articular cartilage in rabbits

• H. Chuma, M.D.^†,  H. Mizuta, M.D., Ph.D.^†, S. Kudo, M.D., Ph.D.^†, K. Takagi, M.D., Ph.D.^†, Y. Hiraki,Ph.D.^‡
  

• ^† Department of Orthopaedic and Neuro-Musculoskeletal Surgery, Faculty of Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto 860-8556, Japan
• ^‡ Department of Cellular Differentiation, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan

Summary

Study #3: Fibroblast growth factor-2 promotes the repair of partial thickness defects of articular cartilage in immature rabbits but not in mature rabbits

• Tetsuya Yamamoto^†, Shigeyuki Wakitani^‡, Kazuhiko Imoto^†, Takako Hattori^§, Hiroyuki Nakaya^§,Masanobu Saito^†, Kazuo Yonenobu^†

• ^† Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Osaka-Minami National Hospital, Kawachinagano, Japan
• ^‡ Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan
• ^§ Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Suita, Japan

Abstract

Study #4: Regeneration of articular cartilage defects in the temporomandibular joint of rabbits by fibroblast growth factor-2: a pilot study

• H. Takafuji, T. Suzuki, Y. Okubo, K. Fujimura, K. Bessho

• Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, 54 Syogoin, Kawahara-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto-shi 606-8507, Japan

Abstract

I remember Sky (from EasyHeight.com) once saying in a post of how his daily schedule goes that he would pray each night to his personal God for the strength and power to make the next day better and I wondered whether the power of prayer or wishing would have any influence on a person’s growth. Did Sky also wish for his body to transform to make himself taller?

I have looked through the updates on the website that is now no longer available and it seems that after 4-5 years of trials and doing bone lengthening stretches and pulling using weights, sprinting, and jumping he never increased at all in height. For all the desiring, wishing, and personal determination, dedication, and persistence, he never increased his height by even 1 inch.

I have thought about the issue of whether a person can use will or desire to make their bodies longer. There are some interesting cases we have found where the mental powers seemed to have some effect but the majority of people who express a desire, or even a strong obsession sees nothing results.

I would say that maybe when we still have our growth plates’ cartilage, we might be able to change our state or emotions to become slightly more positive and better to optimize the natural growth rate our genetic pre-programmed. There is already some studies which show that having a negative outlook on life will affect the immunity and health of a person who is still growing and possibly lead to more incidents of illness, which results in stunted growth and increased bone mineral density.

If we can use wishful thinking and praying, we might be able to increase our immune system, and nervous system to relax more, decrease stress, decrease illness, and optimize the natural growth rate. However, I don’t think it is possibly after the cartilage in our growth plates are gone to be able to use just our minds in terms of praying and wishing to increase our height.

There has been no documented cases which showed that through mental exertion or mental manipulation alone can the individual change or remodel the bones in their body, even in terms of increasing the bone mineral density. A female in her 50s can not wish to decrease her chances towards osteoporosis and bone fractures, but needs to implement some type of exercise program and eat more vitamin D based foods to strengthen and remodel her bones internally to be healthier.

There is a case to be said for the strange fact that Dr. Milton Erickson famously had a patient which supposedly increased their height by 12 inches in one year after therapy sessions with him. I wrote about this case in one of the earliest posts entitled “Milton Erickson’s Legend of 12 Inch Height Increase”.

It involved Dr. Erickson making the guy change his perception on how he viewed the world. However this case is well documented and has been going around the internet space and NLP community for the last 5 decades ever since the case was documented in one of his written books. At this point, I would guess instead that the person who was said to be 20 years ld when Dr. Erickson treated him still had the cartilage in his bones and through some relaxation method, he experience a rare case of “catch-up growth” which I wrote about in the post ”
Catch Up Growth Explained, Can We Use It To Increase In Height And Grow Taller?”

So it might be possible with a very good hypnotherapist or NLP expert to get a person to change their state or perception of the world to help increase the growth rate of a person who still have their growth plates, but there powers to change the mind would not work on a person who doesn’t have their growth plates.

I have talked about the Peak Performance Life Coach Anthony Robbins at least a few times in the span of this website. This is not just because Robbins has a very interesting case of having Gigantism but also because I have been listening and reading his material for a few years now.

There is no doubt that Robbins is very good at what he does which is to facilitate and assist people in reaching their goals and having success in life. However I have always wondered how it was possible that Robbins would be able to achieve success so quickly. I have read the books about this guy and many people have tried to guess at how he was able to succeed so quickly.

In Robbins’ biographies, it documents that Robbins went from total financial ruin to making over $1 million a year in just one year after he decided one night to stop feeling sorry for himself and went for a physically demanding run. All of this was done when he was still in his early 20s. When he was just 19-20, he was already well known as a type of instant-fix psychiatrist.

Many people have wondered what could be the secret to Robbin’s success. Some claim that he understood the NLP principle of Modeling and applied that one step towards everything in his life. He would find the most successful people in the area he wanted to learn, figure out what they were doing, and emulate the characteristics of those successful people.

Others say that he was just at the right place and right time to start what we now would call the “Self Improvement” or “Personal Development” community in the 70s-80s. Of course the ideas for self improvement has been around forever since the time of Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, James Allen, etc but it was Anthony Robbins who would bring the idea of C.A.N.I. (Constant And Never ending Improvement) to the public’s awareness. He decided to take the platform of TV and broadcasted his face and message every night on those late night Informercials in the 80s. He became a national and international start with a very recognizable face.

Besides his drive towards succeeding, he also had a few key mentors and lucky breaks…

• His meeting and being trained by Grinder, one of the two original creators of NLP.
• His mentoring by one of the earliest people in the self help industry, Jim Rohn.
• His initial drive, motivation, and passion to read over 700 books.
• His chance meeting with Tolly Burkan gave him the idea to incorporate fire-walking into his seminars and programs. The firewalking is an analogy to express the idea that a person can use their mental state to resist pain and overcome their fears 
• His early wins in life like interviewing Howard Cossell and being able to be proactive in finding his role models.

I am not to take away Robbin’s own hard work in reaching where he was but it is clear that his meetings early on with some influential people in the Self Help community contributed to his fast rise to financial freedom and business success.

However I wanted to make an interesting argument in this post. It is that “I believe the main reason Anthony Robbins has been able to achieve the type of success he has enjoy at this magnitude for the last 3 decades is primarily because of his size/height”

Note: Now it is absolutely true that there are plenty of people in the USA and other countries who most people would consider “tall” or even “giants” but end up broke, a failure, and homeless. I know of even a 7′ 4″ homeless guy who lives on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Being tall does not immediately translate to professional and financial success. Winning the genetic lottery is note enough these days to gaurantee any type of success.

I once heard one self help guru say that for one to truly development into a person that attracts people, one of the 5 key things one must have or develop is presence. Being fully present is very important to develop deep, meaningful relationships with people and have a good communication between people.

When I look at the idea of presence, I can think of only a few things or characteristics which would be used to describe a person who has presence. The words would be magnetic, charming, intense, energy, passion, figure, size, height, gazing into the eyes, warm, etc.

Many people these days want to become “life coaches” which is sort of like therapy but only without the 10 years of medical school training. These jobs are relatively easy with the coach helping their clients figure out their life’s blueprint. It also makes the person who is a coach feel good about themselves since they are “helping other people”. The connection one person makes (as well as the positive emotions they get) in being able to help possibly solve the emotional and psychological issues of another person is very strong. It also helps that a coach is usually very well paid, around the $50/hr range for coaches who start out and that is just for a weekly phone call to their clients. In my opinion, the whole field of “life coaching” is filled with scams and frauds who claim that they are coaches but don’t even have their own lives in order. However, we are talking about one of the most famous, well paid, and most well known “coaches” in the world, if not the one person who actually started this entire sector of society.

I am not going to question at the educational or credentials of Anthony Robbins since coaching has almost always focused on results. Robbins himself only has a High School education but he claims that he has read close to 1000 books in his lifetime to answer one fundamental question which is “What is the difference between the person who succeeds in life and the person who does not?” I guess that is good enough if he can really help people quickly and the clients feel like they really got their money’s worth.

Anthony Robbins clearly has learned the tools needed for success. He learned from the best in his time, and has integrated the ideas into his own system of coaching. He has written two best selling books (“Unlimited Power” and “Awaken The Giant Within”) which many people have said changed their life for the better.

Robbins has said that when he started high school, he was only around 5′ 2″-5′ 3″. Within just 2-3 years, he would have his height shoot up to 6′ 7″. It would be until later in life would he learn that the reason for his insane growth spurt was because of a tumor in his head. We know this as the release of somatropin into his body by the anterior part of his pituitary gland.

After getting medical advice from his physicians around the age of 30, he decided not to operate on the brain and he has been fine since which might indicate the tumour shrunk down after he past puberty. From looking at his face, it seems that the growth hormones have given him the large cheekbones, jawline, teeth, and hands that are characteristic of acromegaly. His body is proportional, and video of him back when he was in his 20s in the 1980s show that he was very fit and healthy.

I think the reason he has reached the success he has is from his ability to use the principle of presence to the maximum, but especially the element of him being so big to generate the element of presence to a very high degree. His combination of passion and energy and warm is something that most people can generate. I have met life coaches which have his level of intensity in life and have just as good speaking and coaching skills. However these people are not at his level of success.

Is it just because Anthony Robbins came before these guys and he was the one who created all of these ideas and systems which the newer coaches are using? i would say partly.

Extreme human tall stature has always generate awe, admiration, and instant respect within humans. I would guess that the behavior of being in awe of taller beings is something that is very instinctual in humans. The fact that Robbins stands 6′ 7″ due to his lucky break in developing gigantism in his teenager years, before his growth plates closed allows him to almost automatically generate respect when an average sized human meets him.

6′ 7″ is over 2 meters and this height is within the 00.1% of all humans in the world. Most people have stated that the first time they meet Robbins is a very unique experience since it is very unusual to meet someone his size. In additon, the growth hormones also made his voice very deep due to the cartilage his larynx thicker generating an automatic deeper voice. Studies in evolutionary psychology has shown that human males with lower, deeper voice tones tend to exhibit more dominant male behavior.

So it would be Robbins asset of his large body size and his deep voice which would make people instantly listen to him speak and assume that he is someone important and influential. In addition, when Robbins was young, even before his insane growth spurt, he was known by his high school friend to be a great speaker, a problem solver, and a communicator. The lowering of his voice which commands more respect due to the cartilage in his trachea and larynx being enlarged helped him develop a even more alpha-like, masculine presence.

This is why I think Robbins has reached the level of success that he has.

If he was a normal sized male, like 5′ 11′ he would still be successful and probably would have become a millionaire after 10 years of hard work, with the type of energy and passion that is his trademark behavior. However I doubt that Robbins would have been able to reach the level of his success so quickly without his height and size. I know rationally and logically that getting a talk from a talk and advice from a big person should be no different from a small person, but at an unconscious level I might be able to take the advice of a small person as seriously and actively as from a person who would be much bigger. Bigger people are just able to command attention and respect so much easier than smaller people.

I personally just can’t imagine a 5′ 3″ Anthony Robbins being able to come up on stage in front of 10,000 people in one of his seminars and still be able to command the same level of respect. He might be the center of attention and his usage of psychological tactics to make people easier to influence might work in his seminars but if he decides to meet his clients face to face for personal coaching, I would say that the ability and quality of his coaching would not be as effective or strong as where he is so much bigger than other people.

This is my two cents on the subject of one of my personal heros and mentors, Anthony Robbins.

Something that I have always been curious about is to ask whether the stories, legends, and myths of which we hear about human like giants from past history could really be true. When I was younger, I was absolutely fascinated or even a little obsessed with the occult, esoteric, the paranormal, and the supernatural.

I recently was bored not being able to sleep and I came across an interesting documentary from Youtube which seems to suggest the theory that giants really did exist in human history’s past.

In this post, I will be using and outlining all the important information found from the YouTube video of a documentary done on giants or extremely tall statured Human-like beings. It is “ANCIENT GIANTS existed – Best Full Documentary-HD”. The video uploader goes by the name “Endza50·”. The entire video uploaded to Youtube is around 50 and a half minute long.

It would seem that throughout history people have been telling stories about super-tall human like beings. The most famous giant would be from the bible with Goliath. What some people might not know is that Goliath was actually 1 of 5 brothers and he was part of a group known as the Philistines.

Even in the most published book in human history, the Holy Bible, there is verses which talk about the fact that when the human race was in its infancy, there were giants that roamed the earth. Ex. Chapter 6, Verse 4.

So are we supposed to believe in these ideas of ancient races of extreme tall statured humans up to even 20 feet tall which roamed the earth?

Side note: In the story from the Bible, David did not actually kill Goliath with his sling, but only stunned Goliath enough to make him fall down and knock him to a daze long enough so that David took Goliath’s weapon and then cut off his head.

In the documentary, which I watched with a level of scepticism, it seems that the Mayans and Incans both held beliefs in the legend or myth that a race of giants giants existed before their civilization which would be extinguished by a great flood. They viewed these giants before them as gods and created stone figures in the shape of these giants.

It seems that one of the most common features found in giant skeletons found even in the Northeastern Region of the USA was that they had double rows of teeth. This seems to be one of those things that would be written again and again in any newspaper clippings one finds from the 19th and early 20 century which reported these cryptozoological skeleton findings. Sometimes there is also claim that the giants had 6 fingers and 6 toes.

One speaker named Jim Marrs says that there is a legend made by the Paiutes, a native american tribe indigenous to the Nevada region. From the blog HERE…

The Legend

The Paiutes, a Native-American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, told early white settlers about their ancestors’ battles with a ferocious race of white, red-haired giants. According to the Paiutes, the giants were already living in the area.

The Paiutes named the giants “Si-Te-Cah” that literally means “tule-eaters.” The tule is a fibrous water plant the giants wove into rafts to escape the Paiutes continuous attacks. They used the rafts to navigate across what remained of Lake Lahontan.

According to the Paiutes, the red-haired giants stood as tall as 12-feet and were a vicious, unapproachable people that killed and ate captured Paiutes as food. [Overestimation is to be expected.]

The Paiutes told the early settlers that after many years of warfare, all the tribes in the area finally joined together to rid themselves of the giants.

One day as they chased down the few remaining red-haired enemy, the fleeing giants took refuge in a cave. The tribal warriors demanded their enemy come out and fight, but the giants steadfastly refused to leave their sanctuary.

Frustrated at not defeating their enemy with honor [underestimation is to be expected], the tribal chiefs had warriors fill the entrance to the cavern with brush and then set it on fire in a bid to force the giants out of the cave.

The few that did emerge were instantly slain with volleys of arrows. The giants that remained inside the cavern were asphyxiated.

This story seems to have originated by a ethnic Paiute named Sarah Winnemucca (later added the last name Hopkins probably signifying she married a white man) who wrote a book about the history of her people entitled “Life Among the Piutes“.

The whole documentary was very interested and a few very notable, but more infamous writers of the paranormal and conspiracy theorists like Erich Von Daniken, Bruce Rux, David Childress, Brad Steiger, and Jim Marrs all tell some type of anecdotal story showing that the USA short history, many people in the 19th century claimed to have dug up skeletons which are of people who are of extremely tall stature. During the 19th century, the white settlers would go into the midwest and find big mounds which was believed by some local native americans to be graves of ancient giants. When the white settler’s excavated and dug up the mounds to see what was inside, they did seem to find 7-10 feet tall skeletons inside.

A famous case if when men in Bridal Veils Falls, California supposedly found a wall filled with ancient writings. They broke the wall hoping to find gold and treasure but found instead a tall female skeleton holding onto a baby. It seems that similar findings are also in Texas and Nevada. Not just in the USA, during the 19th century, anyone with a shovel was digging into the ground and people fond giant skeletons also in Greece, the Middle East, Turkey, and many other countries around the world.

The 2nd famous case is when people in 1912 went to a cave in Lovelock Nevada to get bat guano but instead found duck decoys, baskets, hunting & fishing equipment, and mummified red-haired giants around 6’6″-7’0”. Sarah Winnemucca in her book tells of this story and that the giants with red hair came from that specific cave. It is said that the people who excavated the cave manage to bring 60 skeletons out of it but none are found today.

In South America, besides the Nazca lines, there are other large carved figures like the picture to the right.

The documentary makes a very big push in making the viewer think that there is a high possibility that giants did exist in human’s past.

If I was to make a guess, I would say that it is not unreasonably to believe that maybe there were tribes in human history who chose to selective breed their people for tall stature, to give them a sort of physical edge against their neighbors who might be warring with them. Tall stature has been associated with increased strength and power, and there might be people who have tried in history to get the tall people in their tribe to breed and then after a few generations, the average height of the entire tribe increased. When these tribes then faced warring outsiders, the outsiders would see these people who are so much bigger and be intimated by their size and run away.

While I am sure that a good size percentage of all the documented and written stories throughout hisotory about giants skeletons were hoaxes and scams done by people to have fun or cheat people out of money, it is a little hard for me to believe that all of the cases about giants skeletons were hoaxes. I would assume that at least one of the stories was based on true findings, and that would be enough evidence to show that in human history, there were some groups of people who ended up being much taller than the other groups of people/tribes around them.

When the website was first beginning I had written a post listing which steroids have been discussed with the possibility of increasing height or stunting growth. The post “Grow Taller Using Steroids , Part I” has been one of the most visited posts and it seems that the effects of steroids have never been answered. Would they stimulate or inhibit height?

The answer is that it really depends on the type of steroids one decides to use. Some steroids have been shown to actually increase the growth rate in children with still open growth plates, and others accelerate the senescence of the growth plates and increase the maturity of the bones.

Something we really should be asking ourselves is this “What is the technical definition of steroids?”

It turns out that the term “steroids” refers to any type of laboratory created synthetic hormone which will have similar effects as the sex hormones aka androgens the males of our species releases in their testicles.

Note: This information is below taken from the Steroids.com website.

The definition of an anabolic steroid as defined currently in the United States under (41)(A) is that “anabolic steroid” means any drug or hormonal substance, chemically and pharmacologically related to testosterone (other than estrogens, progestins, corticosteroids, and dehydroepiandrosterone (7).

What we the general public refers to when we use the word “Steroids” are the anabolic steroids type. If we were to use the technical term for steroid found from the field of Chemistry, we would get something different which would not have the same function for the context of the subject we are talking about.

It seems that steroids are then just the synthetic version of testosterone. There has been many studies which show that for males, the hormone that makes them become “men” in the biological definition, is from the androgen testosterone which is made in the male gonads. When a young adolescent male starts going through puberty, they get both the rush of the female androgen estrogen and the male androgen testosterone. The female gonads, the ovaries also produce progesterone but that it not our talk for this post.

It is testosterone which makes males feel stronger, have bigger, thicker muscles, and have increased sexual drive and sexual stamina.

However, there is another type of hormone that is released by the human endocrine system which have similar effects towards making people feel younger, stronger, and increased sexual drive. That is the growth hormones or hGH which is released by the pituitary gland. This is what we as height increase researchers are looking into.

And for me personally, this is what I would also label as a steroid. If a company is manufacturing synthetic versions of the somatropin, I would also call it a steroid.

In my definition of the word “steroids”, it refer to lab derived versions of the Growth Hormones made by the pituitary gland and the Testosterone made by the male gonads.  

There has been many, many people who claim that steroids is bad for a kid who is still growing. Everyone seems to quote the famous horror stories of stunted growth and shrinking testicles, but from what I have researched, there has not been even 1 study which shows the direct link and harm from steroid usage and really bad negative side effects. If a person can direct me to at least 3 PubMed studies showing negative consequences of using steroids within physically mature males I would greatly appreciate it.

If “steroids” are just testosterone and gonadotropin, then why is it bad for a person?

It is bad if a teenage boy who is already having his body filled with hormones get even more. That is like turning an already horny teenage boy even crazier with sexual frustration with more testosterone. It could turn that teenage male potentially violent from sexual repression.

The thing is that I don’t study the science on how to get bigger muscles and how to increase male sexual performance, or stamina. That is for another researcher. Let’s get back to how steroids affect height.

So if steroids are just growth hormones and testosterone, how would they effect the growth process of a person with open growth plates?

As for height, the synthetic steroids for growth hormones derived from the hypothalamus-pituitary gland region of the brain like Genotropin, Somatropin, Humatrope, would actually increase the growth rate and the final height of people who take it. However, the effects may be very small. When we look at the case of Lionel Messi and how he started to take Growth Hormone injections to prevent him from becoming too small in life. The story about Messi and his height was that when he was a young kid, his parents noticed that he was much shorter and smaller than his peers. From doctors testing him, they had concluded that Messi was short statured due to what is known as Growth Hormone Deficiency. The growth plates in his body had the receptors to accept any GH that was in his system, but there was not enough being produced. If Messi did not take the injection, because his body (pituitary glands and adrenal glands) was not producing either the hGH or the IGF-1, he would have ended up much shorter than his current stature of 5′ 7″ which is still on the short side for professional soccer/futbol players. I wrote a post about the unique situation of Messi in the post “Lionel Messi Using Growth Hormone Therapy To Increase Height And Grow Taller”.

I have shown in previous posts that if a male gets too much testosterone into their system while they are still growing ie in their puberty phase, it will convert aka aromatize into the female androgen estrogen and that is what will speed up the rate at which the chondrocytes in the growth plate are being depleted. From my research, it seems that estrogen has been the real activation key on not just determining when the cartilage in the growth plates will disappear, but also when the stage of puberty will begin. This is why people tell a person who decides to use steroids that they are going to end up with stunted growth. If you get too much testosterone into the system, that just leads to more estrogen which will strip the resting zone of the chondrocytes needed for further longitudinal growth.

Clear Examples:

In this article from the LA Times in 2007 entitled “Estrogen’s history as a growth limiter” we find parents who asked physicians to inject their daughter with estrogen to limit her growth and height so that they can always take care of her.

In the post “Alpha, Above Average Testosterone Males Are More Likely To Be Taller, An Endocrine Explanation” I had shown that males who might have slightly higher rates of testosterone rate in their body than their male peers might end up being taller than them as well as more violent and dominant in behavior. However we must be careful not to get too much of the testosterone.

In the post “People Who Lack Functional Estrogen Receptors Become 7 Feet Tall?” I had referenced at least 2 cases of males who had a genetic trait where they did not have receptors in the growth plate to accept the estrogen in their system, which meant that their growth plate cartilage never completely ossified and they ended up being 6′ 8″-7’0″.

Lastly, I have cited this study many times but I will reference it again. The study “Normal bone growth requires optimal estrogen levels: negative effects of both high and low dose estrogen on the number of growth plate chondrocytes.” shows that if a person has too much or too little estrogen in their system, they are going to have stunted growth. There is an optimal level of estrogen. For most men, we go through with puberty later than females so we have on average an extra 2 years of growth before our plates ossify due to the chondrocytes running out. This suggests that having a little extra testosterone might be actually beneficial for height increase but only up a certain point. However, there are a certain portion of the male population that already has too much testosterone and taking the steroids will only lead to decreased final height.

At this point, there is no way to separate which males in a group will steroids actually stimulate height increase and which males steroids would inhibit height growth.

The point that this post is supposed to make is that there is a link between using steroids and possibly stunted growth.

However if we decided to take the other type of “steroids” (which I have defined) in terms of synthetic recombinant growth hormones aka somatropins like genotropin, humatrope, etc. it would not stunt our growth but actually increase it if one is going through the puberty phase.

In addition, there are steroid derivatives like Anavar and Letrozole which have PubMed studies backing up the theory that these aromatizing inhibiting compounds will increase the growth period and stop the chondrocytes from being used up too quickly making the final height increase.

At this point I don’t know if the human body can ever become fully saturated with too much growth hormone from taking GH injections. From the pathologies of Gigantism and Acromegaly and how they affect the human body, it would seem that the human body might not have a saturation point on at least somatropin uptake.

In one of the most pivotal posts I had written for the website entitled “The Connection Between Regenerating Deer Antlers and The PTHrP, PTH And IHH pathway for Cartilage Regulation, PTHrP Seems To Be The Answer (Big Breakthrough!)” I had looked at the connection between the IHH-PTHrP master regulator signaling pathway in the growth plates, and the principles behind how the antlers in deers continue to regenerate and grow longitudinally almost annually.

That post linked above is one of the biggest breakthroughs I have had in the research in being able to push the endeavor slightly closer.

I would now like to refer to the picture to the right which I took using my iPhone 4s of the medical research textbook “Bones & Cartilage, Developmental and Evolutionary Skeletal Biology” by Brain K. Hall. The book was found recently at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Washington.

Although the photo is crooked by 90 degrees, it is still very clearly visible that the way that the deer antlers seem to suggest that they grow is that there is a small pocket inside the relatively hard bone-like tissue where the mesenchymal stem cells or progenitor cells are located which will eventually turn into chondrocytes and then into osteocytes.

This sort of suggests the idea that as long as we can get a sizable colony of mesenchyme into the human long bones, the mesenchyme might have the strength to push the bones apart and thus expand the bones longitudinally. Of course this idea must be checked and compared to the human body’s structures to see whether we can even take the principles of one biological system arrangement and use them in another.

The 2nd thing we must also consider is the fact that the way the antlers or horns are shaped suggest that there is a break in the bones so that the hard bone matrix does not completely surround the mesenchyme progenitor cells. Horns are actually different from antlers. Horns are made of a type of material that is not as strong as bones. From the picture of the horns in the 1st picture, we see that the horn material and the bones surround the mesenchyme. However, it seems that there is a break or a edge-edge boundary layer break between the horn material and the bone material which would suggest that the mesenchyme which will differentiate into chondrocytes use this boundary layer as the source where longitudinal lenghthening is even possible.

When we try to search further into this idea, we first have to do more research on the composition and structural arrangement of the deer antlers and ask whether the human long limbs have a similar structural arrangement.

From the Wikipedia article on the antler.…

While an antler is growing, it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. Antlers are considered one of the most exaggerated cases of male secondary sexual traits in the animal kingdom, and grow faster than any other mammal bone. Growth occurs at the tip, and is initially cartilage, which is later replaced by bone tissue. Once the antler has achieved its full size, the velvet is lost and the antler’s bone dies. This dead bone structure is the mature antler. In most cases, the bone at the base is destroyed by osteoclasts and the antlers fall off at some point.

Analysis:

It seems from the Wikipedia description that the tip is what grows taller being all cartilage, and the cover is the perichondrium. Once the mesenchyme runs out of progenitor stem cells to turn into chondrocytes, that is some type of molecular or genetic signaling pathway which gets triggered turning the velvet cover which is just the perichondrium hard into something like the analogue to the human’s long bone’s periosteum from vascularization and ossification. Then the antlers reach the final length and they get sheded. From one source, it says…

After the breeding season, cells start to de-mineralize the bone between the pedicle and antler, causing the antler’s connection with the skull to weaken and the antler to fall off

So that is the initial guess from me on what happens during the antler longitudinal growth.

However, is the deer antler made of the same type of composition as say the human long bones?

From the study “Mineral composition of antlers of three deer species reared in captivity” three species or types of deers antlers which were shed were taken and analyzed for their composition.

Dry matter, crude protein (31.99, 35.16 and 36.59%) and total ash (62.94, 62.54 and 60.27%) contents were similar among the three species, whereas the fat content was greater (P<0.05) for swamp deer (5.08%) compared to axis deer (2.31%) but compatible with hog deer (3.14%). Concentrations of calcium (23.44, 23.43 and 22.05%), magnesium (0.73, 0.80 and 0.74%), cobalt (9.01, 8.04 and 7.67 ppm) and zinc (33.50, 32.14 and 35.81 ppm) were not different among species…..Concentrations of the heavy metals, lead and cadmium, were similar among the three species. It was concluded that the concentrations of various minerals in the fallen hard antlers of the three species of deer were similar to those reported for bones of domestic animals.

This study sort of suggest that the antlers one might find shed in the woods have around the same composition as bones of farm animals that have been domesticated. But the key to ask is whether the matrix of the antler is as strong and resistive to tensile and compressive loads as the bones that is underneath it. My guess at this point is that the antler’s don’t have that high of a tensile strength.

Note: It is important right now to realize that there is a clear biological difference between the term horn and the term antler.

Let’s now look at the example of the elephant’s tusks, the rhinoceros’s horn, and the horns in other mammals like the  medium sized whale like sea creature, the narwhal’s tusks. From the wikipedia articles on these mammals, the narwhal’s tusk seems to be an elongated canine teeth in the whale. For the rhino, it’s horns is made form keratin, which is the same type of basic element found in human hair and nails.

As for the elelphant’s tusks, they are supposed to be….”modified incisors in the upper jaw”. So the tusks do grow in length as the elephant is in it’s growing years.

From the article in Wikipedia about elephants…

“They replace deciduous milk teeth when the animal reaches 6–12 months of age and grow continuously at about 17 cm (7 in) a year. A newly developed tusk has a smooth enamel cap that eventually wears off. The dentine is known as ivory and its cross-section consists of crisscrossing line patterns, known as “engine turning”, which create diamond-shaped areas. As a piece of living tissue, a tusk is relatively soft; it is as hard as the mineral calcite. Much of the incisor can be seen externally, while the rest is fastened to a socket in the skull. At least one-third of the tusk contains the pulp and some have nerves stretching to the tip. As such it would be difficult to remove it without harming the animal. When removed, ivory begins to dry up and crack if not kept cool and moist.”

The whole point at this section of the post is to find other animals, hopefully mammals which have parts of their bodies that still grow while they are adults, similar in shape, structure, and strength to human bones.

We see two cases where the bone like material which grows in length is actually teeth in the animal. I would assume that if we cut off the tusks, then the bone like horn will not regrow back. In one case, with the rhino, the material of the horn is actually very weak, and made of the same type of compound as our hairs and nails. Elephant tusks are strong, but definitely not as strong as human bones. The ivory that human artisans which can carve into is weak if the bones become weak from drying. The ivory is just the elephant’s analogue to the dentin found in human teeth.

This short side look seems to suggest that the way and basic principles in which horns in animals grow in length can not really be used viably towards height increase. The material of horns are much weaker than human bones, so this might explain why lengthening is even possible when one tries to put a pocket of progenitor pluripotent cells inside to push the wall of organic matrix around it.

We have to look at antlers, not horns since antlers seem to be made of the the same type of components as human bones.

It seems that for antlers, the growth in length originates from the top, or tip of the appendage. For horns, the growth is from inside the horn, between the horn material and bone underneath. From the website for the National Park Service,….

“…Antlers, on members of the deer family, are grown as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone and are a single structure They are generally found only on males. Antlers are shed and regrown each year.

Horns, found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, bison, and many other bovine, are two-part structures. An interior of bone (also an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles, as are your fingernails. In fact, your fingernails and the exterior sheath of horns are made of very similar materials. Horns are never shed and continue to grow throughout the animals life. The exception to this rule is the pronghorn which sheds and regrows its horn sheath each year.”

So it seems that antler’s are extensions of the skull of the animal, which is real bone. Antler’s can be shed (usually annually) while horns almost always continues to grow longer throughout life. As we remember from the previous post on the link between antler regeneration and the PTHrP-IHH main regulation pathway, for the longitudinal growth to happen in antlers, there must first be a wound, which must not be closed. The wound area must form a blastema, which will grow into the mesenchyme-bone arrangement seen in antler-based animals leading to longitudinal growth.

It might be that for us to be able to achieve longitudinal growth, we might have to inflict some type of bone disruption in the form of distraction ,incision, or cut which would give the bone wound area time to form a blastema, to push the separated bone areas apart from each other in the direction we desire.

If we are going to try to do that using the principles we learned from antler regeneration, we would also have to figure out how to get the progenitor cells which will development in the aftermath to stay on the path towards the chondrogenic lineage and not differentiate too quickly into the osteogenic lineage giving the cells enough time to enlarge/hypertrophize to push the area of incision apart.

{Tyler-Here’s a study I found recently on deer antler:

Comparison of the Effect of Velvet Antler from Different Sections on Longitudinal Bone Growth of Adolescent Rats.

“The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of velvet antler (VA) from different sections for promoting longitudinal bone growth in growing rats. VA was divided into upper (VAU), middle (VAM), and basal sections (VAB). An in vivo study was performed to examine the effect on longitudinal bone growth in adolescent rats. In addition, in vitro osteogenic activities were examined using osteoblastic MG-63 cells. VA promoted longitudinal bone growth and height of the growth plate in adolescent rats. Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) in growth plate of VA group was highly expressed compared with control{If the growth is mainly due to BMP2 that does not show much promise for adult height increase as BMP2 is expressed in adults}. The anabolic effect of VA on bone was further supported by in vitro study. VA enhanced the proliferation, differentiation, and mineralization of MG-63 cells. The mRNA expressions of osteogenic genes such as collagen, alkaline phosphatase, and osteocalcin were increased by VA treatment. These effects of in vivo and in vitro study were decreased from upper to basal sections of VA. In conclusion, VA treatment promotes longitudinal bone growth in growing rats through enhanced BMP-2 expression, osteogenic activities, and bone matrix gene expressions{The non BMP2 effects have the most potential to taking effect in adults like the bone matrix effects/The bone matrix may actually be catabolic to growth by constraining so if VA can degrade the bone matrix that can stimulate growth}. In addition, present study provides evidence for the regional differences in the effectiveness of velvet antler for longitudinal bone growth.”

“Typically, the antler is cut off near the base after it is about two-thirds of its potential full size, between 55 and 65 days of growth, before any significant calcification occurs. “

“Longitudinal bone growth in control rat was 617.4 ± 34.2 μm/day, and administration of VAU significantly increased the longitudinal bone growth to 718.6 ± 48.6 μm/day”<-This is actually huge. 16% growth increase approximately.  Assuming this works for all bones it would take a person from 69 to 80 inches or almost a foot taller.  Note though that growth rate does not always correlate with total growth.

VAU(or upper region of the deer antler) was most anabolic to longitudinal bone growth.VAU has the most epiphysiseal content.

Deer Antler also stimulated osteoblastic growth which the scientists speculated is likely contribute to the longitudinal bone growth.  However, this possibly could only increase growth rate but it could also increase total longitudinal bone growth by increasing the amount of growth per growth plate cell(more bone matrix, etc.)