Another compound I have heard people claim could possibly increase height was over the compound Chitosan. When I first googled “chitosan grow taller” the first link was to the site GrowTall.com.
The website states that chitosan is a type of “fiber” that is made from crustacean shells from a chemical process. Besides being found in shrimp, lobsters, it seems that chitosan can also be found from teh plastic part of the squid we remove which can not be eaten. The first thing that comes to my head is to remember that a lot of high increase pills have a compound made from seashells as well based on calcium, usually calcium carbonate. From high school biology we remember that human digestive systems can’t digest fibers unlike most plant eating animals like cows which have 4 stomachs. The chitosan would go into the intestine area, bond with ingested fats, and come out when we go #2 in the bathroom.
The website suggest that chitosan might be useful for weight loss, can be used in wound treatment (ie closure) and that it should not be used by children and/or pregnant women due to growth retardation. This claim would mean that chitosan would actually make growing children shorter than they would actually be, which is the opposite of what we are looking for. As fror doasge, 3-6 grams of the compound can be taken each day with food. It seems chitosan has the ability to remove the body of certain minerals which again shows that it is a compound that is more likely to retard and stunt growth that promote it. The fact that it is stated that it can be used for woud healing may indicate it does have some angiogenic properties.
As for medicinal or therapeutic uses, some studies suggest it can possibly lower cholesterol as well as treat kidney failure. For the kidney failure, the chitosan is said to combine with an toxic compounds and this causes the toxins to be excreted out when the chitosan as a fiber is excreted. From a very syperficial level, that is a reasonable scientific guess as why researchers may think it helps with kidney failure.
As for the claim that it is used to treat wounds and help in wound healing/closure, the idea is that along with the plasma, the chitosan may be able to bind to whatever usually like blood and plasma that comes along to close wounds and help built new tissue. That other idea is that chitosan may be able to kill some bacteria (like Strep) and yeast (like Candida)
Some studies claim it helps prevent or treat tumors, which would suggest that it is more catabolic in nature which is against what most height increase products would claim.
From the website GrowTall.com…
“Animal studies suggest that some forms of chitosan may help to prevent bone loss;… however, because chitosan also interferes with mineral absorption, the net effect in humans might actually be to increase bone loss…
Safety Issues
There is significant evidence that long-term, high-dose chitosan supplementation can result in malabsorption of some crucial vitamins and minerals including calcium, magnesium, selenium, and vitamins A, D, E, and K.33,34 In turn, this appears to lead to a risk of osteoporosis in adults and growth retardation in children. For this reason, adults taking chitosan should also take supplemental vitamins and minerals, making especially sure to get enough vitamin D, calcium, and magnesium.”
The overall conclusion on this resource is that chitosan is more like to remove important minerals for bone instead od prevent bone loss. If this is the case, for children who are still growth, that can indeed interfere with with the endochondral ossification process. Let’s not forget that while a lot of our research now is on cartilage and cartilage regeneration, for us to have the height we already do, it does involve the fact that calcium and otehr hard deposits have been layered and grown on top of each from the natural height growing process. Bone and mineral loss is a problem for people still growing.
However, the effects on people who are finished done growing who wish to do exercises to lengthen long bones may be the exact opposite. I do note that there has been some weak positive correlation with the idea that weaker bones with lower BMD (bone mass density) may mean that they are easier to change and be melleable (if only a little) to some bone modeling loading. If chitosan can remove the minerals in the bones that make them so hard, it might indeed assist in some techniques we have talked before like the shinbone method, in inducing microfractures, and the LSJL method.
As for the conclusion of this source on Chitosan, I say that there is a slight chance that Chitodan may help people who are already finished with the natural growth process grow taller if they take it long enough and but also did some type of bone remodeling exercises.
A post on the prospective affects by Chitosan was looked at already by HeightQuest.com in “Height increase with Chitosan?” .
Analysis:
His main point is to get the chitosan to actually go into the blood stream for some effect instead of getting it completely passed through the digestive tract without it ever getting used. The difficulty is to get the chitosan content into the bone marrow. From one study he quotes “Effect of dietary supplementation of chitosan and galacto-mannan-oligosaccharide on serum parameters and the insulin-like growth factor-I mRNA expression in early-weaned piglets.” Chitosan might help because it will “encouraging epiphyseal bone marrow stem cells to become a more rounded pro chondrogenic shape”
The last resource I would raise is another result found from Google on a forum thread from Soompi HERE. A member named Jaeho would write…
“Also, my mom ordered Royal Jelly and something called SmarTall. SmarTall is apparently the kids’ version of Royal Jelly. My brother and sister have been taking SmarTall for 2 days.
I also searched Chitosan online, but all the sites say it’s a weight loss pill and that it’s a scam… BUT in Korea, it’s marketed as a miracle product that cures all sorts of health problems. I can’t find anything on SmarTall though.”
Anyway, I asked my mom why she bought SmarTall and she said it was like Royal Jelly for children… but it’s for height too? Well, the name gives it away… lol. From a first guess”
Analysis:
It would seem that chitosan is being marketed in east asian countries like Korea for being a sort of miracle pill that has multiple therapeutic benefits. It’s claims to help people loss weight makes it very attractive to the Korean people who are well known by being very appearance conscious. There is no claim that chitosan has any effect on height but there is another product that is Royal Jelly derived called SmarTall being sold (at least back in 2006) in Korea which is given to kids to help them grow taller. The conclusion here is that Chitosan has no height increasing properties.
If we type in the term “chitosan height increase’ into google instead what we find are studies which do suggest that chitosan does have some height and size increasing ability but those are just for vegetables, specifically grains.
A link to a webpage on Vanderbilt University HERE shows that people have already looked into chitosan quite extensively and summarized its properties and possible effects. They conclude with….
“Although companies selling chitosan claim that the product is very effective and claim to have medical research about how well their product works, the medical studies show that when taken alone, chitosan has not been proven to help a person lose weight, increase their HDL cholesterol, or decrease their LDL cholesterol. Instead, chitosan can cause unwanted gastrointestinal cramps and constipation”
Conclusion:
Chitosan may be harmful to growing children in terms of growth retardation from its ability to absorb important minerals the body and bones need when the person is still growing. After the person is finished growing, there might be a small chance that a person can use chitosan’s mineral absorbing properties to make bones less hard and easier to model so it might be possible to use it with some bone loading technique to lengthen bone.
