I was going through the forum Make Me Taller when a certain thread did increase my curiosity “JTS Implant for height increase?“. The forum members were rather excited about this technology and the science is indeed there backing up what is claimed.
It seems that there is a way for at least young kids to lengthen their legs using a type of device that does not involve surgery. There is actually a YouTube video referenced entitled “What Is The Lengthening Procedure Like?”
On the website Implants For Children there is a section that talks about what exactly is the JTS implant at “What Is JTS?”
The Science Behind This Limb Lengthening Method Without Surgery
Due to some type of illness or disorder which will cause the bone tissue in a limb/leg to be useless and can not be saved by surgeons, there is a type of metal implant that is surgically implanted in the place where bone tissue used to be.
This implant is mechanical in nature. There is a small but powerful gearbox in the implant. The gearbox is strong enough to release an output force which is high enough to pull legs apart using a special gear mechanism.
To lengthen the leg, the gear is put in an external drive unit. The drive unit is turned on causing electrical current to run through the electrical coil in the drive unit. This causes a magnetic force to be created rotating at 3000 rpm.
From the webpage…
“This rotation is captured by the magnet within the implant and is passed through the gearbox to extend the device. The implant will grow at 1mm every 4 minutes, thereby slowly stretching the soft tissues”
The benefits of this type of leg lengthening is that is is very precise, it is noninvasive for the stretching, does not require sedation, low chance for infection, is almost pain free, and the patient can go home the exact same day.
Implication For Height Increase Seekers
While the forum members got slightly excited about this prospective new method, they quickly become disenchanted when they found out that this method would involve where there would have to be a metal implant permanently placed in their body as well as having a major portion of their leg bone removed for the metal implant to be go in.
The device is only allowed for kids who have suffered from some type of disorder which caused major parts of the bone tissue in their leg to be damaged beyond repair and the child also has to be young enough where they would most likely still have growth plates meaning that they are supposed to be still growing taller. The implant is almost always done for one leg only so that the implant can increase in length at the same rate as the other leg which is not infected so that when the child is finished growing taller and the growth plates in the limbs fuse, the implant is finally set in its final length and no longer increased any more.
The technology is really incredible, but I would suspect that most people who want to grow taller would have no desire to go through a very invasive surgery in the beginning and have an extendible metal implant permanently placed in their body. It probably makes more sense for people to go through with the limb lengthening surgery with the external fixator or internal rods to increase the length of their legs instead because at least after 2 years at most (usually 1-15 year), a 2nd major surgery is done where the internal rods or the external fixator is finally removed.
This method for potential height increase is viable, but there probably is not that many people who would be willing to go through with it. In Addition, of the few locations around the world which does this type of metal implant and external drive lengthening, none of them currently would allow any healthy person with good legs to go through with this type of surgery for a cosmetic reason for only increasing their height.
