Just a quick post on a new website or forum which focuses on the subject of trying to grow taller.

Since this website does get around a thousand visitors a day it has been noticed by a many interesting people around the world, including the Department of Defense, the Chinese Military, Homeland Security. While I was going through the backlogs on see where the visitors to my website were coming from today I found a rather interesting link

http://rost.borda.ru/?1-0-0-00001112-000-0-0-1360254153

The post seems to mention the compound hexarelin, which is claimed to be a potent activator of PI3K. I think it was Xcrunner who made this point years ago (who claimed that he was a medical or pharmaceutical student) and people have been just repeating his claim, which I still have not found to be true from anything I have read.

The people on the forum believe that if you combine the Hexarelin with SAM (SAMe), MSM, Chon (Chondroitin), you might be able to increase DNA Methylation and possibly reopen the growth plates again. That is a big claim.

To this day I still don’t know what MSM is supposed stand for, but people have been claiming for years now that MSM is something you want to use in combination with the SAM to possibly get the body to grow after epiphyseal plate ossfication.

This discussion forum recently discovered seems to be very serious about the endeavor. When I went to the main webpage, I turned switched the plugin on my Chrome Browser to always translate Russian Cyrillic. It does appear that the forum is focused on a band of amateur height increase researchers trying to figure it out. Like always, some people are searching the supplements and other people are saying that it won’t work. I guess things don’t chance, no matter which country and culture you come from.

I have always realized that the internet is a VERY LARGE place, where there will be websites and discussion forums where people from other countries speaking completely different languages are talking about the same thing we are talking about.

I have already found one Turkish Forum, one Swedish or Norwegian website, and one old spanish blog, all talking about their search and findings. This new forum in Russian just shows that there are more websites out there looking at the same thing that we are looking at. They are searching for the ultimate solution too.

I would love to get in contact with these people and talk to them to see what they have found to maybe add more pieces to the puzzle but right now, there is just not enough time for me to put in that much work. Perhaps for any of you who are read cyrillic it might be useful and interesting.

Something that I read from a recent post was that the weight loss industry apparently is currently around $66 Billion dollars for the 2012-2013 year. Based on a post from FoodEducate.com there is supposed to be around 75 million people who spend on average $800 a year trying to lose weight.

That is a lot of money spent trying to accomplish something which most people can accomplish with even the slightest bit of commitment, dedication, and discipline. So I wanted to ask a similar question about this ‘industry’, if we can even call it that.

How big would the grow taller industry be worth if there was a non-invasive method, specifically targeted for adults with fused growth plates?

Many people on the grow taller forums claim that is would be in the trillions, and that if someone could license the invention and hold onto that type of intellectual property or secret, they would become very rich. I sort of agree, but just how much could the inventor of this non-invasive method be making?

There are currently about 7 billion people in the world. Exactly half of those people in the world are below average in height. This is true for men, and women, Europeans, Asians, Africans, etc. That is how a height distribution bell curve works out.

Of those people who are below average, how many of them would like or secretly wish to become taller? I would say that maybe 70% of those people would pay for a solution, if it meant that it didn’t involve too many steps, too much pain, and too much time taken from away their normal lives.

What these people who are only semi-interested in a solution, they want something easy, like a ‘grow taller miracle pill‘ which does not exist, at least for people who have complete bone maturity. They would probably only make the effort to drive to a drug store like CVS and go up the aisle and pick it up. They would prefer that this miracle pill would not require a prescription but over the counter.

A small percentage of people would be willing to spend some time each day doing the type of stretching exercises needed to gain a slight bit of height increase. Most people are just lazy, and that is okay. Humans are lazy creatures because it is hard to expend energy. If we could, we would want to get what we want, immediately, with no effort, time, or energy spent.

Trying to grow taller is about 10,000X harder than losing weight, if not impossible for certain people after a certain age. The main reason is because they lack the resources or desire to go through with it.

The best orthopedic surgeon who does limb lengthening surgery in the USA is probably Dr. Dror Paley, who has done hundred of these types of surgeries. The next best surgeon is probably Dr. Betz based in Germany. You can read about the journals of people who went through the surgeries from the forum Make Me Taller.

The average cost for grow taller surgery which is called distraction osteogenesis will cost around $50,000-$100,000 for the best surgeons who specialize in this type of surgery. There are probably less than 100 people in the world who are certified and have the skills to do this type of job. There are indeed cheaper doctors who do the height increase surgery, like Dr. Xia based in China for only around $25,000 total but that is still quite a lot of money for most people, and we are just talking about people who wish to become taller in the developed nations, which have a higher living standard.

$50,000 is what the average US household makes. I would guess that people like Paley and Dror would charge about the same price for one surgery procedure of the same price, $50,000. If one the surgeon just performed one of these surgeons everyday for a year , which takes around 2-4 hours each, they would have an income stream of slightly over $18,000,000 dollars. Take into account the medical secretaries, the clinic costs, the anesthesiologists, nurses, and maybe 1-2 other surgeons, and you would still be coming out with around $5,000,000 every year. Of course these dollars will not, and can not perform on a new patient every single day. They would eventually become burnt out. I personally would guess that these surgeons are making closer to around $1,000,000 a year, after taking into account HMOs, other types of medical insurance, paying off their medical staff and other doctors, facility costs, etc.

If there are around 100 people in the world who are doing this, this means that there is already around $100,000,000 of cash flow occurring every year on just this most extreme method of grow taller method. If there was a much easier way to do it, how many more people are going to start trying it out.

I have received emails from people who have told me that they have contemplated suicide because they are so unhappy with their height. They just can’t imagine living the rest of their life at the height which they are supposed to be stuck in. Seeing multiple therapists don’t seem to help, since this aspect of who we are, what our identity is, is set in stone, something that can’t be changed.

If you, or we manage to find a solution, we would be like the answer to million’s of people’s secret wish. There are thousands of people in the world right now who would pay upwards of even $100,000 to go through with the limb lengthening surgery. Millions more want to become taller just as much but they are not willing to accept the surgery approach.

I would guess that probably 50% of any population desires at some level to be taller than they are currently. The fact that everyone in my own personal family have stated it may mean that my family is either extremely unusual bunch of people with some type of height fetish, or they represent somewhat of the average viewpoint on this subject. Most people after they stop growing and become adults, they stop worrying about this issue. They move on to worry about something else, which is usually money.

If we assume that maybe the highest amount of money anyone would ever decide to pay a single miracle pill to allow them to end up taller is around $200, that means that from one supplier alone, they would be about $700 Billion Dollars worth of financial transactions. Of course this is just for a year’s worth of revenue alone. If this was a single company, and the company’s net worth was considered, it would be around $7-12 Trillion. There has never been a publicly traded company worth even $1 Trillion.

In addition, it won’t be the people who are below average who will wish to use the technology. The moment people who used to be taller realize that their shorter peers have now the way to become bigger than them, they will jump on the bandwagon as well. It will turn into a sort of arms race to see who will end up taller due to social competition to flaunt one’s physical qualities. I remember the quote by Al Pacino in the movie “The Devil’s Advocate”. “Vanity, definitely my favorite sin”

What is my point?

If you as a researcher can figure out this problem, and find a real solution, even a slight improvement on the way we make people taller these days, one will definitely become a multi-millionaire, or even a billionaire if they license their technology correctly to the right groups of people.

If one can make a quantum leap on what is currently being done by orthopedic surgeons to lengthen bone, they will become one of the world’s first trillioniare, based on rough calculations.  (That 1st trillionaire title seems to have gone to Mr. Kamal Ashnawi) Maybe I should have named this post “Who is the world’s first trillionaire?”

 

This is the reason I suspected Sky from EasyHeight.com wanted to try to figure it out. Why should a below average in height vietnamese guy settle for a low 6 figure job as a pharmacist when they can potentially become a billionaire by finding something similar to the “elixer of life”. Plus, he would figure out how to make himself bigger, and help make a huge contribution to the world which no one would ever forget even generations later. This is similar to Steve Job’s comment on desiring to make a dent in the Universe. If you succeed, you are going to make just as big of an influence on millions and billions of people’s lives in the future as long as the human race exists.

 

I don’t do this research for the money, because there is no money for amateur researchers like me and Tyler. There are some Google Adsense Ads  and Amazon Affiliate Links lying around so that I would earn just enough to pay for all of the website service costs. You might be surprised to learn that although this website gets thousands of unique visitors a day we earn almost nothing. When I say that it is pennies a day, I do mean pennies a day.

People just don’t believe this idea is possible, until they see it with their own eyes or hear enough other people claim that it is true. It is absolutely critical that when it comes to anything related to this endeavor, people have to be sceptical of the claims being made.

However the problem and how to solve it has become clear to me now. I know what exactly I should be looking for. I finally have figured out what I should be looking for in terms of the research. When the breakthrough research does appear, I will be able to connect the dots. I will propose the exact answer, but I am not sure if I can find the right type of investors who would invest in the lab supplies and experiments to prove this idea of mine works. To have an idea on just how hard it is to get a pharmaceutical drug out to market, and how much it would cost, take a look at this article by Eli Lilly

Side Note: I am reminded of a Senior Design Chemical Engineering Course I took back in my undergraduate days. The lecturer stated that based on just how much sulfuric acid (H2SO4) is used in almost all chemical processes to make the raw materials to power any society’s unsatiable hunger for consumer products, if any chemical engineering student could figure out a slight modification on the process to make sulfuric acid itself in large quantities with relative ease, by as much as just 0.1%, and licensed that patent they have intelligently, they would become a multi-millionaire with royalties coming in by the millions every month.

This is knee cartilage and not growth plate cartilage but some characteristics may apply.

Michael mentioned Nerve Growth Factor before in a supplement review.

Rac1 mediates load-driven attenuation of mRNA expression of nerve growth factor beta in cartilage and chondrocytes.

“To determine effect of gentle loads applied to the knee on mRNA expression of nerve growth factor, particularly, the active beta subunit (NGFβ) in cartilage and chondrocyte.  Cyclic compressive loads in vivo and fluid flow in vitro were used to determine the mRNA levels. Alteration of Rac1 GTPase as well as effect of salubrinal, a specific inhibitor of eIF2α phosphatase was assessed. Knee loading at 1 N reduced mRNA levels of NGFβ and its low affinity receptor, p75 in cartilage and subchondral bone{This is in contrast to the Zenith Height product which states that NGFB would increase height}. In cartilage, knee loading at 1 N reduced the phosphorylation level of p38 MAPK (p38-p) and activity of Rac1 GTPase. Consistent with in vivo results, fluid flow at 5 and 10 dyn/cm(2) reduced mRNA levels of NGFβ and p75 in C28/I2 human chondrocytes. SB203580, which decreases p38-p, reduced the mRNA levels of NGFβ and p75. Silencing Rac1 by siRNA decreased the levels of p38-p and NGFβ mRNA but not p75. Furthermore, administration of salubrinal reduced FRET-based activity of Rac1 as well as the mRNA levels of NGFβ and p75.”

The authors interest in NGFB is NGFB’s role in causing pain in cartilage.

“the activation of the p75 receptor has been shown to promote neuronal cell death”

“A basal expression level of NGFβ is high in embryos undergoing skeletal morphogenesis and low in mature cartilage.”<-Maybe NGFB is responsible for growing pains?  This would also suggest that NGFB may be positive for height growth.  It’s also possible that NGFB is just a correlation for height growth and not a causal factor.

12 week old mice were used.  Durating of 1 or 3 hours of LSJL was used used and 1 or 3N was used.  In other LSJL studies, typically 0.5N were used for the force but in one study 1N was used.

“lateral loads to the knee were applied for 5 min at 5 Hz with a peak-to-peak force of 1 and 3 N.”

Levels of NGFB were higher for 3 hours than 1 hour but both were lower than control(see figure 1 in linked study).

Loading at 3N increased p38 phosphorylation whereas loading at 1N decreased p38 phosphorylation levels.  Suppressing p38-p levels may increase chondrocyte proliferation whereas increasing p38-p levels may favor differentiation.  p38 has been implicated in chondroinduction and increasing Sox9 levels.

Fluid Flow of 5 dyn per cm^2 decreased p38-phosphorylation wereas other levels 2, 10, and 20 increased it.

“Knee loading induces not only pressure alterations but also pressure driven fluid flow to chondrocytes. Unlike well-studied effects of normal stress on chondrocytes, it has been recently suggested that a consequence of compressive loading is production of hydrostatic pressure as well as fluid flow to cartilage. In osteoarthritis, chondrocytes are exposed to flow shear due primarily to synovial fluid and high amplitude of fluid flow reproduces the hallmarks of osteoarthritis in vitro”

This was admittedly a dissapointing LSJL study but based on how NGF-Beta affects height we can see that there may be a need to use heavier LSJL loads.  Since p38-phosphorylation favors differentiation and heavier loads increased p38-phosphorylation more than medium loads.  Heavy loads may be needed to induce chondro-growth plate induction by LSJL.

Here’s an hypoxia study that may provide insight on p38 and chondroinduction:

Hypoxia promotes chondrogenesis in rat mesenchymal stem cells: a role for AKT and hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1alpha.

“Cartilage is an avascular tissue and thus resides in a microenvironment with reduced oxygen tension. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of a low oxygen environment on MSC differentiation along the chondrogenic route. In MSCs exposed to chondrogenic growth factors, transforming growth factor-beta and dexamethasone, in a hypoxic environment (2% oxygen), the induction of collagen II expression and proteoglygan deposition was significantly greater than that observed when cells were exposed to the chondrogenic growth factors under normoxic (20% oxygen) conditions. The transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha), is a crucial mediator of the cellular response to hypoxia. Following exposure of MSCs to hypoxia (2% oxygen), HIF-1alpha translocated from the cytosol to the nucleus and bound to its target DNA consensus sequence. Similarly, hypoxia evoked an increase in phosphorylation of both AKT and p38 mitogen activated protein kinase, upstream of HIF-1alpha activation. Furthermore, the PI3 kinase/AKT inhibitor, LY294002, and p38 inhibitor, SB 203580, prevented the hypoxia-mediated stabilisation of HIF-1alpha. To assess the role of HIF-1alpha in the hypoxia-induced increase in chondrogenesis, we employed an siRNA knockdown approach. In cells exposed to HIF-1alpha siRNA, the hypoxia-induced enhancement of chondrogenesis, as evidenced by upregulation of collagen II, sox-9 and proteoglycan deposition, was absent. This provides evidence for HIF-1alpha being a key mediator of the beneficial effect of a low oxygen environment on chondrogenesis.”

The paper mentions ultrasound as being able to stabilize HIF-1.

“rat MSCs undergo chondrogenesis, as evidence by enhanced collagen II expression and proteoglycan deposition, when exposed to TGFβ and dexamethasone in a normoxic environment. When the MSCs were exposed the chondrogenic factors for 2 weeks in normoxia, followed by 1 week in hypoxia (2% oxygen), chondrogenesis was significantly enhanced, demonstrating that a reduced oxygen tension favours differentiation along the chondrogenic route. The hypoxic environment increased HIF-1α nuclear accumulation and its transactivation in an Akt- and p38-dependent manner. ”

“In ATDC5 chondroprogenitor, hypoxia alone favours chondrogenesis, whilst insulin-mediated chondrogenesis is inhibited by hypoxia ”

Thus it is more likely that heavier loads would be beneficial in an LSJL regime due to the effects of p38 phosphorylation.  However, in the LSJL gene expression study and several LSJL lengthening studies 0.5N was used.  Perhaps, the LSJL based lengthening does not involve p38 but rather the ERK pathway.  Sox9 was in fact upregulated in that study while a decrease in p38 phosphorylation tends to decrease Sox9 expression.

Last night while I was laying in bed the subject of the phenomena where certain females noticed that they have grown taller during pregnancy reappeared in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue and tried to make a somewhat educated guess on what exactly is happening.

Why is it that there have been so many (maybe a dozen on online forums and discussion boards so far which I have found) females who report that they have noticed that they have become taller from pregnancy?

I thought that it was from the dramtic, accelerated increase in progesterone in the post Analysis On The Possible Cause For Height Increase During Pregnancy, but that can’t be since progesterone is supposed to be able to increase bone mineral density, which means that the bones should be getting harder, and less resistant to bone remodeling.

The other idea I wrote about was that the hormone Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) which is involved in Klinefelter Syndrome, was the growth hormone that was being overstimulated. FSH comes from the same place in the anterior pituitary gland as somatotropins. They are stimulated by gonadotrophs. FSH is over stimulated during certain phases of pregnancy.

However, the main problem was alway over how could the pregnant female’s body ever increase in height, especially with a fetus in their uterus? Which bones exactly would be a stretched out for it?

Then I remembered the fact that multiple pediatricians have warned pregnant women that they might develop osteoporosis because of the transfer of calcium from the mother’s body to the fetus’. This is what I am guessing is the critical process I was missing.

The Process

1. The development of the fetus from just a embryo to a organic being which required calcium minerals to start being formed in its developing body means that the calcium level in the mother’s entire body is dropped.

How much is the drop in calcium level? 

From the study Calcium and Bone Metabolism in Pregnancy and Lactation*

“…calcium and bone metabolism is substantially altered during the normal reproductive periods of pregnancy and lactation, and bone density can drop and regain 3–10% in the span of a few months in normal, healthy women.”

So the drop can be as much as 10% of the calcium phosphatase crystals.

2. Because of the position of where the uterus is located, the calcium will be drawn more from the upper part of the body, the torso, than the legs, since the bones in the leg are consistently being remodeled and made thicker and stronger from the effect of body weight loading.

3. If the calcium from the torso is being removed from the mother, then her bones would become weaker. Assuming the normal care of a pregnant women, she would start to spend less time on her feet, and more time lying on her back or in a fetal position in bed.

4. The vertebrate curvature is reduced as she is lying in bed more. Her intervertebral discs are decompressed completely.

Her vertebrate bones after a 10% decrease in calcium mineral loss has become weak enough to realign themselves to be much more straight. It is in contrast to the normal curvature we find in most vertebrate of people.

The thoracic and lumbar region of most people’s vertebrate has a natural curvature, which gets straightened out by the way the pregnant women lies on the bed.

I refer both the lying on the back position and the fetal position.

Notice the picture of the ballerina on the right. Notice how the fetal position some of us get into for sleep is actually a sort of body contorsion which allows for the dorsal side of the vertebrate to be stretched and decompressed.

With the addition of a baby that is uniquely positioned in the lower stomach area, the lumbar vertebrate are the bones that are specifically realigned and positioned as the hardness of the bones are decreased.

What I am proposing is that from the combination of 7 main factors, the pregnant women being more bed ridden would experience height growth.

1. The decrease in calcium levels in her own body from the transfer to her baby by upwards of 10%. This makes the bones more malleable.

2. The fact that the pregnant female is more likely bed ridden causing her to lie on her back more. This slightly helps in the vertebrate realignment idea.

3. The only other bed position is the fetal position which means that her vertebrate is naturally becoming decompressed and stretched out. obviously a pregnant women can’t lie on a bed face down, or that would crush her womb.

4. The position of where the womb is means that more structurally strain is placed in the lower back area, so if the women is in the fetal position in bed, the weight of the womb and baby contributes in the vertebrate realignment.

5. The fact that the irregular bones in the feet of the females get slightly bigger in width contributes. This is from the phenomena of where a large percentage of females have shown that their feet have grown longer and wider from pregnancy, most probably from periosteal appositional growth. I proposed that besides just length and width of the irregular bones in the bones that have increased, the height of the irregular bones in the female have also increased. This will contribute slightly to the height increase.

6. Tyler’s proposal of the onset of relaxin means that the ligaments holding bones in tight structural alignement is slightly loosened for bone realignment.

7. The release of the Follicle Stimulating Hormone by the gonatotrophs in the anterior pituitary gland means that it might act like a growth hormone for the women who is in a position with weak enough bones, where they can be ‘stretched out’

All of these 7 factors causes what I propose is the lumbar and thoracic vertebrate bones to become weaker from a significant drop in calcium levels losing the high compressive strength, have looser ligaments holding them together, and being in positions in bed for a long time which would allow for the natural curvature of the vertebrate to be decreased from a realignment of the individual irregular vertebrate bones.

However, there are also multiple cases of women who have experienced height loss from pregnancy due to their bones becoming too weak and developing fractures. The truth is that height loss from pregnancy makes much more anatomical sense than height increase.

When you are standing up when pregnant, the extra weight of the baby and womb would cause the lower back to become more curved, not less. The bones being weaker in the compressive strength (NOT tensile strength) should mean that when standing, the pregnant women would have their upper body weight loading the vertebrate and bones causing the body to become shorter.

Like always, this is just a theory I am proposing. Something to maybe reference in future posts to either disprove or validate new research, and idea we might have.

Update #6 – Stretching Slightly For Personal Reasons – September 3, 2013

This last month in August has been an emotional and personal challenge as I had to move away from the website for a considerable amount of time to focus on other issues which has appeared in my life. Like most people realize, there are multiple sections in our life which we have to take care of, which can be categorically broken apart into personally, professional, health, relationships, etc.

Things that happened in August

• I decided for now to dissolve one of my companies that has been based in Washington State for productivity reasons. I had started the LLC a few years ago when I was involved and interested in something else. I saw what I thought was an amazing opportunity and I spent half a year chasing that. These days I have shifted my focus.

• I am putting more emphasize on quality posts and epic content. I have been reading multiple sources of information these days and I sort of realize that there is no way that we can get anywhere in the research if we don’t look really deep into the material.

• Tyler from HeightQuest.com has finally started to come around and write unique posts to further the cause. This is a business and research collaboration which I suggested very early on in the Summer months which he agreed to. It has taken a long time but things are working out rather well now.

• Trying to give the website a new look. There was a short redesign of the website for the 2013 year. The current theme of WordPress I am using is just the old 2012 Theme, which I personally think is adequate to do everything that is needed. I switched for a few days to the newer 2013 theme model, but after looking at how large the title font sizes were I decided to switch back to the cleaner, more simple 2012 Design.

• Getting a 2nd DMCA notice from a person who has been selling an extremely popular grow taller E-product online and being forced to take down a few PDF files

• I will also be away from the website for the month of September to focus on my other businesses and projects. However there will still be a few interesting posts I wanted to share.

Things I have realized this month

• I have realized that the ability to grow growth plate like tissue has been around for more than a decade. People have already been successful with explanting progenitor stem cells from an adult humans body and growing them into growth plates.

• Dr. Robert Ballock has been successful in the development of test tube growth plates. If there is anyone in the world currently who can do what we do better, it would be him. His credentials are quite amazing. A BS in BIology for his undergraduate from Harvard. Then getting his MD from Harvard Medical School. This is followed by an internship and residency at UCSD, one of the best medical centers in the country (or was it UCSF?). He would do 3 more fellowships as well. I have done some research on what type of medical student a person has to be in to be able to get into the orthopaedic surgery speciality and the USMLE Step 1 scores for them are among the highest of all medical specialties, with an average based in 2005 to be around 230. The main point is that Ballock is one of the people who would have the best chance of really succeeding in finding an alternative to limb lengthening surgery if we are not successful.

• What we are trying to do, there are probably a thousand other orthopaedic surgeons and researcher in the world doing the same thing. The problem is that probably very few of them are trying to create newly formed growth plates in the bone in vivo in a non-invasive way if possible. However many of them are doing research on hyaline cartilage regeneration for medical and clinical applications. Researchers at the top levels for at least the universities focus on such a small area of science that for most professors which have the actual status and credibility to get major funding to do serious research, their focus is so small that they might not be able to see how their small area of research can be applied to help humanity in general. They don’t know how to translate all the theoretically knowledge and be able to execute on projects which can apply those new information. It is well accepted that for any person in the biological sciences to be able to get a Master’s or Ph. D degree they need to push the field of their study silghtly further out. This means that every person who obtains a Ph.D in the hard sciences understands or knows something that no one else in the world at the time realizes.

Height Changes

• Nothing has changed. Of course I have not measured myself at all this month. I’ve been focused so much on other areas of my life this endeavor was not pursued at all.

• As for my weight, it has been decreasing. What I have noticed is that if you change your eating habits to more fats and meat, and less on bread, wheat, and rice you actually loss weight. I am sort of biased towards the Paleo Diet idea, based on what I read on The Bulletproof Executive podcast.

• There was a documentary done by the UK which explained why was it that for decades the idea that ‘fat’ was bad when it was actually ‘sugar’ that was making people big. Watch the documentary The Men Who Made Us Fat below

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To read about what happened last month go to the post Update #5 – Having Legal Problems While Trying To Get Help – August 1st, 2013

Kaempferol levels were elevated in one study after administration of fructus sophorae extract.  Kaempferol is found in foods like strawberries, grapes, apples, etc.

It is important to note that in the following study ATDC5 cells were involved.  They are not like mesenchymal stem cells in that they are already chondrocyte progenitor cells and are primed for chondrogenesis.

Kaempferol Induces Chondrogenesis in ATDC5 Cells through Activation of ERK/BMP-2 Signaling Pathway.

“Endochondral bone formation occurs when mesenchymal cells condense to differentiate into chondrocytes, the primary cell types of cartilage. We investigated whether kaempferol induces chondrogenic differentiation in clonal mouse chondrogenic ATDC5 cells. Kaempferol treatment stimulated the accumulation of cartilage nodules in a dose-dependent manner. Kaempferol-treated ATDC5 cells stained more intensely with alcian blue staining than control cells, suggesting greater synthesis of matrix proteoglycans in the kaempferol-treated cells. Kaempferol induced greater activation of alkaline phosphatase activity than control cells, and it enhanced the expression of chondrogenic marker genes, such as collagen type I, collagen type X, OCN, Runx2, and Sox9{these are a lot of osteogenic genes too}. Kaempferol induced an acute activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) but not c-jun N-terminal kinase or p38 MAP kinase. PD98059, an inhibitor of MAPK/ERK, decreased in stained cells treated with kaempferol. Furthermore, kaempferol greatly expressed the protein and mRNA levels of BMP-2, suggesting chondrogenesis was stimulated via a BMP-2 pathway. Kaempferol has chondromodulating effects via an ERK/BMP-2 signaling pathway and could potentially be used as a therapeutic agent for bone growth disorders.”

Perhaps Kaempferol could be useful for people with existing growth plates as they already have chondroprogenitor cells.

“Cells were treated with kaempferol or insulin for 21 days. ATDC5 cells treated with insulin showed chondrogenic differentiation 7 days after treatment through the condensation of stage cartilage nodules. ATDC5 cells treated with 5 μM of kaempferol showed differentiation similar to the insulin-treated cells, including the development of cartilage nodules “<-So ATDC5 cells are already primed for chondrogenesis with chondroinduction occurring merely with insulin.  Kaempferol however was more chondroinductive than mere insulin.

“phosphorylation of JNK and P38 Kinase did not occur with insulin treatmen. Treatment with 5 μM of kaempferol showed acute activation of ERK kinase after 1.5 h and the phosphorylation of P-38 Kinase was also observed from 1.5 h to 6 h. Similarly, 5 μg/ml of insulin treatment showed activation of ERK kinase and in a similar pattern to kaempferol, suggesting kaempferol has the ability to induce chondrogenic effect via the activation of ERK and P-38 MAPK. Moreover activation of ERK Kinase by Kaempferol and Insulin suggest that Kaempferol can mimic the effects of insulin with regards to activating phosphorylation of the ERK MAP kinase.”<-The phosphorylation of p38 kinase may be responsible for the enhanced chondroinductive effects and any compound that results in the phosphorylation of p38 could have similar chondrostimulatory effects.

“kaempferol affects the synthesis of matrix proteoglycans and the activity of ALP.”

“kaempferol could potentially be used to treat a variety of skeletal diseases, such as dwarfism”<-The authors have more faith in kaempferol than would be inferred from the results of the study.

Perhaps the authors are alluding to the reduction of insulin and replacement of more sources of kaempferol to grow taller during development.  More apples and less bread for taller infants.

There’s no indication that kaempferol could be chondroinductive on adult Mesenchymal Stem Cells however but it could be synergestic with other adult height increase stimulants.

Here’s a patent related to kaempferol:

Nutritional compositions for promotion of bone growth and maintenance of bone health and methods regarding same

“A composition comprising an active ingredient having a therapeutically effective amount of a rosemary plant or rosemary plant extract containing at least one phytochemical having the ability to induce bone morphogenic protein expression.  The phytochemical is selected from the group consisting of eupafolin, carnosol, scutellarein, genkwanin, kaempferol, acacetin and combinations thereof.”

Kaempferol is mostly identified as a BMP-2 stimulant which does have potential height increase effects.