Sometimes I get messages from people who ask question which I know have not taken any time to ever read the beginning of the website on what they can do. The message is very short and asks me to tell them how to grow taller.

They give outrageous desires on the height gain they want like from 5′ 3″ to 6′ 0″ when they are 23. When this happens I either get annoyed at the fact that they have not been willing to read the directions which I put very clearly in the middle of the main home page or I sympathize with them because I understand the difficult situation they are in.

However, I also would guess that these same people are probably not the people who are aware of the same things I do. I sometimes have to realize that I need to get out of the research and all theory mode of science that is absolutely required for this type of project and get into the point of view of people who have only started to look into ways to increase their height.

Here is what I feel are two critical elements the height increase researcher or seeker should have to help give them a better life and make better choices..

• Common Sense

• The Right Perspective

Common Sense

Obviously the thing about common sense is that it is a very vague term to refer to somewhat self evident understandings on how the relativistic world we live in operates and the rules that are expected of us to function, survive, and thrive in them. For some people, what some people think is common sense would not be so self evident for another person.

I define “Common Sense” as understanding, realizing, and acting accordingly to the fact that the existence or reality they live and operate in has certain rules which apply for most of the situations they will find themselves in.

It is absolutely critical that a person does not fall for their own egotistical tendencies which is termed Confidence Tricks, which are cognitive and mental biases and errors in thinking which makes people not be able to model and describe the world correctly, resulting in them making more errors in judgement and choices than other people leading to unnescesary pain and suffering.

What this means for our endeavor of height increase is that one should probably not be emailing me or other height increase researchers asking us how to grow 8-9 inches taller hoping to find some magic pill which would be cheap and relatively easy to obtain and available.

What they think is possible and is reality is much more different than how the world really will work and how the results will most likely come out. If we were to be more accurate, we can say that the term “Stupidity” is actually the lack of common sense. In scientific humor circles, there is a well known called the Darwin Award, which goes to people who lack the common sense from stop doing dangerous acts which will most likely kill them. This means that they are doing the process of Natural Selection a favor and taking themselves out of the evolutionary gene pool.

So, really all a person has to do to avoid being called “stupid” by most other people in life is to develop some common sense.

The Right Perspective

The importance of having the right perspective is that in our pursuit of the goal of height increase, we should not forget that there are far more important things in life to worry about, think on, and consider.

The best example I can think of right now is to propose the scenario that would a person be willing to try out a type of real height increase technique which would possilby work but also has an extremely high chance of it causing the development of Cancer. In a recent previous post I talked about the possibility that the Parathyroid Hormone related peptide, the PThrP, of being the key compound we need to cause regenerated growth plates in people who have completely closed growth plates. However, at the end I showed that the reason it could even work in a injection series along with IHH, an initital chondrocyte pellet, and other growth factors, was because of its shown appearance in cancerous cells and tumors. If a person who is clearly intent on increasing their height is told that the treatment comes with a steep price, they would need to have The Right Perspective. It is not longer just will the method work to increase their height or not, which is very important but also, will the treatment cause them to develop cancer, which can potentially kill them.

In this case, the right perspective will help them realize that in life, there may be more things than just getting taller. Is it really worth it to gain a possible 2 extra inches and height and risk having a 30% chance of the area of injection developing a malignant tumor/ cancer?

Most people would say that it is not a good idea to risk ones life for such an endeavor.

They are using the right perspective.

Some things in life are worth it, from an investment/ cost and gain perspective, and other things are clearly situations where the choice of continuing to go down a certain path will obviously only lead to a loss of some form. Choosing to save 50 cents from clipping coupons for an hour and then deciding to buy a $600 tablet on the same day shows that one is not using the right perspective. Getting 3 big MacDonald’s sandwiches and then ordering a Diet Coke because of one’s diet shows that one is again not using the right perspective.

Focus on the big things in life, and also be able to recognize what are the big things in life that you should be putting most of your energy on so you can avoid wasting effort and precious resources on the small stuff which will get very little rate of return.

Keep things in perspective.

As a followup to our previous post “Local Growth Factor Injections In Aged Periosteum Result In Increased Cambium Proliferation And Cartilage Formation (Breakthrough)” which I found a study which proves that the 2nd major step or element that has to be done was shown to be successful.

This method I am very confident will result in some height increase, even if it is from the thickening of the articular cartilage or the thickening of the periosteum layer on top of the epiphysis at the end of the long bones will lead to height increase.

Overall, this is probably the easiest method I have devised so far to lead to possible height increase so far. We already know that we can get TGF-Beta 1, 2, BMP-2, 7, and other growth factors from some companies which sell to biology and genetics researchers like Sino Biological Inc. and Invitrogen and Boston BioChem. From a quick look at the websites and the companies, we are finding that these growth factors like TGF-beta 1 and BMP-2 are very expensive at around $300 for just 25 or 50 micrograms. If we don’t wish to throw away money we would have to be very acurate in where to inject the growth factor. If we remember that even growth hormone injections for growth hormone deficient children is also very expensive due to the nature of real somatotropin being hard to make as a human recombinant derived synthetic version.

All that is needed to be done is to inject the growth factor TGF-beta 1 and IGF-1 into the cambium cell layer of the perisoteum on top of the epiphysis to get them to start differentiating into cartilage, increase the Type II collagen content, increase sulfate incorporation, 

This method I am very positive will lead to increased periosteum thickness and cause some height increase. However, we have to note that the cambium layer in humans do get thinner and thinner as we get older but never completely disappear until our later years.

The hard part is to figure out how to find the exact location of the periosteum layer on the epiphysis since it is covered by the articular cartilage Any type of injection would obviously have to puncture the articular cartilage covering and lead to medical complication.

If we couple this with LSJL it would lead to a possible synergistic effect.

This study shows that the 2nd step in what we had proposed in previous posts about how to induce cartilage regrowth has already been tested, experimented, and being shown to be successful. From PubMed study “Rejuvenation of periosteal chondrogenesis using local growth factor injection.“

Analysis And Interpretation: There are two studies we will be looking at here. First we must remember that for the overall thickness of a outer cortical bone layer of a long bone to stay constant after physical maturity, the rate at which the inner layer of the bone to dissolve and get absorbed into the marrow must equal the rate at which the layer of the outer of the bone, next to the periosteum must be the same. If not, the long bone with either get thicker or thinner. We remember that there is constant appositional growth of the periosteal layer of the bone even in adulthood.

For the 1st article…

This shows that if we take the growth factors TGF-Beta1 and IGF-1 and injected them into the subperiosteal layer of the periosteum even in aged mammales, it would result in the periosteum restoring its chondrogenetic abilities like when it was younger. The cambium cells in the lower layer of the periosteum which is what really divides and forms new bone thickness increased in number and in proliferation ability. This is in vitro but I can’t see why the same results would not occur in vivo.

All I can say is to read the really short summary/abstract and you will see that this experiment shows what may be the first easy to implement way to increase chondrocytes in the right area. This would be a way to explain the occasional results we find in people who do the LSJL method. Maybe the dynamic loading laterally manages to cause the cambium layer to form more growth factors, speficially the TGF-1 and cause it to increase in thickness on the top edges of the epiphysis which leads to overall height increase.

For the 2nd article…

The researchers state very clearly that ” The findings of this study indicate that exposure to TGF-beta1 has a stimulatory effect on periosteal chondrogenesis“. As for the correct dosage for maximum increase in cartilage formation and chondrocyte cell numbers, the researchers stated it was at 100 ng/mL of TGF-beta1 for thirty minutes. So if you inject a high level of TGF-beta 1 at short bursts of time, it causes the periosteal cambium cells to go through chondroogenesis. Not only cartilage, but the Type II collagen content and sulfate incorporation ability increased as well.

Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2009 Jun;17(6):723-34. doi: 10.1016/j.joca.2008.10.011. Epub 2008 Nov 6.

Rejuvenation of periosteal chondrogenesis using local growth factor injection.

I was recently in a conversation with my gf and we got into a discussion about the cultural relativity in how people in different cultures and societies views beauty and the subject of the size of a woman’s hips was raised. She showed that in Korean society, the attractive female is one who has a slim waist, and skinny, long legs. I guess the best example is with the picture to the right.

Of course she also added that being tall is also very important. So it seems like the Korean ideal for attractiveness is height and skinniness, something which most other Western countries and their modeling and fashion industries also agree with.

However, I felt that there was something critical missing in the argument. In general, we know that to be skinny, most young girls actually sacrifice a lot of potential height from going on diets, not eating properly, and having some form of eating disorder, whether bulimia or anorexia.

I have always believed that to be skinny and stay skinny, it has to be a habitual lifestyle, since I have found that most people when asked love food and have an incredible desire for food. This would imply that for a person to be that skinny in their adult years, the habits which would lead to this type of body type had to have been developed when they were younger, probably during the years when they still had their open growth plates. If this was the case, any type of intentional restriction of food and nutrition would lead to height growth stunting.

So I showed that it may not be possible to ask for both height and skinniness. The smart person would instead choose to focus on eating as much nutritious and high protein food as possible while they were still growing into physical maturity. Once they have reached the maximum natural height after growth plate closure, they can then start focusing on food restriction diets to decrease the width size. Like I will always say, you can change a person’s weight a lot easier than changing their height. Focus on getting the maximum height first, and then focus on trying to skinny up.

While I was making this first main point I thought about another idea which I wanted to propose, similar to a very old post I did about Michael Phelp’s torso to leg lengths, which are disproportional, entitled “Torso Length To Leg Length , A Personal Theory“. This is the theory…

Women with wider hips can give birth to and result in bigger and taller children, which will thus lead to bigger and taller adults. 

We must remember that on average, European and North A merican Caucasian females have wider hips than East Asian females due to lifestyle choices, eating and diet habits, etc. in the modern world. The “white” women you would find from the rural towns of Iowa or Nebraska I would guess has a larger and wider hips than the urban “asian” girls you might find in Asian cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc. I would next propose that the height of these “white” women from Iowa and Nebraska may be around 1-2 inches taller than the women you find in rural asian countries.

If the hips of a women are bigger, by the law of a proportional body, we can say that the uterus of the female should be also bigger.  As a correlary, we can thus infer that the bigger uterus can carry a bigger baby inside it before it is time for the final gestation process, ie. giving birth.

The best example I can think of is the case of Yao Ming. Yao was born to a mother who was either 6′ 2″ or 6′ 3″ and to a father who was around 6′ 7″-6′ 9″. Obviously he had the genes for height working for him from the beginning. I remember reading an anecdotal story about the fact that Yao’s grandfather was supposedly the tallest man in all of Shanghai during a certain early 20th century period. If we use the law of proportion, we can say Yao’s mother had great height, so she had a larger waist hip, which resulted in a larger uterus, so she had the capacity to carry a bigger baby.

I have been finding studies which show the endochondral ossification of long bones process in both prenatal (before birth) and neonatal (after birth) are different. It is well known that the human embryo into fully functioning human grows the fastest while is it still in it’s mother’s womb, the prenatal stage. Once the baby comes out of the mother’s uterus, womb, the growth rate drops as it goes through the younger years, until the growth rate increases slightly during the puberty years. This would suggest then that for women who have the bigger uterus/womb, they will be able to hold their baby slightly longer, giving them a slightly higher chance to grow more before birth. From Yao Ming’s  unofficial biography, “Operation Yao Ming” we find out that Yao came out as a very large baby, at  11 lbs and in the corridors of Shanghai No. 6 Hospital on the evening of Sept. 12, 1980. It was shortly after 7 p.m. (source) Yao weighed more than twice as much as the average Chinese newborn. When we look at the growth rate of Yao, we can see that overall, his growth rate was not really higher than other kids or abnormally higher. it is just that Yao came out a lot bigger than other babies. So, the raw initial amount of mass and cell # was far more to work with. This would be the product of either the fact that his mother’s body and womb is bigger than other Chinese females, or the fact that his mother and father’s height genes are at work, or both.

The next example would be the case of Karan Singh, who we looked at before in the post entitled “Tallest Toddler In the World – Karan Singh“. Karan just “happened” to be born to one of the tallest females in the world. His mother is Shweatlana Singh, who has been billed as Asia’s tallest woman. However that fact comes into contention because on the website The Tallest Man she is listed and measured before at “only” 6’8″. His father is also tall at 6′ 7″. As for Shweatlana, she claims that she is around 7′ 2″. She states about her boy…’He was born big and is already half as tall as me, so I believe he will outgrow me soon,’ said ShweatlanaKaran, who was twice the size of normal babies at birth – 13lb and 2ft – never fitted baby clothes and now wears clothes designed for children three or four times his age. (source)

What we see is that Karan was born to a women who is taller and probably has bigger and wider hips that Yao Ming’s mother. Karan was born at a weight more than Yao Ming and his growth rate is also high. I would guess that Karan would end up taller than Yao in 10 years. His mother who has billed herself as the tallest women in Asia showed us that Karan was born big, and that his growth rate is not from a higher growth rate after birth. It seems to be the same case as Yao Ming.

The last example I can give would be from the Giantess Anna Haining Swan, or Bates, who was around the 7′ 5″ range. Her husband was equally big at maybe around 7′ 3″. They had one baby would was recorded at the highest baby birth weight ever at over 23 lbs and over 30 inches tall but the baby did not survive. If the baby had survived, we would have seen a possible 9 feet tall human being.

There is a rule of thumb in medicine that says that the height of a the baby at the age of 2 would be approximately half the height of its ultimate adult height. Using this rule of thumb, we can say that an individual’s final adult height is a function or dependent on it’s height at age 2 ~ FH=f(H2)~FH=2*H2

This would suggest that overall, every human being goes through an overall normal growing process, with very few people, even true giants being given higher rates of height increase. The fact remains that they just were born bigger, with more cells to replicate. If we then use inverse logic, we can say that the reason the babies were born bigger and had more cells to replicate is because their mother’s had larger wombs and could carry a bigger baby. Since taller women in general have bigger wombs due to proportion, we can make a rather common sense argument that taller females give birth to bigger babies.

However, I feel that the critical step or element is that the final height of an individual is determined at its original cause to be the fact that the mother had wider hips, which allowed for a bigger, wider womb.

Recently I have noticed that even with the newly created Frequently Asked Questions sections uploaded which I hope would reduce most of the emails the website email has been getting, the emails still have increased in number. Overall, I would say that creating the FAQs section was still a good idea but one pattern I have noticed a lot in just the last few weeks or so was that as people start to email me multiple times, they start to become really concerned over their identity and state either in the first or last sentence of their message that they wish that I would not divulge to the other readers and visitors of the website who they really are, whether it would be email, country of origin, name, or even comment name.

Now, I could be wrong about this and it could be that some people just don’t want their name posted on the internet or desire any type of fame or notoriety, even for good things like success or high accomplishment. I have known many people and have read many instances where extremely brilliant people are nominated for medals, awards, and honors and when they choose to refuse the prize that they are awarded, it leads to the opposite intended effect, causing them to be even more thrown into the limelight and have people see who they are. However, I could be completely wrong and there is no valid theory behind this reasoning theory.

Here is what I think is the primary reason almost no one wants their name to be published on a height increase research website…

Here is what I am guessing is the real reason why no one wants to be associated with the project or endeavor, or at least have their real names and identity used.

They are afraid to be associated with failure, which would in some way through inference imply that they are also a failure. 

I am quite positive that if we somehow came up with something that was shown to consistently give amazing results, most of the people who emailed me would prefer to get their names out. If this website ultimately succeeds in its original intention, it would completely change the way humans will live, behave, and act.

The truth is that in life, most people don’t care about what happens in the rest of the world, and only choose to focus and care about what is going on in their own life. If a person is choosing to take any form of initiative to do some form of action, it is done because they hope to gain something from doing it.

Failure can be described as a psychological “slap in the face” for trying to accomplish a task which would result in a person gaining something they desire.

Most people would not be willing to take the lead in a large group for fear that they would do something wrong, or decide to choice to take a path that leads to ruin or failure. They would instead play the game in a defensive way, waiting for another person who is willing to take the initiave, form a cause or manifestor, and follow them. It is almost automatically assumed that whoeve is the first to take a stance on something, or go down a path, they probably know more or is smarter than the other people who are waiting for a signal from everyone else. This way, even if the endeavor ends in failure, at least they don’t have to feel bad about themselves since they can always rationalize away their wrong choices by saying that everyone else was doing it and that they were just following the crowd.

In most of life, people are very risk averse. In general, females are even more risk averse. They learn better from bad experiences and almost completely stop trying a specific endeavor if the first time they tried the experience it resulted in high levels of pain. For most people in life, they are only willing to do the minimum amount of work and give just enough effort to get by in life and just survive to the next day. It really does take a large amount of mental and emotional energy and effort to be better and further than one’s peers and contemporaries.

Our real reason for not revealing our identity is that we know that our desired out come has a high chance of failure. Success is something which will not come quickly, but can only be found after years and years of dedicated research, testing, and errors.

If instead you were commenting or discussing your idea on a website devoted to weight loss, one would probably be far more comfortable with giving and using one’s real name and usernames. Weight loss is relatively easy, well defined, easy to perform and get results, and is a overall socially promoted and accepted idea. When people decide to write out their New Year’s resolutions, one of the most common resolutions is to loss weight. This means that they probably at one point in time went on a health, fitness, and nutrition website and read a few articles on how to get fit, get strong, and loss weight. Weight loss is possible, since the adipose tissues are malleable, easy to contort and push around. Weight loss is even automatic, if one decided to follow certain diet rules with discipline. A person can quite easily call themselves a fitness and weight loss expert if they can show some results themselves and they would be willing to put their names on their method, system, or technique since weight loss has been consistently shown to work and have results.

Height increase, but especially for people after physical maturity, is an endeavor that is extremely difficult, if not impossible for most people. Whatever stories or results we do find online in those websites or forums are almost never reproducible by other people. The results and successes are also sporatic, random, and unpredictable. The methods and proposed ideas are many but few get any results. What results that are seen are often just temporary. This means that for our desire to grow taller, it is not likely, it is more likely to fail than succeed, and very difficult to achieve, not matter how much we desire for it with our minds and hearts, since some things in world just can’t be changed without insane amounts of power and force to even alter the way things are even a slight bit.

So…Why Are We So Afraid To Reveal Our Identity For This Endeavor?

• A Personal Answer: Because we are afraid that we would become associated with an endeavor that would not lead to any solution, failure.

About two months ago I got into exchanging emails with Harald Oberleander about whether he would be interested in coming on to the podcast and record an episode. Due to his desire to not reveal his voice and preserve his anonymity, he preferred that he would answer the questions I proposed to him in word doc format. This is the result of him working on the questions and getting us his answers. I hope any people who can help him and his organization will be able to help him and the cause out.

These are the 26 questions I asked him and the answers he gave to them.

Interview questions with Harald Oberländer, founding member of the „Biomedical Growth Research Initiative” (BGRI)

http://www.growth-research.org

Part I

Question 1: So what is your story? What makes you decide to take up this cause?

• Answer: I am a short statured German teacher, who has always been interested in the progress of biomedical research. I have always been sure, that biomedicine has the potential to revolutionize the therapy of unwanted short stature. But unfortunately there is currently worldwide nearly no specific research concerning the development of an innovative height increase therapy (for adults). That was the reason why I founded the “Biomedical Growth Research Initiative” together with some other short statured people from around the world.

Question 2: How tall are you? Do you feel a sense of insecurity over your size/stature?

• Answer: I am 1,67 m. Yes, I have always felt insecure because of my short stature.

Question 3: What got you interested in the subject of height increase or auxology?

• Answer: The problems resulting from my short stature and my interest in (bio-)medical research.

Question 4: Before you found this website, what other resources were you using in your

research?

• Answer: Mainly Pubmed, http://www.biospace.com , http://news.yahoo.com and http://www.makemetaller.org

Question 5: … And how did you find about the website?

• Answer: I found it with a google search result.

Question 6: Now do you want to talk about your experiences with interacting with people on the other boards and forums?

• Answer: There has always been some interest concerning our support for serious height increase research. But unfortunately very few people want to support the development of such a therapy actively.

Question 7: Why has it been so hard to deal with those people on the internet forums and boards?

• Answer: As I already said: Most people don´t want to invest time and efforts in order to support the development of a safe and effective height increase therapy.

So we have been quite ineffective during the last few years, as we only have few active members.

Question 8: So how much money in initial funding are you looking for?

Answer: We have received three detailed research proposals from research teams at universities in the USA, Canada and Hong Kong. Lately we were also contacted by a young German researcher, who has some very interesting ideas, but not a formal research proposal yet. At least 250.000 dollars are needed to start one of these projects. This money would be given directly to the researchers, not to the BGRI. Of course every seriously interested donator or investor will receive the official research proposals after signing a standard confidentiality agreement and he/she will be able to visit the researchers personally at their universities before making a final funding decision.

Question 9: How long has the organization existed?

• Answer: We started with some first steps concerning the “Biomedical Growth Research Initiative” in 2003.

Question 10: Why is the address of the organization based in Israel?

• Answer: Our former webmaster lives in Israel and he also created the P.O. Box address for us. Unfortunately he is no longer active. So we are currently looking for a new webmaster in order to update our homepage from time to time.

Interview questions with Harald Oberländer, founding member of the „Biomedical Growth Research Initiative”

(http://www.growth-research.org)

Part II

Question 11: Why do you think it has been so difficult in finding even one investor into the research?

• Answer: We have contacted several venture capital companies. But unfortunately it is not so easy, as you may think. First of all: Short stature is only in extreme cases (like e.g. achondroplasia) an accepted medical disease and nobody has ever really tried to develop a safe and effective biomedical height increase therapy for short statured adults. Additionally most biotech investors prefer to invest into late stage products, that are already in human clinical trials. There is a significant fear to loose money, if you invest too early in a biotech therapy. You have to know, that even established biotech companies (like e.g. Advances Tissue Sciences, Valigen, Kimeragen and many others) with promissing product candidates have run out of money during the last few years. To sum up: At least during the starting phase a donator or an angel investor with a significant personal interest would be the ideal answer. As soon as human clinical trials have started, it will be much easier to attract large institutional investors. But without personal contacts it is really hard to find serious wealthy short statured donators or investors. In the past we have had three contacts with individual investors, but in the end they couldn´t fulfill their promises. So we need every help we can get in order to find a serious donator or investor (ideally with a personal interest in height increase research).

Question 12: What types of research have you personally been doing?

• Answer: I am not a researcher, I am a short statured person. The BGRI is some kind of international support group. We are “only” in contact with (bio-)medical researchers around the world.

Question 13: What areas of research or ideas do you think are the most promising?

• Answer: Tissue engineering, growth factors, gene therapy, stem cells and maybe LIPUS offer interesting perspectives. But only specific height increase research projects could tell, which way will be successful. So I can´t answer your question without further scientific research results.

Question 14: Which countries are actually looking at this scientific endeavour seriously?

• Answer: As I already wrote: we have been in contact with researchers working at universities in the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Germany.

Question 15: Have you ever thought about going through with the limb lengthening surgery?

• Answer: Yes, I have thought about that. But I still hope for better options in the foreseeable future.

Question 16: Are you familiar with Tyler´s method Lateral Synovial Joint Loading? What is your opinion on his proposed technique?

• Answer: I have read about it. My opinion concerning Tylers´s method is: maybe it will have some little effect (like e.g. regular stretching exercises) of about some centimetres in the best case. But I don´t know any published human clinical studies concerning this program. So there is no scientific prove, that it will work.

Question 17: Can you go into a little more detail in explaining how you think the theory actually works out?

• Answer: I had to sign very strict confidentiality agreements with the involved universities. So I am not allowed to reveal more information in a public interview. If an interested donator or investor wants to have more detailed information, he/she will be very welcome to contact me personally at any time.

Question 18: Have you found anything recently?

• Answer: Our most recent contact has been the ideas of the young German researcher.

Question 19: Now, this next question is to sort of play Devil´s Advocate. What makes you believe that the ability to increase our height after growth plate closure is even possible?

• Answer: Biomedical research has already resulted in some really innovative medicines approved for the general public, e.g. tissue engineered cartilage (http://www.biotissue.de/en-ProductsPatientsBioSeedCIntroduction.html), the gene therapy “Gendicine” against cancer (http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v22/n1/full/nbt0104-3.html ) or bone morphogenetic proteins (http://www.stryker.com/cn/products/Orthobiologicals/Osteoinductive/OP-1/OP-1Implant/020210 ). And there are several exciting biomedical research results, that may have relevance for developing an innovative height increase therapy. So I am convinced, that there is a reasonable chance for success.

Question 20: Can you give some evidence in terms of recent studies or published papers which show that there are some researchers and groups that are really making headway into the search?

• Answer: Unfortunately there is currently worldwide nearly no specific research concerning an innovative height increase therapy for adults. Nevertheless some research results for other indications (e.g. growth plate injuries, bone healing, limb regeneration) would surely have relevance for developing a safe and effective biomedical height increase therapy. You will find some very interesting studies on pubmed by searching for e.g. “bone tissue engineering”, “growth plate regeneration” or “limb lengthening growth factors”.

• A lot of very interesting studies can also be found on your homepage (http://www.naturalheightgrowth.com ).

Question 21: In your professional opinion, What is the area of study me and other seekers out there should probably be focusing on? Stem cells, gene therapy, bone loading techniques, growth plate regeneration?

• Answer: In my opinion all these approaches could lead to innovative therapy options.

Question 22: Within 20 years, do you think we will have an alternative to limb lengthening surgery?

• Answer: As far as I can see this is mainly a question of the invested money and resources concerning specific height increase research. From the scientific point of view this would be more than realistic, I think.

• With adequate support a much shorter timeframe should be possible.

Question 23: Beside height increase, what other interests and field of studies are you doing research in?

• Answer: I am not a researcher, but a short statured support group member. So I am not doing research myself.

Question 24: Now do you have any suggestions on how the website can be improved on?

• Answer: A discussion forum would be great, so that your readers could connect with each other.

Question 25: Do you have your own blog or website?

• Answer: Our homepage can be found at http://www.growth-research.org

Question 26: Now if we wanted to find out more about your research, how can the readers reach you?

• Answer: You can contact my by e-mail at harald_oberlaender@hotmail.com