Of all the techniques and ideas I have proposed so far this may be one of the most technologically advanced ideas and proposals. Recently I was watching a talk on TEDtv called “Yoav Medan: Ultrasound surgery — healing without cuts” and I wondered whether it would be possible to use this type of non-invasive surgical method to increase height. After spending a few hours looking at the various resources and PubMed studies on the internet I would say that this medical technology procedure actually has some good height increasing possibilities. Let me explain.

The video is below. A full analysis of this possible method and approach is talked about below the video.

Sources

• “Magnetic resonance image-guided focused ultrasound surgery.“
• “A new noninvasive approach in breast cancer therapy using magnetic resonance imaging-guided focused ultrasound surgery.“
• “High intensity focused ultrasound: surgery of the future?“
• “Magnetic resonance imaging-guided, high-intensity focused ultrasound for brain tumor therapy.“
• “Non-invasive Surgery Using Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery Technology“

Analysis & Interpretation

From the 5th source, “Magnetic resonance (MR)-guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) completely destroys targeted tissue without causing structural or functional damage to the adjacent tissue. The ultrasound energy penetrates normal tissue while reaching targeted tissue at sufficiently high energy levels and inducing cell death with minimal interference. MR imaging (MRI) identifies targeted tissue and detects suitable access routes for the acoustic waves. It also determines tissue temperature changes. MRI contrast scans then verify thermal ablation. Thus, an effective, safe, non-invasive, closed-loop procedure eradicates circumscribed tissue with minimal discomfort and recovery time. Described as the ideal surgery,….”

The real method for non-invasive surgery has arrived. With it, that suggests that we can finally make surgical incisions on places without needing to cut open skin. The technology I am looking at is very advanced and its main application has been towards killing (or at least stopping the growth) of brain tumors which are malignant. However I would suspect that if the frequency and magnitude of the ultrasound surgery can be increased, it can turn into a device that cuts anything including the hard nature of the hydroxyapatite, which is what gives bone their hard nature.

Implications For Height Increase

Here is what I can say to all the people who are interested in height increase. The non-invasiveness nature of any type of technique can probably be achieved now using the MRgFUS . If the device is strong enough, it can make cuts into the hard non-living tissue of the bone, the extracellular matrix of the bone. A quick tensile load means that along with the initial bone cut, the pulling can mean that limb lengthening surgery can be done extremely precisely.

I had talked about before in previous posts about the use of Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound (LIPUS), Extracorporeal Shockwave Technology (ESW), as well as High Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound. Now we are seeing high intensity ultrasound which is non-invasive in nature. Any cuts and incisions made on the bone can be done with no cuts on the skin.

I had talked about before using Piezoelectric Surgery as a way to cut bone for microfracture formation and distraction osteogenesis in the post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Minimal Invasive Piezoelectric Surgery, Part I” bringing up the issue that if we can figure out the resonance frequency of the long bone in each of its areas, including the cortical bone area and the trabecular bone area,

Here is the method I propose to regrow cartilage in the areas we want now non-invasively. 

1. First we get an X-ray of the limb to be done on to know exactly where the outer edges of the bone is.

2. We can apply a sharp but high intensity pulse to the now gone epiphyseal cartilage bone area, and by using the resonance frequency of the bone type, we can induce the bone material to break apart in that area using the High Intensity Focused Ultrasound devices.

3. Remember that the Parathyroid organ is what regulates the calcium in our blood. If we can regulate the PTH/PTHrP calcium homeostasis so the calcium deposits get resorbed by the blood (like osteoclasts) leaving a relatively empty space filled with bone marrow we can do what I would call the first filtering of the marrow to get ready for cartilage formation. I had talked about the possibility of using the Parathyroid related Peptide, PTHrP as a way to lead to noninvasive height increase in one of the most interesting posts “Parathyroid Hormone And Parathyroid Hormone-Related Protein May Lead To Non-Invasive Epiphyseal Growth Plate Regeneration (Big Breakthrough)“. Since the increase of PTH means that the calcium in bone gets resorbed back into the blood leading to a medical condition known as hyperparathyroidism , we must only get the PTH/PTHrP to be increased in the area where the bone material was dissolved. This might be achievable from somehow getting the indian hedgehog  (Ihh) to be increased in expression within the MSCs inside the marow which would expand and fill up the  newly formed medullary cavity.

4. The bone marrow inside has MSCs but has a type of bone marrow known as yellow marrow, which doesn’t have the red bone marrow of children, having what is known as adipocyte derived MSCs. From pubmed studies…

• Chondrogenesis of adult stem cells from adipose tissue and bone marrow: induction by growth factors and cartilage-derived matrix.
• Comparative review of growth factors for induction of three-dimensional in vitro chondrogenesis in human mesenchymal stem cells isolated from bone marrow and adipose tissue.
• Combination of transforming growth factor-beta2 and bone morphogenetic protein 7 enhances chondrogenesis from adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells.

This shows that with growth factor combinations like TGF-Beta2 with BMP7 and the combination TGF-Beta3 with BMP-6 (from the 2nd source) which we can inject into the bone area with a small drill can stimulate the initial chondrogenesis process. We would do a weekly injection of the right growth factor combination to create more chondrocytes.

However the issue would be whether we can use just the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MRgHIFUS) alone in achieving cartilage formation inside the bone without needing anything else. I would actually prefer that after the MRgHIFUS usage to break apart the bone areas in the location we wish to, we inject growth factors like GDF-5, FGF-3, and TGF-Beta1,2,3

5. Which we can use another frequency, a lower frequency from dynamic mechanical loading to cause more chondrogenesis. The idea now is to convert the few chondrocytes that are made from the growth factor injections into a culture form to make a culture to form cartilage.

6. From the previous post “Thyroxine Regulates The Morphogenesis Of Isolated Chondrocytes Into Columnar Cartilage (Big Breakthrough)” I would guess that if we can inject thyroxine into the now marrow filled cavity of the bone, it might be able to get the chondrocytes that do get differentiated to start stacking in columnar fashion to create a extracellular environment similar to the original growth plate.

6. We must remember that vascularization is what causes cartilage tissue to start turning into bone. This means that the high intensity focused ultrasound needs to be used regularly to destroy blood vessels which would try to either differentiate the adipose derived MSCs into osteoblasts an osteocytes. Of course this is easily done since the original application of the MRIgHIFUS (or MRIgFUS) was to destroy blood vessels which would supply the nutrients needed to allow tumours to continue to grow.

7. After a cartilage is mostly formed for the layer in the long bone internally for the trabecular bone area, we can then do it to the cortical bone, and doing the same process over again.

This will be the first time that we can use real technology to rebuild cartilage that was completely lost during the natural growth process. However the cartilage formed may not be the nice hyaline type we are looking for with stacked chondrocyte columns. Some of the cartilage formed may be irregular or crooked but I would guess that as long as a layer of cartilage can separate hard bone from hard bone, we can use other cartilage forming ideas like injecting Chondromodulin Type 1 to stop vascularization to increase the cartilage thickness.

Last night while I was doing nothing I decided to waste some time and scour YouTube for any videos that would entertain me. Along the way I somehow started to watch old Seinfeld clips again. One clip however did catch my attention and was where Kramer started to get really deep into swimming.

Apparently Kramer started off doing hundred of laps in the local YMCA or fitness club pool. He would change that to start swimming in the East River, which I would have no idea where that is since I never lived close to or in the NYC area.

In the clip below, around the 2:40-2:50 mark, he would state “…exercises every muscle in the body. It’s great for the back….Four hours in this chop (?) and I’m a full inch taller…”

Very early in the website I had written a post about the link between swimming and possible height increase with “Grow Taller By Swimming”

Interpretation

I personally can attest to the fact that from swimming, the body “feels” taller since many muscles that are not used in traditional exercises and weightlifting are used and stretched out. The bouyancy of the water does indeed help lower the amount of weight that the lower body will feel. Years ago when I was going through an obsessive period of exercising many hours of the day to gain height swimming was a huge part of the daily routine. Around 2-3 hours was spent everyday doing butterfly strokes in an olympic sized pool to increase fitness and to possibly gain height. Krammer says that 1 full inch in at least temporary height can be gained after 4 intensive hours of swimming. It is a TV show but the claim does not seem that unreasonable. We do remember that when astronauts are in space, the spine and vertebrate is mostly decompressed. At an environment like that, the vertebrate is supposed to decompress to the point that the average height increase seen is by 3% of the original height on the surface of the earth. This means that on average, the human body would increase by 2 inches. For water, the effects are not as dramatic but there can be some effect.

It has never been tested to see what would happen to the human body if it was just placed in water for a long period of time but  we do know that when dead bodies are found in the water they do become bloated and are often found floating on the surface of the water since the body has a lower density than the water. It is well known among divers and swimmers that one’s elevation underwater can be altered by the amount of air that one keeps in one’s lung. If the lungs were filled completely with air, the body will go up to the surface since the average density of the body would be less than the water.

As for the claim that swimming can lead to some height increase, we do note from previous research that the bone density of swimmer who do it extensively at least for prepubscent females

From study “Differential effects of swimming versus weight-bearing activity on bone mineral status of eumenorrheic athletes“…

“Swimmers were taller (p = 0.0001), heavier (p > 0.005), and had a greater bone-free lean mass (p < 0.001) than gymnasts and nonathletic controls. When adjusted for body surface area, there was no difference in lean mass between swimmers and gymnasts, and both were higher than controls (p < 0.01)”

The fact that the swimmers found in this study was taller could be just from the fact that in the sport of swimming, taller and longer bodies may be better at reaching long distances and can cover more surface area but it still shows that swimmers are taller. There is no evidence that would indicate that taller children in general are pushed into swimming, unlike volleyball and basketball, but the more likely result is that the taller children end up being able to reach the other end of the lane slightly faster, and that results in the being more likely to be at the collegiate and professional levels of swimming. As always there is so causality that have been able to really show that in developing children, swimming –> taller body.

It is true that the bone mineral density of swimmers is much lower than other athletes, and may even be lower than controlled groups where people don’t exercise.

From source …

“While in space, astronauts’ bodies respond to the lack of gravitational stress on the bones by decreasing their bone mass. On the other end of the spectrum, weightlifters experience an increase in bone density due to the stress of the extra weight on the bones. The more stress placed on the bones over a period of time, either through heavy weights and/or by impact, the more the body responds by increasing the bone density.

Study after study comparing swimmers with other athletes, shows swimmers to have similar bone density to couch potatoes.”

We see from many studies and sources that there seems to be a weak positive correlation between the fact that high bone mineral density in at least developing children, as long as malnutition is accounted for, seem to correlate to above average height. So the weaker the BMD, the he higher chance for a person to be above average in height. The fact that in space where gravity is near zero shows that both the body expands in height and the density drops. The effect of water should do the same thing.

From source link HERE

Note: I was unable to embedd the video due to certain YouTube restrictions.

A key theory behind LSJL is the use of hydrostatic pressure to induces mesenchymal stem cells into chondrocytes to form new growth plates.  Hydrostatic Pressure alters the expression of some of the genes altered by LSJL.  Although, there are many genes not shared which is not surprising considering that LSJL exerts other forces than hydrostatic pressure and the microenvironment is different between the rat bone and the cell lines used.  Hydrostatic pressure is one of the most consistent stimuli in inducing neo chondroinduction.

Hydrostatic pressure decreases membrane fluidity and lipid desaturase expression in chondrocyte progenitor cells.

“Membrane biomechanical properties are critical in modulating nutrient and metabolite exchange as well as signal transduction. Biological membranes are predominantly composed of lipids, cholesterol and proteins, and their fluidity is tightly regulated by cholesterol and lipid desaturases. To determine whether such membrane fluidity regulation occurred in mammalian cells under pressure, we investigated the effects of pressure on membrane lipid order of mouse chondrogenic ATDC5 cells and desaturase gene expression. Hydrostatic pressure linearly increased membrane lipid packing and simultaneously repressed lipid desaturase gene expression. We also showed that cholesterol mimicked and cholesterol depletion reversed those effects, suggesting that desaturase gene expression was controlled by the membrane physical state itself. This study demonstrates a new effect of hydrostatic pressure on mammalian cells and may help to identify the molecular mechanisms involved in hydrostatic pressure sensing in chondrocytes. ”

“Hydrostatic pressure (HP) is known to reduce lipid membrane fluidity. High HP triggers an adaptive mechanism, during which membrane fluidity is increased by raising the proportion of unsaturated fatty acids.”

“TDC5 cells responded to the change in their membrane fluidity under pressure by modulating the expression of Fads1, Fads2, Scd1 or Scd2. 10 or 20 MPa did indeed significantly inhibit the expression of all four genes after 24 h, while 5 MPa also significantly decreased Fads1 and Scd1 expression.”<-None of the genes were directly altered over significance by LSJL.  The genes were measured one hour after loading so it’s possible that the genes returned to baseline after one hour.

With this  data it’s easy to see why there was no change in gene expression level by LSJL as most of the repression of these genes occurred after 6 or 24 hours under hydrostatic pressure.

“MβCD increased ATDC5 membrane fluidity (laurdan GP values respectively increased and decreased under cholesterol and MβCD treatment”

“Similar to HP, cholesterol increased laurdan GP and significantly inhibited Fads1 and Fads2 expression. By contrast, MβCD[methyl-β-cyclodextrin], which decreased laurdan GP, significantly increased the expression of all four desaturase genes. Together, this suggests that membrane fluidity itself may be the general modulator of desaturase gene expression.”<-Cholesterol has been implicated in controlling endochondral bone growth before.

“the beneficial effects of loading on cartilage are mediated by the transcription factor CITED2, which represses cartilage degradation by the matrix metalloproteinase MMP1.”

“In the human hip joint, loads typically reach 10 MPa during normal activity, with peaks of up to 18 MPa. Considering that interstitial fluid pressure supports about 70 to 90% of the applied load, HP within the cartilage can be expected to regularly exceed 7 MPa and peak at around 16 MPa. 20 MPa is therefore a relatively high pressure”

“How HP is actually sensed by the cell remains poorly understood, but the link between HP and cholesterol suggests at least two hypotheses: both HP and cholesterol may converge on the SREBP pathway, cholesterol by affecting SREBP maturation via SCAP, HP by affecting the membrane fluidity of the endoplasmic reticulum, where non-activated SREBPs reside and which is more sensitive to HP than the plasma membrane; the mechanosensing mechanism of HP could also reside in cholesterol-rich domains like lipid rafts or caveolae”

“membranes rich in unsaturated fatty acids may be compressible enough to deform significantly, and trigger signaling events, even under relatively small pressures. Finally, the plasma membrane is supported by the cytoskeleton, which is mostly incompressible; it is possible that pressurization of the compressible intracellular fluid leads to large deformations in membrane domains unsupported by the cytoskeleton, the change in bulk volume being focused onto a small membrane area.”

In another thread from the Make Me Taller forums a poster named upinthesky would post a link to a story (HERE) which made me wonder whether it might be just easier to sometimes look taller and be perceived to be taller.

The article he cites is an editorial from The Economist on a study that came out from UCLA by a group of researchers and Daniel Fessler.

The study seems to have had over 600 subjects have pictures shown to them with people holding difference objects and having them judge how formidable they seemed to be. Apparently the pictures where a person was shown holding a .45 handgun were had been judged that the person in the picture was taller than a person holding something else.

The implications of this Economist article is to show that sometimes it is not how tall we might be objectively that is important, where the measurement of height is with a measuring tape and stadiometer but how tall we seem to be from the perception of other people. There have been many cases where a person’s height is perceived very differently when they are placed in different situations and settings. I remember once talking to a person who told me about the study of a height of a person being judged with the variable of authority or prestige being looked at. It would turn out that when a group fo students were asked to judge the height of a single person while their professional title was changed, from professor to graduate student to undergraduate student, the perception by the height guessers changed. The professor was judged on average to be around 2 inches taller than if the height guessers were told that the person was “just” a college student.

So….perception matters. When a person commands any type of authority which leads to either respect, admiration, or fear, their height is increased. For this case, when the person is holding a gun, their height increased by 2 inches. This shows that we can alter other people’s perception of our height through either acting in a formidable or threatening manner. (Not that I advocate acting violently just to make oneself appear bigger.)

The article is below…

The evolution of risk assessment

Big men with guns

Apr 11th 2012, 22:01 by J.P.

As I was going through the Make Me Taller forums yesterday I came across a discussion thread which again was looking at any alternatives of height increase beyond the limb lengthening surgery. The thread lead to a patent from 2008 which seems to be a real application. To get the link, just go to Google and type in “Height Increase Device Patent” and it should be one of the results on the first page. The original link is from FreePatentsOnline.com.

What is claimed is: 

1. Height increasing device comprising: a wedge shaped resilient foam portion; a spandex elastic type slip on shoe; said foam portion bonded to the bottom of said spandex elastic shoe; said elastic shoe having an open front allowing the user’s toes to exit said elastic shoe; and said wedge shaped foam situated under the user’s heal area so that the thickest portion of said wedge is at the rear of the user’s heal and the thinnest portion is located at the mid foot area. 

2. Height increasing device as claimed in claim 1 wherein said resilient foam portion is constructed of Evo Foam. 

3. Height increasing device as claimed in claim 1 wherein said wedge shape can be as thick as one and one half inches at its thickest point at the rear of the heal. 

4. Height increasing device as claimed in claim 1 wherein said spandex shoe can fit a variety of foot sizes. 

5. Height increasing device as claimed in claim 1 wherein said spandex shoe and attached wedge shaped portion can be worn under a person’s standard sock so that said person can remove his or her shoes and still have the benefit of extra height because said spandex shoe can not easily be seen through said user’s sock.

Analysis Of The Patent:

There is a link HERE to the actual patent form filed with pictures of the device. The pictures are very crude and makes me wonder why a person would ever try to patent this type of idea. It is not very inforceable since I am quite certain that many shoe sellers and repair shops in Singapore, Indonesia, and China are already doing something similar in fashion to give some of their buyers a height boost from their shoes.

The shoe design seems to be able to remove 3 main problems that has been traditionally associated with any type of height increase shoes, which is that….

1. The shoes inserts are big and bulky designed to be left inside the shoes.
2. There will be some situations where the shoes do have to be removed which reveals the height difference and cause public embarrassment.
3. The soles of the shoes are clearly visible to be thick and not very stylish.

After looking over this device for 10 minutes and looking at the really crudely drawn pictures of how the feet and shoe accessory is supposed to fit over the feet, I am still a little confused. On the one hand I think that this device is a sock like thing where the heel region is a relatively thick, strong, elastic part which causes the feet’s heel to thicken up at a sloped angle, which would give around 1 inch of concealed height. On the other hand, the device may be something that is placed into the shoe from the start and for the feet to go into and stay wearing until the shoes need to be removed for some reason. The device most likely will be staying on the feet while the shoes keep a normal thickness in the heel region.

I have clipped and posted the first page of the patent below.

In a recent post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Microfracture Surgery, Part III” I had begun to propose a new height increase minimal invasive technique using the most general idea from microfracture surgery.

Here is how I interpret the entire idea behind microfracture surgery. You cut a section of the cartilage to get to the underlayer of bone. You use a type of thin drill or pick to poke very small holes, the microfractures, into the bone so that the device reaches deep enough to hit the inner of the epiphysis of the long bone. This means that the inner bone marrow, blood, and stem cells can seep out, filling up the hole made, and the clot eventually turns into into fibrocartilage.

I had stated at the end of the previous post…”What could work is that if a series of microfractures in a specific distribution design is created from drills on the side of the epiphysis to completely go around the bone in a closed path. This means that after a few days, the path of drilled microfractures would fill up with stem cells which will eventually turn into fibrocartilage. The fibrocartilage will not be that strong, but before they calcify into bone from vascularization, it would be possible to drill another set of microfractures around the same path to fill up the remaining bone bridges.”

I wanted to explain a little further into this idea so that the reader can understand from a 3 dimensional perspective what I am graphically proposing. The microfracture surgery used an awl (surgical device that punctures) to get the holes in the bones. What I would proposed for the height increase method is to use a similar device, the surgical drill, which would still have the same thickness as the awl.

The drill would go through the outer tissues like the skin and the muscle, just like what would be seen when the traditional ilizarov external method does when the drill is used to add the spokes and wires which are supposed to hold the two bone sides apart and in place when they are being distracted slowly by the long screws.

The path from looking from a downward z direction would show that the drilled micro holes goes completely around the leg bone. Where the original external fixator method used only 3 drills to put metal spokes or wires into the bones to hole them into place, the drilling for this method would be in the dozens, but will be done under anesthesia. The drilling will go through the bone multiple times to make a path. After the drilling is done, the entire bone will leak out the marrow and stem cells. Something to hold the leaked marrow will keep the clot. After a few days, the outer surface of the bones would be clotted with initial fibrocartilage formation. When the cartilage is formed after 1 week, The rest of the undrilled areas of the bone is done. This would eventually cause the entire cortical area of an entire strip of length in the long bone to be drilled through. The other drilled fractures will also be filled with clots, which turns into cartilage. After the cartilage is formed around the entire bone, covering where the cortical bone is supposed to be, the tensile strength of the long bone will be reduced dramatically. Any type of method like LSJL or weight pulling would lead to cartilage width expansion, thus longitudinal growth.