While I was going through compiling The Library I came across a study which made me stop for a good hour to understand what it is really implying and I finally realized why the results from it was so contrarian to everything I’ve learned about so far.

From PubMed study entitled “Locally produced estrogen promotes fetal rat metatarsal bone growth; an effect mediated through increased chondrocyte proliferation and decreased apoptosis.“…

J Endocrinol. 2006 Feb;188(2):193-203.

Locally produced estrogen promotes fetal rat metatarsal bone growth; an effect mediated through increased chondrocyte proliferation and decreased apoptosis.

Yesterday I got an email from a reader of the website who wanted me to check out the videos on YouTube of a guy names SkinTightFlash who was showing his face and talking about his height increase success story. From only looking at 4 of the 7 videos he has uploaded to date, I would guess that he is a real honest person who is not trying to scam or con people out of money and pushing them to buy a product that doesn’t work. It seems that Lance Ward has featured him and his videos on the GTG (Grow Taller Guru) youtube channel to show that his programs do work in helping people grow taller. That is fair enough. So far he has become rather popular and even though he has 7 videos uploaded as of this current date, he has over 2000 video views, as he states. In each video, you can see that he gets dozens of comments asking for his routine and stretching patterns of who give his a congratulatory note. He seems like a really nice and likeable guy.

You can get to his YouTube video Channel by clicking the his profile at TightSkinFLash.

Click Here–>TightSkinFlash <– Click Here.

I will not be uploading, embedding, or posting any of his videos on this post since there is too many and the information I have below I had to watch all the videos and combine all the information he has given are all scattered through out the videos. There is no central video he has which would give all of the information below.

So far these are the facts we know about him.

Obviously he is an African American male

Age: over 25 years old, as he reports

Old claimed height: 5′ 7.25″ He says that from the age of 18 and high school, he remembers that he was always at 5′ 7″ and he is not sure where the quarter of inch came from after that. From his early 20s, he was always at 5′ 7″, not any taller.

Height found on his Driver’s License: 5 ‘7″ based in Texas. Note: The issue I have with that drivers license shot was that he did not show his face. That makes me slightly suspicious. There is really nothing to cover or hide from revealing his face on the drivers license. At least that would be a way to 

Claimed new height #1: 5′ 8.125″ , this is for his morning height, after he gets out of bed

Claimed new height #2 after more stretching: 5′ 8.25″ (for sometime later after September, maybe November-Decembet time range.)

Measured height late at night at the gym: 170.9 cm which is 67.2835 inches or 5′ 7.25″

Dad’s Height: 6′ 2″

Real Goal: 6′ 4″

Would settle for: 6′ 1.5″- 6′ 2″

Won’t really start to give advice or talk about his methods, routines, or ideas until he reaches: 5′ 11″

Won’t be sure if his height increase is real until he reaches: 5′ 9″

Others things to consider: The possibility of his measuring error is reduced because of his shaved head. Hair plays a large part in height measuring error. In one videos he explicitly shows a shot of his head before and after getting it shaved since he realizes that he had to be more accurate in his measurements and wanted to make sure the height increase he was measuring was real. Good for him. That shows he is really dedicated.

Measuring Technique: From one video he states that all though he has gotten people and commenters who suggest him getting a stadiometer, he has not gone that path since those things cost hundreds of dollars. His method is to measure and mark horizontal lines on a wall and use a book that pushes down until it reaches his head to measure himself. I would say that is still reasonable although it would lead to more measurement error than I would have desired.

Schedule of Measurement: He measures himself every morning. He did the very first measurement “late, late, late at night on the 13th of September…or maybe even the 14th of September since it might have crossed midnight…“(his quote) He was also dehydrated that date. Every other measurement after that first measurement was done in the morning. That is what he has chosen to measure himself.

This guy is on a 90 days height increase challenge. His routine he states is that he stretches 2 hours a day, which I found really impressive. He says in one of his videos that he tries to stretch 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening, and have the other 2 hours somewhere in the middle.

He does try some hanging on a bar chin-up style like Michael Jordan but he says in one of his replied comments that he can’t do it for more than 10 seconds.

So far, I have gone to his YouTube channel and written a message asking him if he would like to join in a discussion with me for one of the podcast episodes so we can record his story and hear everything. Apparently he does try to take the HGH cocktail we found from the Grow Taller 4 Idiots book, which is a mixture of Fava beans, raw cabbage, and tomatoes. He stated he goes with organic ingredients which is fine by me. Whatever makes him feel better. From the video it seems he buys his organic vegetables from Whole Foods and mixes the secret ingredient, organic natural milk with his vegetable “HGH Cocktail”.

When he talks about the secret ingredient, what I am guessing he is referring to is “organic natural milk“. The tallest groups of people in the world are either tribes in africa, the Dutch, or the Croatians/Serbians. Some of them do drink a lot of milk, while the  African tribes drink a lot of goat milk. The thing is that the pure cow milk is actually illegal to be sold in some states due to the fact most people feel the pure stuff may contain harmful compounds inside. Additional compounds are added which is believed to eliminate potential biological parasites or bacterial which could be harmful. In replacement, most places choose to add a chemical additive, which means you replace a potentially dangerous compounds from a biological source to a potentially dangerous compounds from a chemical source. He claims that SIMPLE SUGARS are bad if you want to be skinny or tall. I agree with him about the skinny part since there has been studies which link carbohydrates with increased fat retention, and carbohydrates are just complex sugars. However, I can’t give an opinon about his claim on the link between simple sugars and height since I have seen nothing to back up his claim about that. From the section of video it is shot at, note that he uses the term “a gallon and a half a day” when he types it up. That means the secret stuff is a liquid form measured in volumetric units. Plus, you can see him driving through an area which looks to be rural, so he might be actually at a farm. Of course I kept pausing his video so the last section was actually written before he revealed that the secret compound was organic natural milk in the next 3 seconds of the video.

In another video, you can hear a female voice interject which shows that he has not been doing these program on his own. That woman seems to be doing some of the camera holding on some of the videos. She is revealed to be his wife. He says that she supports his decision and desire to go through with the grow taller program 100% which is very commendable. In the same video, he reveals that his has two beliefs on why his situation is a littler harder than other people’s being slightly older that other people who are trying to grow taller and being overweight. He says that because of him being overweight, he would have to try harder than most others to get the results he wants.

In another video, he shares the story of how his cousin who used to tease him for him being shorter than him was recently compared in height to him to find out he was taller than her, both with shoes off. That would be a good ego boost to anyone, to get back at people.

My Personal Analysis: In many of my previous posts I had talked about this idea I called “Hidden Height” and I will say it again. Most people in society actually are not at their full height potential because they actually have “Hidden Height” which is never realized. What I am claiming to this guy is that he is just finally decideding to change his lifestyle incorporating better diet habits and exercises and stretching to realize that hidden height. I stated in a previous post entitled “What Percentage Of The General Population Can Increase Their Height?” which was written in the beginning of September about the idea of Hidden Height but I have also talked about it occasionally. In general, I have stated that people who have being overweight living unhealthy lifestyles before they start a height increase program are far more likely to see results that the people who are already doing fitness. This is because the person who is not doing fitness has not tried to realize that hidden height.

Since they don’t exercise a lot or try to stand completely straight, their vertebrate through gravity will actually start to curve more and their posture gets worst as a result. Being overwieght and/or obsese is the easiest way for people to have hidden height. The excess weight actually prevents their vertebrate from decompressing completely and letting them to stand completely straight. Further bad posture lead to further vertebrate curvature. My old girlfriend’s father had the the cervical vertebrate region so curved forward that the back of his head would never touch the bed if he lied on his back on the bed and removed the pillow. From older pictures you can see that he in his 20-30s always stood straight and had good posture but the years cause him to loss the good posture excess eating habits, long working hours, excess drinking, and habitual bad posture. If he tried a height increase routine he would have gained at least 1 inch back permanently.

That hidden height is from the fact that there are stretching a person with closed growth plates can do which can help them lead to 2-3 cms, and maybe even sometimes 4 cms of extra height which is mostly permanent. This guy states himself that he is overweight. This makes him the perfect candidate to see dramatic results. If he was a Olympic level gymnastic, no matter how much stretching he did, he would NOT increase even 0.25″ of extra height .It really does suck that the for the people who live healthy lives, the exercise and stretching routines won’t give them much results but can only be seen by people who have not been doing it.

There is a chance for a certain percentage of the population people to get some extra height in adulthood and that is seen in other posts whether you use rolfing, chiropractor, Alexander Method, PIlates, or Yoga. However, again it is really them gaining the hidden height potential they always had in their curved posture and vertebrate.

Conclusion: His 1 inch height increase is real and probably will be permanent. However my claim is that the increase is from hidden height which was already there which he is only now is being fully realized. There will come a point where he will be limited to any more height increase due to the contraints of bone i.e. the intervertebral disks can no longer decompress any more, and I would guess he won’t ever get past the 5′ 9″ limit. The clearest examples was the Monaug case from GiantScientific forums. He gained around 2 inches from a massive real dedicated stretching program  but eventually lost some of that and eventually ended up with about 1 inch of permanent growth. If he does however get beyond, 5′ 9″ to even 5′ 9.5″ then we really have something to look into and checking up on.

This is not a cosmetics or cosmetics review website. This is a website that investigates, analyzes, and searches for the solution of height increase. However I felt that I probably would be able to give my own personal review on the theory of this product due to previous research in bone remodeling.

Sometimes I see products being sold at the local convenience store I shop at and I get a slight swinge of anger from seeing something which I know would never work but still sells to people due to their insecurities like vanity or fear. This happened to me yesterday.

While I was walking through the local supermarket trying to get toiletries I ended up in the aile where female cosmetic products were being sold. Along that long and large section, I saw again what I would only call the “Japanese Face Slimming Roller Massager”. Refer to picture to the right if you are not familiar or know what I am talking about.

I remember back when I was living in the states going to places like the Japanese based store Diaso or the locally Seattle based asian supermarket chain Uwajimaya and seeing this thing which was a Japanese invention. Now that I am living in East Asia I am seeing this product again.

Although I have never bought the roller and used it myself, I wanted to give a thought to the effect of the Japanese face slimming roller massager. I actually think that the extended use of this massager may actually cause the opposite intended effects of face slimming due to how bones remodel.

Note: Picture is taken from EBeautyBlog.com

We see from other pictures that the natural state of the roller is not in a V-shape but in a rather tight tweezer shape. If I was to put this thing on my face, would the elasticity be weak enough to only roll my skin or will the elasticity be stronger and actually cause the roller ends to be touching my bone ie. jawline?

If it is just touching my outer layer of epidermis, my skin, then what it does as it rolls along the face is to move around the adipose tissue making it slightly more uniform in distribution thus causing the face to be slightly smoother. Think of the big Zambonis (Ice resurfacer) which you find at ice skating rinks.

In terms of the application for massager, it seems to work well. In quite a few forums like HERE we find out that it is a nice product if you are looking to get a way to massage your cheeks and face. People like its stress lowering, comforting, therapeutic effects. The effects made by the few people who review show it helps in a psychological way which is probably a placebo. They say it relieves tension and maybe also reduces pain.

However, due to how it is touching and at what frequency on the face, there is a chance that repeated application of the hard surface can cause the jawline bones, the side mandibular area to actually thicken, due to the Wolff’s Law. Periosteal and appositional growth of the bone may lead to the bones to grow wider and thus the face wider too. Of course this is assuming the face slimmer is even touching the bone. If it is, it would cause it from continued use, but the effects would be so small it would be mostly unnoticeable, maybe only 1-2 mm of mandibular bone thickening.

In addition, if we remember our basic knowledge on massage theories, one of the biggest things that happens to human skin when you apply a loading motion like massages and acupressure is that it would lead to the blood vessels in that area to dilate leading to better and increased circulation and blood flow. This means the area would actually become slightly engorged. Think about how a person who gets hit by a blunt object will find that area later to be swollen. This would also lead to the opposite intended effect, making the face wider.

If the product does have any face slimming effects, its application on the skin must be very soft and it would cause the adipose tissue unders the skin to move away from the area where it is being rolled and applied at to another area. However it seems this thing is cheap at around $3-5 in most stores so it is worth a try just to see how it feels.

Something I realized today after I was getting really frustrated writing up a post which I think will be a breakthrough post was to wonder what exactly you as the regular reader and visitor is getting in terms of value from this website.

I know that I won’t be finding the solution to all of our problem, how to grow taller after our growth plates have closed, any time soon. If the reason you are coming to this website is to hope that one day soon I will figure out through my research an answer to our problem, I think you will have to wait a long time.

Since this type of research will take a long, long time so why do you, the regular visitor still come to the website?

I hope I am not being patronizing but I try to be realistic on my endeavor. It is hard. This thing is super difficult, harder than trying to get through a engineering undergraduate course load, a graduate theoretical physics class, or a medical school 4 year program. At least those things people in the past have been able to get through and succeed in.

Whether I succeed or not, I don’t get a prize or medal even if I succeed and find something maybe years later from now.

The research is long, intense, and requires that I delve into subjects which I previously tried to avoid with all effort. During my undergraduate engineering courses, I preferred physics and engineering problems, not biology and genetics studies. I am learning VERY SLOWLY each day and the fact that I have to use a Medical Dictionary every time I come across a word which I don’t know about (ie. immunohistochemistry, glucocorticoids, glycosaminoglycan) which is about once every 2 minutes means that it takes me about 3 days to pick up and fully understand what even one main idea means. I am moving slower than even a turtle, but a snail’s pace. Refer to slomo to the right.

I am not a genius, and I am not diligent in my work ethic. I lack many qualities which would allow me to succeed in most endeavors in life.

What I do have is that I am persistent and willing to give my effort in trying something which most people think is a waste of my time. However I am finding that as each month goes by, I get a little better at reading those PubMed articles, get slightly better at understanding the genetic implications of what the Authors write about, and can start to make some headway in coming up with some original thoughts of my own.

So far, most of what I have written about is from the work and effort of other people before me. All I try to do is relate and translate the work of people many standards of deviation smarter than me to a language and way that would let me and the readers understand better.

All that I hope for is that by the end of this year, 20013, I will be knowledgeable enough to be able to make some coherent, reasonably accurate theories and ideas on how we can start to try to get the human height to increase.

What I am noticing a lot recently is that some of the more interesting article posts are written in languages which I can not read (yet). So I am throwing a post out there looking for a people who can read, and translate Chinese and Korean scientific studies, articles, and papers.

Sometimes I come across papers in German, or Finnish, or Japanese but some of the more recent ones which I find the most interesting are both hard to find a complete full document file and text on as well as being in a language which I can’t read.

So there is two job roles that I hope people can take on to help make a contribution to the cause.

• I would like people to first go to  The Library section on where they can get just The Abstract, but still need the full document. The articles that are in another language are always in brackets, which is a nice thing that the PubMed database has already done, to indicate to native English readers that the paper is in another language.

• Then hope you can translate (you can use Google translate, Yahoo Babelfish, etc.) the documents completely, at least the introduction, discussion, and conclusion parts. The experimental, and method sections can be left untranslated, until we are sure that the experiment showed success in what we are hoping for.

I am willing to pay for these documents if there is a database somewhere which does hold them and require payment. However I prefer not to expend the effort, energy, and time to find these key papers/ documents. That hopefully would be the job of a person who would like like to make a contribution to the website.

At this point I can’t pay anything to the person who does this. The only thing I can do at this point is give them credit and put their name on any posts and papers we the researchers would write about.

I think it is time to reveal to the readers that what I had hypothesized in previous posts like “A Real Alternative To Limb Lengthening Surgery – Epiphyseal Growth Plate Regeneration, Regrowth, Implantation, And Transplantation Is Completely Possible (Big Breakthrough!)” already was being done in countries like China has been occurring already.

I remember going really fast through the PubMed studies long ago and tabulate everything into The Library and there were a few studies which I was suspicious about. Two studies I went through today revealed that the Chinese Government and Military have been successful in actually regrowing fully functional epiphyseal growth plates, have tested them on laboratory rabbits, and have shown the plates are functional in vivo after implantation.

Study #1: [The treatment of premature arrest of growth plate with a novel engineered growth plate: experimental studies]. – Author: Zhou Y, Lu S, Wang J, Zhang Y, Huang J. –  Source: General Hospital, Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Beijing 100853, China.

Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
To observe the role of the engineered growth plate (EGP) in the treatment of premature arrest of growth plate and to establish a novel treatment method for the premature arrest of the growth plate.

METHODS:
The engineered growth plates were cultured for the first time by using polylactic acid (PLA) as cell scaffold seeded with growth plate chondrocytes and they were implanted into the medial proximal defects of growth plates of New Zealand rabbit tibia. The degree of deformity of the tibia was evaluated by X-ray and the expression of collagen II mRNA of regenerating growth plate was detected by in situ hybridization technique.

RESULTS:
Little deformity appeared in the EGP group 8 weeks after operation. Some deformity was seen in the EGP group 16 weeks after operation, whereas it’s degree was much less than that of the control group (P = 0.0001). The degree of the angular deformity of the EGP precultured with bFGF and TGF-beta group was less than that of the EGP group (P < 0.05). The cells in the regenerating growth plate arranged in column and were stained blue by in situ hybridization technique.

CONCLUSION:

The EGP can prevent the formation of bony bridge and restore the growth of the damaged growth plate.

PMID: 11832153 – [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]Study #2: [Repair of upper tibial epiphyseal defect with engineered epiphyseal cartilage in rabbits]. – Author: Zhou Q, Li QH, Dai G. – Source: Department of Orthopaedics, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, P. R. China 400038.

Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To observe the effect of engineered epiphyseal cartilage regenerated in vitro with 3-D scaffold by chondrocytes from epiphyseal plate in repairing the tibial epiphyseal defect, and to explore the methods to promote the confluence between engineered cartilage and epiphyseal plate.
METHODS:
Chondrocytes were isolated enzymatically from the epiphyseal plates of immature rabbits, and then planted into the tissue culture flasks and cultivated. The first passage chondrocytes were collected and mixed fully with the self-made liquid biological gel at approximately 2.5 x 10(7) cells/ml to form cell-gel fluid. The cell-gel fluid was dropped into the porous calcium polyphosphate fiber/poly-L-lactic acid(CPPf/PLLA)scaffold, and a cell-gel-scaffold complex formed after being solidified. The defect models of 40% upper tibial epiphyseal plate were made in 72 immature rabbits; they were divided into 4 groups: group A(the cell-gel-scaffold complex was transplanted into the defect and the gap filled with chondrocyte-gel fluid), group B (with noncell CPPf/PLLA scaffold), group C(with fat) and group D(with nothing). The changes of roentgenograph, gross and histology were investigated after 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16 weeks of operation.

RESULTS:
In group A, the typical histological structure of epiphyseal plate derived from the engineered cartilage with a fine integration between host and donor tissues after 2 weeks. The repaired epiphyseal plate had normal histological structure without deformation of tibia after 4 weeks. The early histological change of epiphyseal closure appeared in the repaired area with varus and shortening deformation of the tibia after 8 weeks. The epiphyseal plate was closed in the repaired area with more evident deformation of tibia; the growth function of repaired epiphyseal plate was 43.6% of the normal one. In groups B, C and D, deformation of tibia occurred after 2 weeks; the defect area of epiphyseal plate was completely closed after 4 weeks. The deformation was very severe without growth of the injured epiphyseal plate after 16 weeks, and no significant difference was observed between the three groups.

CONCLUSION:
Engineered epiphyseal cartilage can repair the epiphyseal defect in the histological structure with partial recovery of the epiphyseal growth capability. Injecting the suspension of fluid chondrocyte-gel into the defects induces a fine integration of host and donor tissues.

PMID: 14663950   [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Study #3: [Repair of growth plate defects of rabbits with cultured cartilage transplantation]. – Author: Wang J, Yang ZM, Xie HQ. – Source: Department of Orthopedic Surgery, First University Hospital, West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu Sichuan, P. R. China 610041

Zhongguo Xiu Fu Chong Jian Wai Ke Za Zhi. 2001 Jan;15(1):53-6.
[Repair of growth plate defects of rabbits with cultured cartilage transplantation].