Note: For the report from last month where I gave both the yearly and monthly numbers of the traffic to the website, go to the post “Natural Height Growth December 2012 – Monthly And End Of Year Website Traffic Data Report”

One idea for a regular monthly post I have been doing almost since the beginning of the blog are these monthly reports on the traffic. I have been doing them for all the months and this post will be for the month of January in 2013.

Analysis & Interpretation: 

The month of January seems to have been a little slower and I can only assume that the reason the rate of increase in the traffic has been slowing down over time is from the rate of the number of posts being published here decreasing. In the beginning of the blog, There was around 170-180 blog posts put up in just 1 month!! Now the numbers have decreased to only around 30-50 per month.

What we see is that there was almost 34,000 total visits in the month of January, from the 1st day to the 31st day. The average # of people went from around the 850-900 per day mark in December to around 1000 total visitors/day. Around the middle of the month, the website went viral again where the traffic to the website almost increased by 3X from 1000 total visitors/day to almost 3000 total visitors/day. This was written about in the post “Website Traffic Volume Went Through An Extreme Increase And Other Technical Operational Details“. The news stations and national TV networks picking up on the story over the fact that Tanya Angus passed away and I was one of the earliest sites to report on the news and I got it from TheTallestMan.com website.

Sometimes the traffic is below the 1000 mark around the 950 mark, but other days sees the traffic increase to almost 1150 total visitors/day. Something I do see and realize is a problem is that many of the old and regular visitors to the website are not really coming or reading anymore and I wonder what is missing from the website. The website’s growth is indeed slowing down. This is expected since it is harder for larger websites (and larger things in general) to experience the same level of growth that might have been seen when the website was smaller. Going from 100 total visitors/day to 200 total visitors/day is much easier than going from 1000 total visitors/day to 2000. The very fact that a person’s own success can be their own downfall and that is sort of what is happening recently. Much more negative comments and reception have been appearing recently and the website is only getting slower and slower, and harder and harder to edit and change. There is just a lot more information that needs to be edited and changed.

Personal Note: 

On a personal note, I am in a new relationship with someone new so that has been taking up a lot of my time recently. There have been quite a few days when my social and personal obligations have forced me to not update or write for the website but I do find that I am getting a lot of personal satisfaction with this improvement in my life. I sort of realize now that I do my best work and are the most productive when I am single, focused, and slightly angry. That is sort of a hard state to be in at this point.

Recently while I was doing research on the link between aggrecan and its connection and effect on the cartilage, I came across this study which seems that suggest that by combining the hyaluronic acid with an external source of synovial fluid we can still get chondrogenic differentiation from mesenchymal stem cells in vivo.

After reading over the abstract a very simple idea came to me and made me wonder whether in vivo cartilage formation would be just easier to perform. If we remember from our research on microfracture surgery on a possible way to increase height, we note that the microfracture surgery was really very simple. You make a hole in the articular cartilage defect region with a awl and the hole will reach the below the initial bone surface to the sub-cortical level and get to the marrow when the MSCs are. The MSCs leak out and that clotting action creates a another cartilage in the defect’s place after about 2-4 months. However that cartilage would be with disorganized fibers known as fibrocartilage.

This may be one of the easiest proposed ways to increase height yet. The study below shows that if you infuse TGF-beta 1 into a culture of explanted MSCs from the marrow of horse, then the culture will under staining to check for proteoglycan and type 2 collagen see high levels. While the hyaluronic acid by itself does little in terms of anabolic chondrocyte formation, the hyaluronic acid with synovial joint fluid does have some chondrogenic ability. What I propose is a 4 step process for height increase.

1. Take X-rays of the individual’s knee region to figure out where exactly their articular cartilage ends and where the synovial joint begins.
2. We are targeting the region inside the synovial joint where the hyaluronic acid (as a GAG) and the synovial joint will be.
3. We make two incisions on the medial and lateral side of the end of the tibia cutting into the joint, so that the synovial fluid can reach into the inside of the epiphysis.
4. We inject TGF-Beta1 into the epiphysis, where it will be mixed with the HA and the SF. Since the fluid will flow into the marrow all three compounds will help the MCSs inside to go through chondrocyte differentiation.
5. The way the incision on the bone will be made will be a from the side to give the bone to heal in a certain way that the MSCs produced will create a band of fibrocartilage which will let is easier for the bone to expand longitudinally.
6. We make another injection of TGF-beta 1 at a high level, arund 200 ng/ mL into the joint itself to stimulate the chondrogenic property of the HA and SF already in the knee. This will also precent any leaking of MSCS out of the induced incision from diluting the effect of the TGF-Beta1.

The full text for the study is available from clicking the link.

Hyaluronic acid and autologous synovial fluid induce chondrogenic differentiation of equine mesenchymal stem cells: a preliminary study

Abstract

Mesenchymalstem cells(MSC) have the potential to differentiate into distinct mesenchymal tissuesincluding cartilage, which suggest these cells as an attractive cell source for cartilage tissue engineering approaches. Our objective was to study the effects of TGF-beta1, hyaluronic acid and synovial fluid on chondrogenic differentiation of equine MSC. For that, bone marrow was aspirated from the tibia of one 18-month-old horse (Haflinger) and MSC were isolated using percoll-density centrifugation. To promote chondrogenesis, MSC were centrifuged to form a micromass and were cultured in a medium containing 10 ng/ml TGF-beta1 or 0.1 mg/ml hyaluronic acid (Hylartil®, Ostenil®) or either 5%,10% or 50% autologous synovial fluid as the chondrogenesis inducing factor. Differentiation along the chondrogenic lineage was documented by type II collagen and proteoglycan expression. MSC induced by TGF-beta1 alone showed the highest proteoglycan expression. Combining TGF-beta1 with hyaluronic acid could not increase the proteoglycan expression. Cultures stimulated by autologous synovial fluid (independent of concentration) and hyaluronic acid demonstrated a pronounced, but lower proteoglycan expression than cultures stimulated by TGF-beta1. The expression of cartilage-specific type II collagen was high and about the same in all stimulated cultures. In summary, hyaluronic acid and autologous synovial fluid induces chondrogenesis of equine mesenchymal stem cells, which encourage tissue engineering applications of MSC in chondral defects, as the natural environment in the joint is favorable for chondrogenic differentiation.

© 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Today while I was being lazy I was getting my daily YouTube viral video fix and I came across a video on this old MTV show called NEXT where a group of people, usually 5 of the same sex, who get in a bus and would all vie to get the attraction and attention, or money of the person who is judging them. I decided to post this video up to show just how important height can be in real life situations and can lead to a bad first impression and rejection from the opposite sex as a potential dating partner.

I remember being sort of addicted in my younger days to watching teenage based dating shows on MTV in high school. MTV shows from the 2000s, last decade,  like Room Raiders, Eliminate, and NEXT were shows which I sort of learn some of my social skills from.

On this episode of NEXT a girl named Brittany at 19 years old comes on looking for a guy she can have fun with.

Th first guy to get off the bus was 18 years old named Sean. In less than 2 minutes after he got off the bus, immediately after introducing himself, she would eliminate him from the potential group of guys to be a dating partner.

She would say that “he is just not tall enough”. When a guy gets a rejection like that it just hurts to watch and he couldn’t think of any comeback except to make a self depreciating joke of “still waiting for that growth spurt”. She would reply with a sort of condescending tone of “good luck with that” and then make her rationalization that “I need a boyfriend that I can look up to, literally”. From the look of the video, it would appear that Sean was about the same height as Brittany but the angles may be off a little.

If I was to give my own thoughts on what this girl did I felt that it was not a nice to thing to reject a person due to something that they have no control over. Maybe this guy was already sensitive on his lack of height but her immediate rejection of him on national TV because of being too short may be much more painful than other situations. This situation shows that the lack of height may be the most detrimental against men in the area of dating and relationships. Very few people would reject another person immediately unless that is something that is lacking from the first impression. When it comes to being shorter than your peers, that first impression may not be as good.

The video is taken from this YouTube source HERE.

Something I have noticed from reading forums on the internet about the dating dynamics of the modern world is that a lot of men who are on the short side complain that because of their short stature, most females would reject them immediately based on that first impression. They would talk about the unfairness of the dating game and how it is set up.

First, I think a lot of men out there would agree with me that being height challenge does make the chances of succeeding in the dating world with females harder. There are already enough studies, anecdotes, and stories which validate this general bias or phenomena.

This issue is very sensitive and something that almost always causes the readers to jump up to express their own opinions. Like the color of one’s skin or the ethnicity one is born into, one can’t really change one’s height without trying to do something very dramatic.

In the dating world, one thing is clear. There is a lot of competition and everyone is trying to get some type of advantage. I remember once listening to a dating coach explain that one can view life that happens as a continuous, complex mating ritual. If life is just a complicated mating act, then having some innate physical attributes like being taller than one’s peers will easily put one at an advantage.

If we remember from our media like TV, magazines, and the internet one of the highest coveted females in the world are what are known as “supermodels”. These supermodels are what we young adult men would say come from the catalogs of Victoria Secret and the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

It is absolutely true that the concept of beauty and what consitute the ideal of being “beautiful” is very subjective and varies but it seems that most males in the western countries can overall agree that models, but especially supermodels are considered attractive.

We have women like..

• China based supermodel Ai Shang Zhen who is 6′ 0.5″
• China based Fei Fei Sun at 5′ 10.5″
• Brazil based Gisele Bundchen at 5′ 11″
• USA based Brooklyn Decker at 5′ 9″
• South Korea based Kang Seung-Hyun aka Hyoni Kang at 5′ 10″
• Germany based Heidi Klum at 5′ 9.5″
• Czech Republic based Petra Nemcova at 5′ 10″

For a more complete list of supermodels from Victoria Secret click the Wiki article HERE. The point is to show is that just for females alone, having increased height does seem to make one more attractive to some degree.

The clearest example which show that being tall will lead one to be considered for a modeling career is Brazil based Elisany da Cruz Silva. She stand at 6′ 9″ and she has already been featured on many TV shows from Japan and Germany. She has been already offered a few modeling positions and work. While she can be considered attractive, her incredible height brings much more attention to her and the increased attention on her causes many people to accentuate her looks.

If we now come back to the issue of the lamentations made by below average in height men, I can only sympathize with this plight. When it comes to the types of issues that people can still lament about there is almost none left except for maybe height, and heightism.

We all know that there is some stuff that we can’t really change.

1. Our age, since time moves forward for all of us. Everyone gets older.
2. Our skin color and ethnicity. If we have two parents who are both indian, we probably are not going to be born with blue eye color.
3. Our height.

These days, from what I see of the plastic surgery clinics in the rich areas of Seoul, South Korea I can confidently say that one can easily change one’s face now to be “more beautiful”. One can change the color of one’s hair with hair dye, bleaching.

When it comes to age, most people don’t really joke or make fun of old people. Overall, there are many countries which do revere the elderly for the wisdom and experience that they can give for the young people. So being old is no longer such a big issue.

As for our skin color and ethnicity. We all know that these days it is not politically correct to be bias or make fun of people based on their race or skin color anymore. When most people are asked whether they have issues with dating someone different than them in skin color or ethnicity, most of them said no. One of the worst things to be called is a racist. No one wants to be labeled that in multicultural societies.

In additon, subjects that can be changed like one’s profession, financial situation, and other similar aspects can all be changed with enough effort and persistence.

It would seem that the last real sanctuary where society accepted ridicule may be towards people who are on the short side.

Instead of racism, class discrimination, ageism, heightism is something that still exists and is almost readily accepted.

It is not considered ok for a girl or guy to reject a potential dating partner for their skin color or ethnicity without some social scolding. As for height, we now have cougars, older women who date younger men. The older man to younger women combination has always existed so the age issue is relatively easy to take care of.

The only thing that people can really complain of is over their height. The discrimination is very clear and strong. Being male and short has serious ramifications on one’s dating life.

Shorter men often become the “friends” or the “orbiters” , but rarely the “boyfriend”. They are considered safe and a sort of “backup plan” or Plan B in case a female doesn’t ever get to meet or find her tall, dark and handsome ideal man with all the qualities she is looking for before she reaches the age where she no longer has the looks for wield the power to control the thousands of men willing to partner up to her when she was younger. If we take a complete biological and evolutionary perspective on viewing the dating dynamics, we can see that humans in general are very self-serving and selfish in their mating selections.

I remember years ago seeing on internet dating forums the height issue being brought up all the time “Can Short Men Date And Succeed With Women? Will Girls Give Short Men A Real Chance?”

My personal answer is that they do have a chance, but they would have to prove themselves because of bad luck. It may not be fair that a great, caring, smart guy would be 5’5″ and always single while his inconsiderate, uncaring, rather stupid friend who is 6′ 3″ gets so many girls attracted to him. In life we know that rarely are we given something for free. Men in general work really hard to get what they think they deserve and are worthy of.

Whatever people feel lacking in, they will try to compensate or overcompensate for their insecurities or lack of confidence. The short man may realize that he has no control over his height but can exercise his mind to be smarter than his taller peers. His dedication towards his career as a overcompensation mechanism can propel him towards having more money and resources to woo the women he desires. While taller men may have won the genetic lottery and have a better chance in the beginning, they may not have developed the personality qualities which make them a “great guy”.

Something I have personally seen is that while the “hot girl” in her 20s and 30s may try to date the tall, more masculine, aggressive males, many of them would eventually choose to settle down with a shorter, more gentle and caring man in their later years. So yes, the short men do have a real chance, but they have to work a little harder and probably have to wait until the women they really want in life realize in time with life experience that maybe “taller it not always better”.

As a guy, I can tell the readers that for men in general, most of men dont have a height requirement for the type of girl that they would be willing to date. But females do. For females living in the old British based unit system, the magical cutoff point for datable men is 6′ 0″, 1.828 meters tall. For females in the developed nations which go by the metric system it is 1.80 meters tall, a little less than 5′ 11′. For some men who are shorter, the agony is real. Nobody likes getting rejected because it crushes our ego. We feel lacking and believe that we are special, unique, and worthy of the love we think we deserve.

If we however take a more objective point of view, the female half of the world population can make the claim that it is unfair that men judge women so quickly on looks and possibly age. A 45 year old single woman with a high demanding career may complain to her Facebook friends that men her age are on interested in dating the younger girls in their 30s and 20s. As we said before, our age is another one of those things that we can’t really control. There is no fountain of youth or time machine.

If as a short, young, virile male we find ourselves sexually frustrated that the women we want are not giving us the type of attraction and attention because we are too short, I hope we can keep the individualistic tendencies down a little and see the more objective perspective and realize that many women also suffer discrimination in the mating selection process.

Something strange I have found from looking at boards and forums on the internet is that the subject of the relative height of the standard heterosexual male-female couple is brought up quite a few times.

The google search term I used to search with was “Couple Height Difference” and the results were amusing and slightly interesting. Most of the results were to show me some of the crazy height differences between celebrities and other famous people from the website Frisky.com, CelebBuzz.com, and other media websites.

The pictures of some of the most extreme celebrity couples’ height differences include some common couples. They are

• Jessica Simpson and her football player husband
• Hayden Panetierre with old bf Wladimir Klitschko who was a professional boxer
• The very quick marriage of Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman
• The equally quick marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphreys
• Fergie and her husband (whose name I forgot)
• Shaq and his current gf who goes by the nickname Hoopz
• Kobe Bryant and his wife
• Eliza Dushku and bf Rick Fox
• Lamar Odom and the other Kardashian sister
• and a whole long list of other celebrities

Others like this forum question HERE posed on the dating website PlentyOfFish.com generated around 200 replies with everyone having their own opinions, personal baises and views being expressed. A lot of women wanted to throw their point of view in there.

Some common thoughts are…

• The man must be at least 4-5 inches taller than the girl.
• The ideal height difference is around 7-9 inches more for the man although the cut off is to be 5 inches taller.
• The man must be so much taller than the women that the girl can lean her entire head on his shoulders.
• The man should be taller than the girl
• The man must be taller then the girl in high heels by around 3-4 inches.
• The man must be at least 6 feet tall, the cut off point.
• The girl doesn’t care how tall he is
• The man doesn’t care how tall the girl is
• The man prefers the girl to be shorter than him
• The man prefers the girl to be around 2-3 inches shorter than him
• The man has a thing for tall girls
• The girl thinks tall men are sexier and give them more of a chance.
• Some joke about how the issue of height is negated when people get the horizontal position aka having sexual intercourse, sex, coitus.

From the forum called ENotAlone.com a poster writes about this issue and wonders whether the couple’s height difference can be too extreme. It seems that tall men are divided on their preferences. Some tall men prefer their female partners to be petite and others like someone closer to their height to avoid neck pain when bending down for the kiss.

On a more fun note HERE is a tumblr blog which features pictures of couples where the height difference is reversed from the standard where the girl is taller than the guy. A guy would comment there that at 6′ 0″ he was rejected by a girl who was 4′ 10″ for being too short. Really???

However let’s get back to the original question, “What is the optimal or perfect height difference or height proportions for a standard heterosexual male-female couple?”

The answer is deceptive since everyone has their own preferences, baises, and opinions. It seems that the majority of women would like their potential male romantic romantic partners to be at least taller than them, especially if they are more on the short side. For taller females, the opinion for the type of guy they are interested in results in a bipolar distribution.

Tall women either are really cool and okay with the idea of dating someone shorter than them due to the issue of the numbers game itself or they are very adamant that they must be with someone at least taller.

The majority of men seem to prefer at least intellectually the idea of a shorter female although I have found from reading more forums on dating websites like PlentyOfFish.com that there is a great number of men who might have some sort of fetish or “thing” for tall women. There is even a website on the internet dedicated specifically for men who are on the shorter side for women who are on the taller side. It is appropriately entitled TallWomen.Org. I have no opinions or issues with the website.

Many other forums would bring up this issue too like Soompi.com, Yahoo Questions,  SimilarMinds.com, The Student Room, StraightDope.com, AsianFanatics.com, BPS Research Digest, AsianFanatics.com (again),  and a few other sites. From only glancing at these new resources it seems the general opinion for some people is that the height difference should be around 4-5 inches.

Of course we should try to be more scientific. From PubMed study ” Variable preferences for sexual dimorphism in height as a strategy for increasing the pool of potential partners in humans” the researchers state in the abstract that..

“In addition to absolute height, a possibly important mate-choice criterion may be relative height, i.e. the extent of sexual dimorphism in stature (SDS = male height/female height) between oneself and a potential partner. Here, I demonstrate that people adjust their preferences for SDS in relation to their own height in order to increase the potential pool of partners….”

So it seems that maybe the relative height between the male and  female could be more important than the absolute heights. The study found that from the group of subjects being measured, the average height of the women was around 5′ 5″ while the average height of the men was around 5′ 11″. The results showed that the people judging their potential partners chose the height of their partner due to the relative height of themselves. The results also showed that from comparing 3 types of relative height ratios/difference in pictures of couples, none of the selectors chose the have the couple where the female was taller than the male.

The researchers writes, “The mean heights for those who chose the pair representing the mean SDS in the population (180.4 cm for men and 167 cm for women) were almost equal to the mean heights for the two sexes in the studied group.”

This means that the summed and than averaged out numerical value for what statistical software has come out with is not that women who are 5′ 5″ would prefer men who are 5′ 11″ which would suggest a 6 inch height difference. The right concluded perspective is that the optimum height difference may not be a difference but a height ratio, or height proportion. 5′ 5″ is 65 inches. 5′ 11″ is 71 inches. 71 divided by 65 gives a value of 1.0923 or 1.09. It seems the “perfect” average SDS as the researchers call it is for the man to be around 9% taller in height than the girl. At least that is what the science says.

But as always, everyone is different in their taste and desires. To each his and her own.

I think this is one of those posts that has been something that was always supposed to be written but the idea was always overlooked due to the fact that the simple idea of stretching would lead to some height increase.

So can stretching help someone grow taller? The simple answer is yes.

However the hard question is actually “How should I stretch to get the height increase that I desire?”

Most people who find the website or email me will often ask for around 3-5 inches of extra height increase. Now that is a considerable amount of change in the body. Going from a guy or girl who was originally 5′ 9′ and making them 6′ 0″ or even 6′ 2″ is something that is very hard to believe. But can it be done? The question becomes…

Is there some type of exercise routine that would lead a person to gain 3 – 5 extra inches of height? The simple answer is probably not.

However getting around 1-2 inches of extra height is reasonable and possible but only for a small percentage of the population. Most people won’t get even 1 inch of extra permanent height, much less 2 or 3 inches. 1 inch is totally reasonable and possible. 2 inches is really, REALLY improbable but I have found cases of people who did get 2 extra inches of height increase, but most of the time, that 2 inches was not permanent and the height would eventually shrink back down to just 1 full inch of permanent change.

Now, let’s stop the talking and see which exercises would be helpful in getting that 1-2 extra inches.

From high school biology, we know that the human body has it’s overall frame/structure determined by a substance known as bone which is what holds the human body up. Without the bones, but especially the long bones which stand vertically up, the body would just be a glop of organs and skin on the ground. Bones are critical in keeping the vital organs safe as well.

From the Wikipedia article on Bone,for most people, when they are born they have over 270 individual bones, but after they reach adulthood, many of the separate bones they had when born have fused together to leave 206 medically defined bones.

From the picture of the skeleton to the left, for our purposes we would like to gain height from stretching.

However, we know that in stretching, we are only stretching our muscles, ligaments, which are other types of tissue in the human body. Muscle and ligament tissue is far more flexible, elastic, than bone.

Stretching muscle means we are working & exercising our muscle, but are we working on stretching our bones as well when we stretch? No, we are not.

This means that in the human body, when we decide to do “stretches” we are not going to affect the bone shape or curvature of a physically mature and developed adult person. The way that bones are aligned, connected, or shaped will not change from stretching, since stretching only affects tissues that are more elastic.

However if we look at what types of tissue will determine the overall height of people, we see that the bones we have in our body are going to determine about 97% of all the height in our body. This means that only around 3% of all the height in the human’s body can be changed through stretching exercises.

Side Note: If you are curious at how I was able to come up with the idea that the bones will determine around 97% of ones height, I refer the reader back to an article on the height increase changes seen in astronauts, which saw their height increase by around average 3% while living in a weightless environment without the downward force of gravity. From GeekSystem.com article “Ultrasound Tests May Help Figure Out Why Astronauts Grow Taller While In Space”

So let’s look at the types of tissues..

1. Stretching won’t change the bone so let’s forget about trying to increase our overall height by more than 3% of what we are at right now.

Example: This means that a person who is 5′ 6″, or 66 inches should not expect more than 66*(0.03) = 1.98 inches ~ 2 inches in possible increase, using at least simple stretching methods.

2. Due to the elastic nature of the muscles, which can contract and extend out, stretching will extend the muscles, but that means that once the amount of tensile force exerted to pull the muscles are apart are removed, the muscle tissue will just retract back to a smaller, form.

3. The ligaments. – These will be connecting to the bone to other types of tissues or to each other.

4. The skin like the muscle can be stretched out but then like the muscle, it will just fold back into it’s un-stretched form.

5. Everything else like blood vessels, small glands,

However we realize that to manipulate our height, we have to manipulate tissue that make up our height.

Our height is the sum of….

• Our skull size
• Our backbones/vertebrate structure
• Our hip bones, which includes the labels of hip bones parts to the right. 
• Our femur
• Patella
• Tibia
• The small bones in our feet
• The hind feet bone or Calcaneus

So if we wanted to increase vertically, we can try to manipulate and elongate any of these bones in the vertical direction. However since this post is about stretching, the exercise will not deform or bend any of these bones in the way that we want.

So we have to ask , besides the hard bones that make up our height, what other types of tissue are there?

The main other tissues is cartilage and fibrous tissues

• We have the intervertebral disks
• The cartilage in the ends of our bones
• Some space in our synovial joints which is filled with intercellular fluid  
• Some ligaments connecting the bones.

Since the ligaments connecting to bone have almost no thickness, we can’t focus on those ligaments.

As for the intercellular fluid space in our synovial joints, specifically the knees, we might be able to increase the volume up a little as well as the pressure in the space, but we are talking about liquid space being able to overcome the gravitational force of our body above the knees pushing down on it.

As for our cartilage, we might be able to do something with our cartilage using stem cells therapy through implants, but that is not stretching. We can’t stretch to get thicker cartilage at the end of our bones.

This only leaves the intervertebral disks left. They are the only things we seem to really be able to manipulate for increased height. The disks are not made of cartilage but of a fibrous tissue which at this point I am not sure are the components.

Recently I had talked about the idea of whether doing back bridging stretching exercises will lead to height increase in the post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Back Bridging Exercises To Stretch The Torso And Vertebrate” and I had personally concluded that stretching in that bend direction will not lead to height increase. Tyler seems to agree with me on that point. I could be wrong about this conclusion and it may be possible with a small minority of people to get body elongation benefits from stretching in the arched back positon, but I would suspect that stretching in that way will not lead to height increase for most people, but might contribute to disk compression and decreased height.

This leaves only possibly 3 main stretching exercises which could lead to any height increase.

These are….

1. Bend down forward while sitting on your butt and stretching your back out (with your head down) trying to puff out your torso like a cobra. See pic below.

2. Twisting your upper torso side to side while keeping the hips still to get the disks to be more flexible and elastic.

3. Putting your arms up high, close together, pull up, and lean to one side stretching one side , and then alternating to the other side.

From what I can think of right now, these are the only 3 exercises which will have any type of real effect on possibly making the disks a little wider and thicker.