Me: One very interesting idea for possible height increase that was brought to my attention was the possiblity of using intermittent fasting to grow taller. From a quick scientific point of view, there is some validity. Fasting is wher eyou don’t eat. Intermittent fastinf measn you go through the cycle of eating and not eating over and over again. When you fast, you get hungry. When you first start out the hunger cycle, the peptide/ protein ghrelin is released into the human system. If we remember, ghrelin is what is known as a GnRH, or Gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue. From the wikipedia article on Ghrelin HERE…

Ghrelin is a 28 amino acid hunger-stimulating peptide and hormone that is produced mainly by P/D1 cells lining the fundus of the human stomach andepsilon cells of the pancreas.^[1] Ghrelin levels increase before meals and decrease after meals. It is considered the counterpart of the hormone leptin, produced by adipose tissue, which induces satiation when present at higher levels. In some bariatric procedures, the level of ghrelin is reduced in patients, thus causing satiation before it would normally occur.^[2]

Ghrelin is a potent stimulator of growth hormone from the anterior pituitary gland.^[3] The ghrelin receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor, known as thegrowth hormone secretagogue receptor. Ghrelin binds to the GHSR1a splice-variant of this receptor which is present in high density in the hypothalamus, pituitary as well as vagal afferent cell bodies and vagal afferent endings throughout the gastro-intestinal tract.^[4][5]

Ghrelin plays a significant role in neurotrophy, particularly in the hippocampus, and is essential for cognitive adaptation to changing environments and the process of learning.^[6][7] Ghrelin has been shown to activate the endothelial isoform of nitric oxide synthase in a pathway that depends on various kinases including Akt.^[8]

Me: Ghrelin does indeed stimulate the growth hormone. Plus, we have seen that too much food from constant eating is probably not good for height increase. Sure, we all realize that malnitrition will stunt a kids’s growth, but would too much food stunt a kids’s growth? I think it does. If we remember that we come from a paleolithic ancestry, our ancestor’s diet habits involved long time intervals where we had no food to times of abundance, like when a buffalo was finally hunted and killed after a week of planning and work.

From my studies on the ESWT, LIPUS< PEMF, and DC/AC E&M field stimulation, It is almost always that having a non-linear, more cyclical signal transduction, like the sinusoidal tapping of loading and clamping from the LSJL technique is better than a consistent rate of external stimuli intensity. We are seeing over and over again that a quick external application of stimuli in cyclical fashion helps promote cell division and proliferation. If we decide to cycle our eating habits and go hungry in a cyclical rhythmic way, it might make sense that the human body might be able to actually grow taller. It thus might be more beneficial for height increase to go through a few cycles of fasting to cause hunger, causing ghrelin release, causing more growth hormone release. Plus, when a person is hungry, they feel weak so they go to sleep. Since sleep is when the most height increase happens, maybe intermittent fasting might be a good idea. The main arguement for the idea of fasting is that reduction of insulin to the brain and that the cells in the body are given a chance to repair themselves since it does take a lot of cellular energy and work to process food and that leads to wear and tear.

From wikipedia….

Mechanism of action

Ghrelin has emerged as the first identified circulating hunger hormone. Ghrelin and synthetic ghrelin mimetics (the growth hormone secretagogues) increase food intake and increase fat mass.^15][16] by an action exerted at the level of the hypothalamus. They activate cells in the arcuate nucleus^[17][18] that include the orexigenic neuropeptide Y (NPY) neurons.^[19] Ghrelin-responsiveness of these neurons is both leptin- and insulin-sensitive.^[20] Ghrelin also activates the mesolimbic cholinergic-dopaminergic reward link, a circuit that communicates the hedonic and reinforcing aspects of natural rewards, such as food, as well as of addictive drugs, such as ethanol.^[21][22][20] Indeed, central ghrelin signalling is required for reward from alcohol.^[23] and palatable/rewarding foods.^[24][25] There is also strong evidence that ghrelin has a peripheral appetite modulatory effect on satiety by affecting the mechanosensitivity of gastric vagal afferents, making them less sensitive to distension resulting in over eating.^[5]

….Ghrelin through its receptor increases the concentration of dopamine in the substantia nigra, a region of the brain where dopamine cell degeneration leads to Parkinson’s disease. Hence ghrelin may find application in slowing down the onset of Parkinson’s disease.^[48]

From a website called Grow Taller Pyramid Secret…

On the sidebar of the Grow Taller Pyramid Secret website you have a facebook widget that shows how many people “like” the Grow Taller Guru , who I will assume is Lance Ward. I would guess that this website is a affiliate site to sell a E-product. From the website….

So, your question would be. How does Intermittent Fasting help one to grow taller?

Firstly, intermittent fasting or skipping meals can help reduce brain insulin level. Insulin is a peptide hormone, produced by beta cells of the pancreas, and is central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, skeletal muscles, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood. Therefore with reduced insulin level, a person’s body have lesser fat, and this can aid the process of growth and development a lot more efficiently, which is necessary for growing taller.

From ThePrimalParent.com website HERE…

Fasting in Paleolithic Times
It is a little narrow minded to assume that children have been eating three squares since the dawn of time. Life isn’t so easy outside of our opulent kitchens where refrigerators, boxes, and cans unnaturally prolong the shelf life of food. Hunter gatherers actually have to leave their camps to kill or gather foods, collect materials for a fire, return to the camp to light the fire, and then wait for their catch to cook. I’m guessing this ordeal takes a little longer than it takes to open a box of cereal and pour pasteurized milk over it.

J. Stanton just published a great article this week about hunter gatherers skipping breakfast and says that skipping lunch is probably even quite normal.

The guide standing next to the Masai man is six feet tall.

The Maasai people of Africa generally eat two meals a day – in the morning and at night. The Masai are exceptionally tall people and some of the healthiest that Weston Price observed in his study of traditional peoples in the early 1930s. This was before modern foods had been introduced into the diet of the Masai.

Clearly, their bodies don’t lack nutrients. They eat plenty of food at meal time. They aren’t calorically or nutritionally deprived. They merely condense their intake between longer intervals.

Intermittent fasting does not significantly reduce calories. In fact, the object of intermittent fasting is not caloric restriction. Regular large, high nutrient meals satisfy a person’s nutritional needs and provide the building blocks needed to grow. Not only does fasting not stunt growth it increases growth hormone. An increase in growth hormone can actually boost a child’s height making them grow taller than they otherwise would.

The effect of boosting or at least maintaining average height of mammals while fasting was observed in one of the most famous studies done on rats and intermittent fasting called Apparent Prolongation Of The Life Span Of Rats By Intermittent Fasting. The study was performed with baby rats.

“The fasting was begun at the age of 42 days and was continued until the rats died.”

Rats are not fully grown until 6-7 months of age and have an average life span of 2-3 years.

“In some cases, the average femoral lengths of the fasted rats at death were greater than, or equal to, those of the controls and, in other cases, the rats were only a little smaller. In short, intermittent fasting seems to make it possible to increase the life span to some extent without stunting the rats.”

A Tradition of Fasting Through Illness

Traditionally, people fast when they’re sick, often called a cleanse. The same trend is observed in animals both domesticated and wild. The healing mechanism is called autophagy.  Alice Villalobo describes how autophagy benefits our cells.

“Scientists have observed that cell debris—proteins and organelles—gets encapsulated by tiny rearrangements of membranes and moved into empty spaces called vacuoles. The transportation of the cell debris is a pathway now called “cytoplasm-to-vacuole targeting,” or the Cvt pathway. Autophagy is the sequestration of the cargo material, bulk cytoplasm or specific organelle within double-membrane structures and its delivery to the vacuole for further degradation.”

It almost seems abusive to prohibit the process of autophagy in children by denying them the right to fast. While children may not need to fast for as long as do adults, the benefits and safety of short, intermittent fasting has its roots in the history of traditional cultures, illness, and even in religion.

I remember once reading from the blog by James Altucher that to make a real connection with the people who read your writings, you have to bleed, be even more  honest, more transparent, and then bleed some more. 

To Quote his message..

“”Bleed in the first line. We’re all human. A computer can win Jeopardy but still not write a novel. You want people to relate to you, then you have to be human. Penelope Trunk started a post a few weeks ago: “I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And I took a picture.” That’s real bleeding. My wife recently put up a post where the first line was so painful she had to take it down. Too many people were crying.””

From quote from another one of his blog posts (source HERE)…

“”…Bleeding is about sharing a situation that we can all relate to: usually disgusting, embarassing, and humiliating, and finding the truth in it….””

I don’t really read many blogs but James’s writing is some of the most honest, real, and raw stuff I’ve ever seen. The level of honesty and rawness he brings to his writings make me feel so innocent and young sometimes. And I’m not young at 28.

I remember a person once gave me the exercise of asking me to calculate how many days left I probably have in this life. Since I am already 28 and I probably will live to the average US male life expectancy age of 80, that means I will have about 52*365~19,000 days.

That’s how many days I have left to live, about 19,000 days. When I had come to see that my inevitable death could be so concrete and finalized from putting a measurable, calculated value on it, it really drove the message deep into my mind. I am going to die, and there is nothing I can do about it. A metaphoric image would be where I imagine my self in a conveyer belt with my head held down in the wooden block of a guillotine being slowly rolled to the blade. I can’t twist or lift my head to see how far away is that blade, but I know that it will be around. As time moves on, I get close and closer to that blade. I know that I have a 99% chance that in 20,000 or less my head will one day meet that guillitone blade. And it frightens me to the very core of my being.

I guess my way of interpreting his message is that I got to be more honest and more real with my writings and messages. So it is time to tell you another secret, a hidden fact which I wanted to hide from you, so that you wouldn’t find out but I can now release.

Here is the secret: I would have never started this website and blog if I hadn’t been so emotionally damaged and detroyed by my girlfriend who left me earlier this year. On the same day she told me that she wanted to end our relationship through the iPad 2 I bought her just a month ago, she started dating a new guy, the current guy she is with. Yeah she left me.

My first reaction was desperation and confusion. I couldn’t do a damn thing. She was at the moment on the other side of the world, in another country. I was completely helpless. I knew words at that point was useless and that if I wasn’t in front of her, I would have no way to control or handle the interaction. All she would have had to do was click one button and she would not have to see me ever again.

I guess looking back on it, my reaction was sort of normal when a guy gets left by his first true love. Devastation is not a strong enough word to describe the type of pain I felt on that night. When you hear those stories of guys and gals who go crazy and insane because the person they were with leaves them, I want to say that the stories were talking about my situation. I lost it completely.

I got angry. I was depressed for at least 6 months afterwards. I had to call a suicide hotline that night she left because I thought my world was gong to collapse. I would call every suicide hotline I could find because I was scared.  I was scared that I would kill myself if I didn’t watch my own emotions. I didn’t want to die but I also didn’t want to feel the extreme emotions going through my body. After the 1st month, I went and saw two therapists about this issue. They didn’t help. What they could say? They could not offer any real advice on the steps to take to make the emotions at least decrease a little.

What she never told to her parents, what they didn’t know was the baby. There was a pregnancy, and a quick abortion. She wanted it but I didn’t. I wanted to keep the baby but she didn’t.

If I try to project into the future, I know that 20 years from now, when she finally manages to figure who she is, find the happiness she couldn’t find with me, I will get a call from her. I’ll pick up that phone and she will try to apologize for choosing to go through with the abortion. She’ll also want to apologize for hurting me so long ago, because she wants to find forgiveness so that she won’t have that guilt eat inside of her. She wants to avoid, run away, and escape from the pain, and I still hate and resent her for not being brave and just dealing with the negative emotions in the first place.

I know I can forgive her for leaving me in time. I can forgive her for immediately dating another guy the exact same day she dumped me. Anger and sadness can go away with time.

However I don’t know if I can forgive her for the abortion. Death is something you can’t reverse. Lord Tennyson in his poetry In Memmoriam A.H.H. wrote the now immortal phrase…

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;‘
Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

I don’t regret ever meeting her because of her love. I had so many amazing experiences and memories with her. I don’t regret her leaving me. That’s okay now.

The biggest problem is regret. That is the killer which I have never been able to get rid of. Sure, I have read enough self-help books to intellectually realize that mantra by self help gurus of “life each day to the fullest” or “I don’t have any regrets on my life decisions”. I couldn’t do that. I did have regrets. I do realize that I do get lazy and lethargic. Sometimes I don’t want to do anything expect lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling. And the next day I feel regret that I lost another day in being unproductive, in not giving what I could back to this world. I then would feel another layer of self-awareness that I was beating myself up over my laziness.

I regret that I was never even given the chance to love my child. We never even found out the sex of our baby. I paid for the abortion, she felt relieved that she could go back to her care-free reponsible less life of the average normal college female, and we then went out to have sushi. I think at that time, we both wanted to cover up that experience in whatever way we could, and she would use repression to push the thought out of her mind.

I remember that the Holocaust and Death Concentration Camp survivor Elie Wiesel who wrote “Night” could not even talk about his experiences on what had happened for 10 years after the WWII and the  Holocaust was over. Many holocaust survivors might not even talk about it for 20, 30s years and some people just never talk about it. It is the normal human reaction to block out the memory and any negatively associatied emotions and feelings of such a horrible thing by never reopening up that wound again. The human mind just repress down that memory and never let it out for healing. And that is okay. That is how some people deal with bad experiences. After almost a year, I think I can now open up my heart again and reveal what I had been keeping inside.

I remember telling her that she won’t realize this mistake until the day she finally has her first child, when after the pregnancy and labor, she finally gets to hold her baby in her arms for the first time. She will cry, and she will realize what it is like to finally, for the first time in her life love something or someone so unconditionally that all you wanted to do was make her happy. Then she would finally realize that I was right, but it had to take maybe a decade of life experience, learning, and mistakes for her to realize it. She doesn’t care right now. She says that even if she would realize later, at this point in her life, all she cared about was her career. She was worried about what her parents would think of her. She was worried that she would give up her career. I understand where she is coming from emotionally but I don’t believe that she understands where I was coming from emotionally.

I know I will carry this to my grave and feel the weight of regret only get heavier with time as life continues forward. I have lost my own innocence.

One of my personal mentors is Anthony Robbins who was one of the founders of the whole coaching and self improvement movement in the 80s. I have both of his most famous works, “Awaken the Giant Within” and “Unlimited Power”. The main technique he has done his entire life to reach the success he has is based on a very simple idea, Modeling: Find out who are the people who are already successful, figure out what they are doing, and learn from them. It would be extremely curt and stupid of me to try to condense all of his work and material into one central message so I will try to do it in three main points. If I was to take two things from everything he was ever wrote it is this.

1. Just take massive action right now and don’t stop.

2. Learn, make as many mistakes as possible, but make the corrections and move fast. 

So far, I have found that people can view life in 6 main ways. Maybe there are more ways but for right now, I have found 6 types of perspectives people can take. Sure, people are not 1-dimensional so each individual person will have their own unique combination or permutation of the 6 life perspectives.

• I. For some people, they choose to view life as an experience to have fun, to experience pleasure, so they chase pleasure. What drives them is the immediate gratification. They look at life as a process and try hard to live for the moment. They don’t sweat the small stuff, and when bad unexpected things happen in their life, they roll with it and just adapt and react to it but by being flexible, understandng, and tolerant.
• II. For other people, they choose to view life as a set of responsibilitys and obligations. They are chasing the accolades, the degrees and promotions, They are calculated and think in terms of everything in terms of investment and trading.
• III. For other people they view life as a battle, as a type of competition, Their perspective is Machivallean and think like Sun Tzu.
• IV. For other people, they view it as a sprint, something they have to race through as fast as possible. They want to finish their schooling fast, get promoted quickly, and make their fortune as quickly as possible. They are the type to not stop and experience the things in life at a deeper level.
• V. For other people, they view life as a process for growth. They are continuously searching to learn more, develop their personality, and understand the world more. They are the ones who goes to school ot study psychology and philosophy. They go to pilgrimages to India to find
• VI. Finally, you have people who think in terms of contribution, in terms of service and giving. For me, that is my path. I know that I am going to die. I don’t want to die and leave this world without giving people at least something.

It took me a decade of living and 4 main critical points for me to finally decide to take real action to fulfill this strange desire to find  a way to make the world better.

I. I realized that I was going to die, and I saw a clearly defined time limit on when it would happen. In the grand scheme of things, 20,000 days really is not a lot. Eckhart Tolle in his worldwide best seller “The Power Of Now” talked about the need for us as people in this modern, fast pace world to finally reign in our minds to stand still and be in the moment. It took me years to finally calm my mind long enough to see who I really am. When I turned to myself and could see that this “Self” or “I” would one day cease to exist, I immediately felt myself become instinctually scared, at the most basic level. My primordial reptilian brain felt the fear of death, and it was trying to run away from it. This was the experience of fear.  This was the first insight. However, it was still not enough to make me decide finally to stop fucking around, talking bullshit to make myself feel better, and actually finally taking action.

II. I realized that the one person who I could have loved unconditionally and have given my life to, my lost son or daughter, would never be, would never even live for 1 second, to know and experience life. I never even got the chance. They were never even given the chance. This was the experience of regret. This was the second insight. The emotion of regret gets heavier and heavier as life continues. Life is not easy, and it will only get harder and harder as time goes on. Like from the movie Rocky Balboa…”Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.” (source) . For me, this was STILL NOT enough to change my behavior and thinking. It really is that hard to change.

III. I had to experience the loss of love, of the rejection of my ability to completely care about someone and for them to not give a fuck about me. I had to experience so much pain, at such a deep, such a raw, and visceral level for me to fundamentally change my thinking process, my believe system, and my actions. This was the experience of sorrow. In the classic novel loosely based on the founder of the religion Buddhism, Shakyamuni Gautama, “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse, the final lesson that the original Prince Siddhartha had to learn was the lesson on love. In the novel, we find that in terms of development, the main character had to go through many phases in life to finally reach the state which so many mysticists and seekers through the ages call “Enlightenment“. First he had to leave his life which was already set up for him. It was filled with comfort and luxury, which he had to first choose to deny. Then he would have to learn from teachers and reach the conclusion that ultimately, no teacher can directly show him what is enlightenment. He is the one who must find out himself. Blindly following another person, no matter how wise they are, will not allow the individual fully comprehend. Along the way, he must experience romantic love and the primal emotions of lust and sex, which is absolutely critical in a fully developed person’s experience. He will grow older, and finally realize what it is to love unconditionally. That son would eventually not understand his love and he finally has felt all of life’s most basic levels of pain and emotion

This was probably the real lesson that most people needed to learn in life. For most people this emotion is what causes what psychologists call an emotional breakthrough. While the emotions of fear and regret are emotions that are negative and feel like an attack which cause the person to resist and defend their “ego” the emotion of Sorrow is what lets a person to relax and stop resisting the world so much. Sorrow is when the person can open their heart and allow for themselves to finally feel the pain they are so afraid of. This was the last trigger I needed.

Anthony Robbins stated very wisely when he claims that at the most fundamental level “Humans relate most easily through pain”. We all know, understand, and can feel pain. We’ve all experienced such pain and will do anything to avoid feeling that type of pain. However, I realize now that this type of deep pain is an ABSOLUTE requirement for most people to really change their life and their behavior. Most people just don’t have the will power, the drive, and the motivation to turn their life into a masterpiece.

IV. I had to finally realize that what I wanted in my life, I had to do something and take real action to make it happen. I am taking full responsibility for my actions in my life and going to take real action to manifest what I will and desire from life. This was the realization and experience of will. From my will, I can use my determination and persistence to take action. Nietzsche wrote about the concept of “Will To Power” and is quoted for stating “”world is the will to power—and nothing besides!“” My own personal interpretation of his work is that even if the world is to beat down on the person, there is still at a core level the impulse which is probably reptilian to achieve, pursue, and strive for something. I was a huge reader of Nietzsche in high school and tried to reconcile the loss of morality due to my atheistic upbringing and the nihilistic extremism which is so easily reached if one pushes brute logic to explaining the world. When there is no system of rules, philosophy, or values to hold one’s identity in place, one realizes that one is really just standing above the abyss of nothingness and one has to find  a way inside to be okay with that. If not, one goes into madness like what eventually happened with Nietzsche. You are not standing on something real so it is your responsibility and right as a free being to choose what is your purpose and actions in life. All the things other people try to do in the world around you is just to try to win your heart and mind. However if you want to be free and be your own person, you have to stop the external thoughts trying to reach you and reach a life conclusion from the inside and manifest whatever you want to the outside world. This was the last insight.

Me: What we are seeing from this study is a correlation with the old wive’s tale that the taller you are, the more likely you are to get back pain, especially the lower type. Sure, common sense dictates that if you have more mass on the torso for the interverterbal disks and back muscles to hold up, they are more likely to fracture and be crushed, causing cerebro-spinal fluid leakage on the nerves on the vertebrate. Of course, I am just describing a common pathology known as “bulging disks” or “herniated disks”. If you are above a certain percentile in the height distribution, your risks and chances for getting lower back pain surgery goes up dramatically. This sort of means that being short has a few good qualities to it. The most obvious being that we see the direct correlation that shorter people have less chance for developing cancer.

From PubMed study link HERE…

Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2010 Jan 15;62(1):125-7.

Are tall people at higher risk of low back pain surgery? A discussion on the results of a multipurpose cohort.

One rather simple and obvious idea for anyone interested in achieving height increase is to visit a chiropractor. From my personal experience it seems that chiropractors are not actually licensed medical physicians but are licensed in an area of study which is based on non-scientific principles (ie. alternative medicine). However, the study of human anatomy and the knowledge of musculoskeletal pathology does seem to allow a chiropractor to be able to help people with their body pains. I guess the major difference between chiropractors, and say licensed physical therapists or massage therapists is that the original theory is based on different ideas, although the result from all three practices are for the same thing, which is relief from pain, increased mobility and flexibility, and proper movement.

Going to the chiropractor seems to be very similar to rolfing and that means there is some spinal and vertebrate manipulation and “realignement”. From source, a questioner who was 14 asked a practicing chiropractor whether they can help him achieve some height. The answer eventually reached the idea that by correcting for what chiropractors terms “vertebral subluxation” they can help the patient achieve optimum living. The point being made from the response is that maybe chiropractor will help the person asking the question in getting them to reach an optimum level of living, but they don’t promise to help them achieve height at any point.

I think the overall conclusion is that for most people who don’t have very good posture and have some curvature in their back, going to a chiropractor may indeed lead to some height increase but that is through them aligning the spine straight. The spine can only be staighten so much and.

I looked around and found that HeightQuest already looked into the possibility of using Chiropractor and Massage to increase height and grow taller HERE. As quoted…

“…Chiropractic adjustments also help adjust the discs back into alignment preventing disc degeneration.  It’s much easier to prevent disc degeneration than to try to find methods to encourage disc regeneration.  So as a means to help increase height chiropractic care is more of a means to maintain height or not to cancel out any height gains you get from intervertebral disc growth…”

Me: I guess the conclusion from his post is that the practice of Chiropractry like Rolfing, and Accupressure, all have some benefits for height gain, whether it is from preventing height loss from disk degeneration but also to a lesser extend regain height through disk regeneration, which I don’t believe is even possible using only chiropractor techniques.

From a MedHelp.org discussion HERE…

It seems the answer given by a real M.D. is that using chiropractry will not lead to permanent height increase which I agree with. The height will increase from spinal decompression after the downward force of gravity is removed through, say sleeping or inversion tables, but after one has to go right side up again, there is no hard support to hold the height increase up so it will just collapse back down on itself.

From google, there are a few other articles like HERE which apparently was written by a Chiropractor practicing in Singapore which says the same thing – As quoted from the article…

“…From a bio-mechanical standpoint, a spine that is aligned would be longer, giving a taller appearance. So it might be a misnomer when patients say that they have grown taller, when in actual fact, they are the same height; it is just that they have straightened up!”

I found more sites like How To Grow Taller At 40 from EHow.com which gives a nice step by step guide on what to do. Another place was Zimbio.Com. This might be one of the only ways to increase one’s height once one reaches past a certain age, at least to recover lost height and prevent height loss. The steps are copied and pasted below.

There’s a reason that virtually all growth happens before the end of adolescence. At either end of your long bones are areas of tissue known as epiphyseal plates, or “growth plates.” These plates are soft and flexible during childhood and adolescence, allowing the surrounding bones to grow. At some point during adolescence, though, the growth plates harden, and growth is essentially finished.

However, adults lose on average between one and two inches of height due to hunching, poor posture, and inelastic disks in the spine. While no more new growth will occur at age 40, you can recover this lost height.

Me: As a continuation of the study where we looked at the effects of using ESWT on distraction osteogenesis, I found a related article looking at the same process using the LIPUS technology.

Analysis: Remember, the LIPUS technology is very similar to the ESWT technology. They both use soundwaves, but one just has lower intensity and the other has higher intensity waves. What we seem to see is that just like the ESW, but an even lesser effect, the LIPUS technology does nothing to help decrease the healing time when a distraction is done. The researchers wanted to see what would be the effect on regenerated bone formation.

The results showed NO change in callus size, callus mineralization, strucutral stiffness, or material strength. I personally think the biggest take-away from this study is the last sentence in the abstract…”Our data do not support the application of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound to regenerated bone during distraction osteogenesis.”

Implications: This makes me question and argue against the application of using the LIPUS technology for possible height increase application. When the last two posts and PubMed studies are compared, we see that the ESWT technology compared to the LIPUS technology had at least a slightly bigger effect in callus mineralization and bone mineral density.

From PubMed study link HERE…

Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2007 Jun;459:237-45.

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound does not enhance distraction callus in a rabbit model.

Me: This study I found showed what would happen if we tried to use the extracorporeal shockwave therapy when we are doing the regular type of bone lengthening through distraction osteogenesis. Of course this is not for height increase application but to see what would be the effect on callus formation. Remember that distraction osteogenesis works on the principle of callus stretching.

Analysis: What we see is a testing on 25 rabbits on the effect of the shockwaves on bone stretching. the Orthofix bone fixator is used, which is a device I have looked at before. The shockwaves wre done 3 weeks after the limb lengthening surgery. The dosage was 0.42 mJ/mm^2 intensity at a pulse frequency of 2 Hz (2 times a second). 3000 pulses were done.

Bad News: “Radiographs and histological observations revealed no apparent fractures in nonlengthening tibias at the shock wave energy densities used.” this seems to suggest that if we are trying to just use the ESWT technology to apply it on non distracted long bones, it can’t work to lengthen it since it can’t even make a few fractures.

Other News: X-Rays showed no difference between the ESW applied group and the control group. However the bone mineral density from dual energy absorptiometry analysis showed that it was significantly increased in the ESW applied group. About 6 months in, both groups saw the bone mineral density decrease. It seems that the ESW might have had an inhibitory affect on the development of the cortex but have a stimulating effect on the inner cancellous or trabecular bone material.

Conclusion: This study seems to suggest that when you use the ESW technology with limb lenghtening surgery, it doesn’t seem to help the distraction healing and closure process increase. There was little effect seen.

From PubMed study link HERE…

J Orthop Sci. 2003;8(4):474-81.

Effect of extracorporeal shock waves on callus formation during bone lengthening.