Me: I had posted recently about the fact that I have had many free copies of E-Products available for download in the “downloads” section of the website and I mentioned that I had at least an old copy of the E-Product “Grow Taller 4 Idiots”. One of the regular readers expressed his opinion on the product and another reader responded to the one reader and mentioned about this website and product which I have not seen before which links to a website instaheight.com. I got a chance to look at it earlier today. From a first glance, it was clear that this website was to sell another height increase E-Product. 

Since I have not done a product review in a while, I guess I wanted to do a slightly more detailed analysis on this product before making any judgements. The first thing I notice is that the page is a very long sales page. I scroll down to the bottom and see that there is 2 height increase products being sold with a third E-Book added on Strength Training. The three products are…

1. 10 Steps To Extra Height – Inch Adding, Get Taller Today – Authors: Deavon Stoller &

2. Human Growth Hormone – HGH Explained, Understanding InstaHEIGHT Super Massing – Authors: Deavon Stoller & 

3. Darren O’ Connell – Training For Power And Strength – Author: Deaven Stoller &

All the products are copyrighted on 2009. At the bottom they lowered the price of these 3 products from $97 to $67.

If you actually click on the download button, you realize that the 3 E-Products are stuff you get from the biggest E-Product market place on the net, Clickbank. I personally have never trusted any of the products that is exchanged on Clickbank personally because I used to be part of that IM community.

First, right off the bat they make two stupid mistakes.

1. They said that the average height of Korean men is 5′ 4″. If they were talking about North Koreans, then they are right but the average height of South Korean men is actually around 5′ 9″-5′ 10″. Why would this website want to show the average height of North Korean soldiers when the nations they were talking about was on the Polish, Chinese, and Vietnamese soldiers.

2. The picture they have on Mia Ku in 1997 may be 5′ 7″ but the picture next to her is NOT Mia Ku in 200 but of Dana Torres, Olympic medalist who is well known to be 5′ 11.5″ . They are not the same person.

The Science/Theory: It seems that the people who wrote the book are trying two ways to make you taller: One way is to thicken the cartilage disks in your vertebrate. If I remember correctly though at adult stages, there is very little cartilage if there is any at all. From our studies we  remember that the disks are not really made of cartilage, but a collagenous fibrous material. You have the vertebrate bone that is attached to ligaments which are attached to the outer and inner collagenous material. If there was any cartilage left it would be at the very outer edges. The other way that the products talks about is from “how to stimulate the growth platelets on a cellular level and where the easiest and quickest activity occurs”. I am not familiar with the possibility of using growth platelets on a cellular level. I know there are growth factors that are platelet derived but I have not done enough research on this type of growth factor yet. The idea they are talking about Super Massing is as  they describe it “The stress applied to the body is not to build muscle but to ignite the body to release HGH”. As we already know excess HGH release will only cause extremity and facial features who enlarge after growth plate closure.

There is two big claims from the webpage which I found to be rather incredible. They are

1. Our employee Sung Xiavi works remotely in China and her full time job is at the “secratariate commission of the peoples health”. She mentioned the document in one of our podcast business meetings and we took the opportunity to access the materials with her translation efforts. This material is high classed confidential government information.

2. Does it really increase penis size in men?

Yes, in all cases, the genitals including the testicles grow in volume and size. In men this process produces much testosterone naturally which is the main driver of genital size. An increase in the genitals in men is a typical outcome along with the height gains.

Also, at the bottom is a disclaimer with this message…

Disclaimer

Me: I was planning on moving onto another subject in my posts when Tyler sent me a message asking if I could do slightly more research on what could be causing these women to get taller. So here is my attempt to understand and guess at the cause.

What we know right now is that there is a decent percentage of women who found that they have grown in height during and after pregnancy. If I was to take a guess at the rate or percentage, it could be as low as 1 out of 10,000 women or even as high as 1 out of every 100 women, so my guess is that it is probably around 0.01%-1% . I don’t believe that this type of thing can happen that much more prevalently. However, any case of height increase in anyone past the normal age of maturity is an interesting case to look into.

Feet Size Increase

What we know is that the phenomena of feet expanding and the need to buy bigger shoes is a commonly cited and found in pregnancy guides. If it was really just the muscle relaxing, then it should only cause the feet to get wider, not longer. However there are women who said that their shoe size went up by 2-3 sizes. Most women’s shoes that I know have also extra wide variations. This means that technically women don’t need to switch to a higher size, since size is defined by length, not wide. The width of one’s feet can be switch in shoes with Extra Wide pairs. Of course we could say that the feet just got proportionately bigger, in width and length. That would make more sense but the increase of shoe size by 3 shoe sizes is beyond what i could imagine swelling can do, especially since the feet never shrink back in size after the pregnancy. 1 shoe size increase is about 0.5 cm in extra length. That means that a 3 size increase is a 1.5 cm increase in feet length. From the picture on the right (found from source HERE) I guess it might be possible for the feet’s ligaments to relax enough to cause even 1 cm of length increase.

Hands Size Increase

From links like HERE we know that many women during pregnancy can’t wear their wedding rings. Since the ring must always overcome the diameter of the knuckle joints, it makes sense that what is really blocking the fingers from the ring are the knuckles. The knuckles have become swollen and enlarged. If the entire finger has swelled , then that is the result of the muscle relaxant. If the reason the ring can’t get there is only from the knuckles, we can say that the pregnancy is doing something to the joints, specifically the cartilage at the synovial joints in the metacarpals of the hands. Using this type of logic we can say that it is possible the height increase was from a pregnancy induced swelling of the articular cartilage on synovial joints in general. It is a very common thing for pregnant women to notice pain and swelling in their ankles and wrists.

Height Increase

If we assume the hormone/endocrinology reason for the height increase, we have to see what types of hormones could cause this. From this link HERE…we can see a list of all the major hormones which are involved in pregnancy.

What I notice right away is that the Progesterone and O-estrogen are produce from the same location as Natural Growth Hormones. However it is also noted that during pregnancy the GH secretion decreases.

Note: What is critical to realize is that during pregnancy most women are not thinking about their height at all so even if they did increase in height, they would never realize it since they are too preoccupied with other issues, like pain, swollen joints, nausea, mood swings, etc. Height is the last thing on a pregnant woman’s mind. This might pin-point to the idea that it could be that height  increase might be slightly more common than reported. 

If we use the diagram on the left (from HERE) we notice that the Luteinizing Hormone (LH) and Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) are both produced from the pituitary gland at around the anterior pituitary region just like the GH pathway.

I remember that the FSH is a type of growth hormone. FSH regulates the development, growth, pubertal maturation, and reproductive processes of the body.

Using the wiki article on FSH located HERE we see that high levels of FSH can lead to Klinefelter’s syndrome. What is amazing is that I have found a few PubMed articles that show that people who have Klinefelter’s syndrome exhibit tall stature. I was actually going o write up a post relating Klinefelter’ syndrome with height since there is a big connection.

From the diagram on the right (found HERE) we can see that the release and rate of release of the major hormones during the time intervals of pregnancy, assuming a 9.5 month gestation cycle.

I am going to have to use a little bit of elementary physics to explain my reasoning for the next part. In general, the way many phenomena can be explained in nature is through differential equations, which one can solve usually using approximation methods to model dynamic behavior of the world around us. This is why the exponential function is so commonly seen in nature, since the differential and integral function of the exponential is the exponential itself.

Both newton’s original motion laws and einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that a rate that is constant will not produce changes, but require a change in rate.

When looking at this diagram, I would guess that the only time and range which height increase probably would happen is during a interval where the hormone release rate increased, which implies a change of a change, or an acceleration. Looking at the diagram, I really have only one small fact to go off of which is that one mother said that her height was measured from the 12th week with no height change and her height was measured in the 22 week and she saw an increase of 2.5 inches. If we look at the graph to see whether there are any hormones which saw an increase in rate of release (aka acceleration) which in calculus terms is what is known as a concave inflection point moving upwards. The graphs seems to suggest that it is either the O-estrogen or the progesterone.

Note: I will look at the possible connection between progesterone and o-estrogen and height and growth in another post. 

From this ParentDish.Co we learn that during pregnancy a lot of the Calcium in the mother’s system gets absorbed by the baby. Teeth loss and bleeding gums are very common. This might help explain the height increase. Maybe one of the only ways to increase height is to make the bones weaker by removing the calcium hypoxilates. from the same source link I quote this “Rachel agrees: “My ribcage expanded after my first pregnancy, and some of my bras and dresses are too tight across there now.””. This seems to suggest that maybe the hormones can get into whatever cartilage or even bones and get them to get bigger somehow. We learned from a previous post that the cartilage in the sternum ossify far later than the growth plate cartilage in the limbs. This women might have had her cartilage in the sternum increase in size.

Further Analysis: From using what little information I could gather, it seems that women who experience the height increase are usually shorter than average with the forum posts saying they were around the 5’0-5’3″ mark. One women said it was not her torso which increased in length. Many said they say height gain in their 3rd pregnancy, others in their first pregnancy. One commented her height increase happened only when she was giving birth to her only daughter. One women said that her gain was around the 12-22 week time period.

Theory 1: If I was to guess I would say that the phenomena is actually catch up growth at work. These women who are shorter than average had stunted growth. Since O-estrogen and progesterone has been used in traditional history for tall girls to stop growth, they are just like extrados and estrogen. They cause a boost in the aging process of growth plates. I can assume that the growth plates for the short females never fully sealed. The increase shot of progesterone and o-estrogen release into the body caused the growth plates to give the last lurch in longitudinal growth from whatever chondrocytes were still around the little bit of growth plate that was left.

Theory 2: The edema they develop causes so much extra water to go into their synovial joints swelling everything up. The swelling of water (in knees and ankles) gets into the articular cartilage. Remember that salt causes edema to happen since the water molecule moves from higher water concentration to lower water molecule concentration (from source HERE). Somehow one of the pregnancy hormones gets more salt into the cartilage and the water goes in the cartilage causing it to expand. The expansion might get into any chondrocytes in the articular cartilage and get them to hypertrophy which floats randomly and sometimes get to the one epiphysis bone surface. The progesterone comes along and takes some of the chondrocytes and ossify them leading to longitudinal growth. Of course this is all assuming that there are still come chondrocytes still in the articular cartilage and the randomness is not completely random but is more prone to land on the bone surface, and that the blood vessels supplying to the cartilage ends can reach to the hypertrophic chondrocytes.

The same story and study is also reported on the following sites:  Google News, The Australian, ABC News, IVF1, and many more websites

Me: My guess along with the researcher is that when the embryo chosen to be used for fertilization, the people at the clinic happened to choose the best, largest, healthiest looking one to use. It is strange that females had the most pronounced effects.

From Phys.Org…

IVF births result in taller children: NZ study October 14, 2010 Children born using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) are likely to be taller than their naturally conceived counterparts, New Zealand researchers have found.

The study by Auckland University’s Liggins Institute found IVF children conceived from fresh, rather than frozen, embryos were about 2.6 centimetres (1.02 inches) taller than non-IVF children by the age of six. The research, which examined about 200 children, found the height difference was statistically significant, even after adjusting for variables such as the parents’ height. Liggins Institiute director Wayne Cutfield said the phenomenon was most striking in girls. “At this stage, we don’t know what the catalyst for that is,” he told Radio NZ on Thursday. Cutfield said appeared IVF children from fresh embyros had a different hormone profile to regular children, which could promote growth. This could be caused by the drugs mothers took to induce ovulation during the conception process or by the culture medium the embryos were developed in for 36 hours before being transferred to the womb, he said. Cutfield said another possibility was that medical workers simply picked the largest, most developed embryos because they were most likely to survive the IVF process. He said the study showed the need for more research into children born through IVF, which has assisted in up to four million births globally over the past 32 years. “There’s been remarkable little research done on IVF children,” he said. “There’s been several studies that have looked at intelligence and cognitive function that havent shown any differences with IVF. This is the first study that’s looked very precisely at growth resultation and metabolism.” Cutfield was sceptical about previous studies suggesting IVF children were more prone to conditions such as asthma and arthritis, saying the finding could be explained by other factors. “Within the IVF cohort, children are more likely to be born particularly small at birth, they are more likely to be born premature, there are more likely to be twins and triplets,” he said. “They’re all groups of children who are likely to have greater health problems and you need to be able to adjust for that.” British scientist Bob Edwards, whose pioneering work made possible the birth of the first IVF baby Louise Brown in 1978, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this month. (c) 2010 AFP

From News Medical…

Taller kids with IVF: Study

Published on October 13, 2010 at 10:13 PM ·

Me: I found this rather fun and cute story about the link between the time of year a baby is born and the height they will eventually reach. They seem to be 0.5 cm taller than ones born in the winter which is sort of a large difference. I guess that means I better start making babies during the Fall the previous year.

From The DailyMail UK…

The sunshine babies: Children grow taller if their pregnant mothers enjoyed a summer in the sun

By JENNY HOPE
UPDATED: 20:46 GMT, 3 February 2009

It’s called the sunshine vitamin and it seems it smiles on mothers giving birth in late summer and early autumn.

Babies born after their pregnant mothers have enjoyed a big dose of summer sun are taller and stronger-boned than those born in winter and spring, according to a major study.

Researchers reckon the reason is the boost some sunshine gives to levels of vitamin D, which works with calcium to build bones.

Late summer and early autumn babies also have wider, denser bones setting them up for a healthier adulthood.

The body makes most vitamin D from sunlight, rather than diet, but sun exposure is controversial
because it can trigger skin cancer.

However, the Children of the 90s project – an 18-year study from Bristol University – provides evidence that the sunshine vitamin is important for bone-building in youngsters even while in the womb.

Its researchers recommend that women pregnant in the summer get plenty of sun by walking around outside or even sunbathing.

Those expecting between November and May – when sunlight levels are low – should consider vitamin supplements.

The Food Standards Agency advises ten micrograms (1,000mcg equal one milligram) a day of vitamin D in pregnancy.

Researchers looked at the likely sun exposure of the mothers of 7,000 children in the last three months of pregnancy.

At the age of ten the youngsters were measured and given x-rays scans to determine bone density.

Children born to mothers with the highest sun exposure were on average half a centimetre taller – a fifth of an inch – than those born in the darkest months.

Summer and autumn babies also had around five inches of extra bone area due to increases in bone width.

The results are the latest from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children which enrolled 14,000 mothers at pregnancy in 1991 and 1992 and has followed most of the children and parents since.

A study spokesman said: ‘Perhaps people shouldn’t be quite so terrified of the sun.

‘There’s been a lot of panic about skin cancer, but people don’t need to panic about the odd few minutes of exposure.

‘A little controlled English sun is better than none. Or go to the Bahamas!’

Me: So after the quick google search I thought the results and posting would end but they seem to only increase in number and the stories are vast in number. There is something going on here which I can’t explain. Tyler would try to say that the growth plates never fully disappeared because their senescence was slower from DNA methylation or something. I would say that the correlation is with whatever hormone increases were occurring during pregnancy.

My Theory: These women are now eating for two. Their appetite goes up, their food intake increases, and this is very similar to what happens during puberty where the young adolescent starts to eat at an extremely high rate. However it doesn’t explain why they would ever gain height. In terms of symptomes, their food intake resembles teenagers who are going though puberty eating everythiing. One women who is 41 gains 1 inch and another woman gains 3 inches through pregnancy.

From BabyCenter.Com… there is one post of a women who noticed her pants have gotten shorter and she doesn’t fit in them anymore.

From TheBump.Com community…

01-21-2011 at 10:57 PM

jennlynn53 Joined on 07-21-2010 Louisiana 25 Posts 378 Points Growing taller because of pregnancy? Is it possible for pregnancy to give you a growth spurt of some kind? I have been 5’3” since I was 12/13 and I had my FI measure me and I am now 5’5”. I tried searching on the web for an answer but I just kept coming to dead ends. So has this happened to anyone else? Or has anyone heard of such a thing? TIA

Me: This woman poster was measured 9-10 months ago and she was 5’3″. Now she is 5′ 5″ and she is 23. However a reply on the same board link is even crazier. Read below…

sfuqua1 Joined on 11-16-2010 1 Posts 15 Points

Even though my doctor said it’s impossible he can’t deny that I have grown.  I was 26 during my first pregnancy.  I started the pregnancy at 5’1 and ended it at 5’3.  I stayed at 5’3 for two years and then got pregnant again.  I am now 28 and started this pregnancy at 5’3 and already at 7 1/2 months pregnant I have grown to 5’4.  I seem to gain 1-2 inches with every pregnancy.  My doctor has no explanation for this and neither does the internet.  But it’s such a relief to know I’m not the only “freak” 🙂 out there who is doing this!

April 17th, 2012, 11:19 PM

TuckrLeesMommy  Mega Super Mommy Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Michigan Posts: 1,289

Hey ladies, so something interesting has just recently come to my attention. I am almost 22 weeks pregnant now, i am due the end of august. I am 22 years old and i have a younger sister who is 12. now i am on the shorter side, i have been 5 foot even since i was 17. Just before my 3 month mark i was weighed and measured for my first WIC appointment at my local Health Department, and once again i was about 5 foot even. Well my 12 year old younger sister has been about a 1/4 inch taller than me for several months now, well just a few days ago she was standing next to me and i realized that i was looking down to talk to her. my mom laughed (she frequently ribs me about my height) and stood us back to back and proclaimed that i was indeed taller than my sister, when just a few months before we had done the same and my little sis was taller. My mom immediately measured me and i’ll be ****** the tape measure read clearly… 5′ 2 1/2″ somehow i had gained over 2 inches of height!!! now i have scoured the internet and i cant find ANY medical findings on this, but a few other accounts of women asking something similar. has anyone else had this? has pregnancy caused anyone else to grow? is there a name for this kind of phenomenon?

Me: This girl who is 22 was first measured at 3 months of pregnancy (12 weeks) at 5 feet tall and in the 22 week she is measured at 5′ 2.5″ which means over a 2 inch increase over 10 weeks. I could say that she is unique at age 22 for having another growth spurt. Since she is rather short I could claim that catch up growth is what caused it.

From the website Mothering.Com…

Getting taller during pregnancy?

Ever since I found the stories of women who have claimed to have increased in height during pregnancy I decided to do a quick search on google for stories, anecdotal evidence, and posts by women who claim they had gotten taller.

Me: If you read through the comments left by other moms you realize that this phenomena seems to be far more common than I ever expected. Of the 17 replies this women got, a good 2 of them said that they saw an increase in height beyond what would obviously be measurement error. The crazy anedotal story is the man’s wife who grew a “couple” inches when she was 30 and on her 3rd child. Wow, what is going on? Of course it is important to realize that a few of the replies stated that they actually lost height from the pregnancy. I don’t know what to take from this post and the replies except be more confused now.

From this post on an Australian Huggies web board HERE the poster says that she grew 1.5 cm during her pregnancy.

Here is one from CafeMom (source link HERE)

Height growth during pregnancy

Posted by

• Summer222009

on Jul. 6, 2011 at 3:54 AM

• 17 Replies

• Vipergirl22

Jessica on Jul. 6, 2011 at 5:38 AM

haha I would like to know that answer too…be interesting if it is true.

by

• KaroGreenly

Karo on Jul. 6, 2011 at 8:30 AM

How old are you? Maybe you just weren’t finished growing to begin with.

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• .Angelica.

Angie on Jul. 6, 2011 at 9:29 AM

I have heard of this happening. Consider yourself lucky if you wanted to be taller I guess. LOL.

by

• .Angelica.

Angie on Jul. 6, 2011 at 9:30 AM

A guy my DH works with, when his wife was pregnant with her 3rd child and I think right around 30 she grew a couple inches. So she should have for sure been done growing.

Quoting KaroGreenly:

How old are you? Maybe you just weren’t finished growing to begin with.

by

• Summer222009

on Jul. 6, 2011 at 2:40 PM

I’m 19 but my growth plates have stopped when I was 12.

Quoting KaroGreenly:

How old are you? Maybe you just weren’t finished growing to begin with.

by

• momoftwins_2

on Jul. 6, 2011 at 4:34 PM

My feet grew but I didn’t get taller

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• ATG499

Wendy on Jul. 6, 2011 at 5:22 PM

I didn’t get any taller during my pregnancy.

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• alyciajoseph

on Jul. 6, 2011 at 7:42 PM

Mine too 🙁

Quoting momoftwins_2:

My feet grew but I didn’t get taller

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• remaining_me

Kay on Jul. 6, 2011 at 7:55 PM

 hmm i never heard of that, lol i didnt get any taller. wider? yes, lol.

by

• remaining_me

Kay on Jul. 6, 2011 at 7:57 PM

 yeah, i permanently went up a half size with my second. I never knew they actually GREW, odd enough. i thought they just swell up.

Quoting momoftwins_2:

My feet grew but I didn’t get taller

11-17 of 17 replies

first previous 12

Jump to page:GO

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• Maddies-Mommy

Member on Jul. 7, 2011 at 2:24 AM

I didn’t get taller, however I went up a shoe size. It was weird, they didn’t swell they just got longer and three years later they are still that size.

by

• lovealot0587

on Jul. 7, 2011 at 2:32 AM

I’m not too sure

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• hayvensmommy07

Bronze Member on Jul. 7, 2011 at 9:03 AM

I was 5’2 before my son. Now I’m 5 foot. Yea I shrank. How I have no idea so if I can shrink then I would think women could get taller too.

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• JayBearsmomma

Rachael on Jul. 7, 2011 at 9:47 AM

lol I shrunk and1/2 inch ! I was 5’2 for the longest then at my 6 week check up I was 5’1 1/2

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

by

• YouGotToLoveIt

on Sep. 9, 2011 at 8:11 PM

Hi,

This is my first attempt to investigate my growth during pregnancy on the web.  Although I have a friend who grew 1 1/2 inches during her 3rd pregnancy and only daughter.

I am now 60 and had my only child when I was 36.  I grew 3/4 of an inch during pregnancy.  I tried to document this growth with any of my doctors and they all made excuses saying that they wrote down my original height incorrectly.  It was very frustrating because my original height was 5 feet 4 3/4 inches and I always tried to stand super tall when measured so that I could say I was 5 feet 5 inches even.  My final height is 5 feet 5 1/2 inches.

Thanks for this forum.  It is nice to know that I am not alone.

by

• Girl_Charlie

on Sep. 9, 2011 at 9:39 PM

And you thought that a “young moms” group was the place to go? Even 24 years ago, 36 was on the upper side of having children, not the young side.

Quoting YouGotToLoveIt:

Hi,

This is my first attempt to investigate my growth during pregnancy on the web.  Although I have a friend who grew 1 1/2 inches during her 3rd pregnancy and only daughter.

I am now 60 and had my only child when I was 36.  I grew 3/4 of an inch during pregnancy.  I tried to document this growth with any of my doctors and they all made excuses saying that they wrote down my original height incorrectly.  It was very frustrating because my original height was 5 feet 4 3/4 inches and I always tried to stand super tall when measured so that I could say I was 5 feet 5 inches even.  My final height is 5 feet 5 1/2 inches.

Thanks for this forum.  It is nice to know that I am not alone.

 

by

• JayBearsmomma

Rachael on Sep. 9, 2011 at 10:28 PM

Lol I shrunk half an inch

Posted on CafeMom Mobile

There’s a study that says pregnancy can increase bone turnover. This may be partially the cause of the height gain as bone turnover equals more plastically deformable bones.

The effect of pregnancy on bone density and bone turnover

“We studied 16 women longitudinally, with baseline measurements before pregnancy; then at 16, 26, and 36 weeks of pregnancy; and postpartum. We measured total-body BMD and biochemical markers of bone resorption (urinary pyridinium crosslinks and telopeptides of type I collagen) and bone formation (serum bone alkaline phosphatase, propeptides of type I procollagen [PINP] and osteocalcin). We also measured parathyroid hormone (PTH), insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), and human placental lactogen. Postpartum, BMD increased in the arms (2.8%, P < 0.01) and legs (1.9%, P < 0.01) but decreased in the pelvis (-3.2%, P < 0.05) and spine (-4.6%, P < 0.01) compared with prepregnancy values. All biochemical markers, with the exception of osteocalcin concentration, increased during pregnancy. The change in IGF-I at 36 weeks was related to the change in biochemical markers (e.g., PINP, r = 0.72, P = 0.002). Pregnancy is a high-bone-turnover state. IGF-I levels may be an important determinant of bone turnover during pregnancy. Elevated bone turnover may explain trabecular bone loss during pregnancy.”

“The involuting uterus is also a possible source of collagen degradation products. The uterus is predominantly composed of type I collagen; pyridinoline (Pyd) is the principal cross-link, and deoxypyridinoline (Dpd) is present in only trace amounts. The collagen content of the uterus increases approximately sevenfold during pregnancy. An increase in the Pyd/Dpd ratio during the puerperium would indicate a contribution to maternal cross-link excretion from uterine collagen.”

“Previous studies have reported decreased serum intact osteocalcin during pregnancy.”

“there appears to be a loss of bone density at trabecular bone sites and an increase at cortical bone sites during pregnancy. Bone turnover is increased with the increase in bone resorption preceding that of formation.”