How Future Stem Cell Technology Will Allow People With Closed Growth Plates To Grow Taller

Recently one of the regular readers to the website, who calls himself Ankit. We almost never reveal last names on this website to keep the identities of our readers, and contributors anonymous. Ankit stated that he has been reading ours website for 2 years now, and wanted to congratulate us on our work. Well, we wanted to thank Ankit but would like to point out that technically this website has not been around for 2 years. I only started writing for the website back in June or July of 2012.

His major question was to ask us about contacting this Russian Stem Cell researcher named Alexander Teplyashin. The name did sound familiar and I think that this guy was someone I wrote about in a previous post “Great News For Stem Cell Method For Height Increase! :)”. We chose not to try to get in contact with this guy since he seems to be a sort of a controversial figure in Russia. We also believed that no matter how many times we emailed him or his secretary, they would not respond. The website (StemCellRussia.com) seems to not reveal a lot of information. However, there have been at least one person who has messaged them and got a response. At the moment, certain pages on the website do not load up.

Given the recent news about how the current Russian president Putin is about to sent Russian Forces into the Crimea and Ukraine to control the uprisings, we suspect that anyone who is going to try to meet this Teplyashin guy to get stem cell research done on themselves to grow taller will be extremely disappointed. Russia has always been a sort of unstable nation with a violent history for the last century or so. How much is the story coming out of Russia actually based on facts and reality and how much is just exaggerations and lies?

We decided to google this guy’s name into Google, Alexander Teplyashin to see what is said about him. The first result was found was an article written in a well respected medical research journal, The Lancet. The article was entitled “Russian scientists voice concern over “stem-cell cosmetics””.

So who is this guy?

It seems that this guy Alexander has been linked to not just claims made by stem cell providers about using the technology to grow taller, but also to stop the process of aging. Some of the claims that he makes include….

Curing Alzheimers
Curing Parkinson’s
Stop Aging
Remove all diseases
Hepatitis
Eye Disorders
Skin Problems

Most sources and internet results reveal that Alexander Teplyashin was head of the Beauty Clinic Plaza, which is located in Moscow. We would learn later that the Beauty Clinic Plaza is not some type of single stand alone office, but is actually the name of a chain of beauty clinics and salons (The only source we did find suggested that there was 2 locations, in Moscow and on the elite Rublyovskoye Shosse) This guy was the director for the chain, not one single clinic or institute. He supposedly had an assistant named Ekaterina Kulneva with her email at scelltimes@gmail.com. The website that has all this information was www.stemcellrussia.com. He supposed also had a wife named Dr. Nata Toptchiachvili. It turns out that they are quite rich. He is described back in 2005 to have thinning grey-black hair and single, well defined crease over his forehead.

Maybe a decade ago, there was a lot of controversy over this guy since he was believed to have been connected to a discovery that barrels of fetuses where found somewhere close to the Ural Mountains.

In addition, there are sources which say that this Dr. Alexander Teplyashin guy was the president of “Pyramids” Clinic network, as well as the director of the Institute of Stem Cell Research.

The exact location for the clinic (or more accurately clinics, if it was indeed a chain of beauty salons/clinics) is described to be in the center of the capital. The building has been described as being “an immaculate building with frosted glass doors, chrome fittings, and a spiral staircase”

We found out that he has a patent for artificial stem cell implant “Method for obtaining mesenchymal stem cells”. The IPEXL database shows that while there are 3 results for this Russian researcher, the 3 results all show one patent title. The time frame was from 2005-2007.

Part of the Abstract is below (To get the full Patent PDF, Click Here)

“…obtain mesenchymal stem cells from human tissue with high homogeneity of the cell suspension, since the used method for obtaining mesenchymal stem cells from human tissue comprises the crushing and enzymatical treatment of the tissue with collagenase solution in Eagle medium in the Dulbecco modification, removal of erythrocytes by the aid of the lysis solution and subsequent filtration of the prepared suspension; as human tissue fat tissue or decidual or amniotic placenta membrane or chorion placenta stroma is used, whereas the filtration is performed sequentially by the use of filters comprising a pore size of 100 μm and 10 μm. In the enzymatical treatment of the fat tissue, of the decidual or amniotic placenta membrane collagenase of the type I is used, and in the enzymatical treatment of the chorion placenta stroma collagenase of the type IV is used.”

The idea for extracting MSCs from human fat does make sense. After a plastic surgeon plugs the hose into the area of fat in a plastic surgery patient, the fat is sucked often into buckets which is often dumped. The fat can however be chemically converted into other uses. (Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club took the fat removed and using some basic chemical principles turned the fat into soap.) You want to use some type of collagenase enzyme to dissolve/break down the collagen, which makes up most of the fat. You have to remove the red blood cells, which are the erythrocytes. That is done using a lysis solution. You are still left with suspensions of fat suspension (which are often emulsion combinations) which are removed through a series of filters, which I would guess is just using the principle of various densities and spinning the resulting solutions in the lab centrifuge so that the different materials separate out due to their different densities (basic introductory chemistry lab idea). Overall, this patent makes sense.

There was also another source which was a study entitled “Characterization of human MSC-like cells isolated from bone marrow, adipose tissue, skin and placenta” where he was cited as an author.

The laws based in Russia suggest that apparently you are allowed to extract out stem cells and even stored it, but you can’t used the stem cells in any way, whether for medical or cosmetic applications. The law was implemented by a group of 13 scientists back in 2003-2004 which only stated that stem cell researchers can not use stem cells taken from “fetuses and embryos” since it was unethical based on the source of the embryo. Based on the way other people have interpreted these russian laws, they believe the law states that “clinical application of fetal, embryonic, or adult stem cells is illegal”. Somehow people like Alexander has found legal and semantics loopholes to show that what they are doing, combining the stem cell research with viable commercial use is not technically illegal. The area is still very vague and the people who want to use the stem cells for cosmetic application use the vagueness of the russian laws to their advantage to run those types of “Beauty Clinics”.

The problem with using stem cells is that for the first decade after the discovery of stem cells, most researchers only knew how to extract them from embryos that were still in development, very young new born babies, the umbilical cord, or aborted fetuses. This caused a lot of medical ethical problems. The way that Teplyashin has been able to get around this medical ethical dilemma has been to use stem cells only taken from adults. It seems that Dr. Alexander Teplyashin, who has been offering therapies in Russia with adult stem cells get the stem cells from adult’s bone marrow and fat. The patent that he is associated with does agree with his claims though.

After careful analysis of the patent, it does indeed show that he proposed the idea of using certain filtration methods to separate the mesenchymal stem cells found from adipose tissue (Fat tissue). We would learn later that the adipose tissue is from liposuction. The little bit of stem cells they could isolate, they would cultivate and stored after filtering the right types of cells out from the fat tissue. This we would learn would be the source of the stem cells, fat tissue which had been removed from women and men who had gone in for fat tissue removal.

What about the part about his proposed technique to make people grow taller?

The original claim was that through injections of extracted and stored stem cells into bone, you would be able to increase your height by as much as 2.5 cms in one month. The patient would even be able to walk after the injections. Of course the rate of bone lengthening was from guesses done before any type of clinical testing. In the beginning, we suspected that there was never any clinical tests done.

It would take the bones 3 months to regenerate (whatever that means). After the 3 months, the bones would lengthen by 8-10 cms. If we were to take a stab at what it means for the bones to regenerate, we believe that the 3 month time line actually refers to when the porous implant would completely dissolve and the stem cells inside would differentiate into the bone material that is surrounding it.

What happens is that the stem cells are first placed into a type of porous material. The porous implant is placed in the space where there is a bone defect/fracture/distraction/break. Over time, the porous implant which is biodegradable dissolves. What is left is the stem cells, which differentiate into the right type of cells to expand the spacing of the bone break.

This method seems to have never been tested in a real medical setting. It was NOT a clinical procedure. It was done only in private clinics and beauty salons.

However, there are also contradictory information we’ve found and read which says that there was indeed at least 1 experiment done at the Cell Technology Center at Russia’s Veterinary Academy on sheep. About 100 sheep had the porous implant placed into their hind legs. We are not sure what to believe.

What is our final opinion?

After reviewing over the science based on just 1st impressions, the method does make sense. From a theoretical point of view, the idea/technique that is claimed could work. If the study with the hind legs of sheep have already been done and we can find evidence in some russian scientific journal, then the technique is valid.

We have read enough studies from PubMed and researchers and experimenters trying out tissue engineering and stem cells to reveal that the idea is theoretically valid. If we were going to take a guess at how future stem cell technology would work to help make people with closed growth plates grow taller, it would most likely be this method as described by Alexander. The problem is that this guy is so controversial. The story of his connection with barrels of fetuses discovered in the Ural Mountains is quite disturbing.

Update #12 – Restructuring The Website – March 1, 2014

So there will be some major changes going on to the website and my entire life in this coming month.

The main thing for this website is that I plan to restructure the content of the website a little, and clean up some of the older posts that I wrote or did not get to finish. There is quite a few dozen posts which I never finished writing which I want to polish up. Some of the sections will be edited and added upon, and some sections may be deleted or moved around.

There will be very few new posts for the next 3-4 months, but there will be many posts and pages from this last year which I will be re-writing and editing.

As for my personal life, I will be moving back to the US this month, around the middle of the month. I’ve loved being able to travel around Asia for almost two full years, seeing the world.

I remember starting this website back around July of 2012, and I still remember the mornings and afternoons when I was still single where I would sit at a local Caffe Bene in Gangnam, Seoul and writing for 8 hours straight. It was a really magical time back then when everything was so new and fresh. Back then the website would grow at a 200% increase in traffic every month. Now the traffic has steadied off, but it has recently just this month saw a 50% increase in traffic, and the website is getting almost 2000 total visitors/day. It seems that a lot of people really like the website. I get emails almost every day where people write to express their thanks that there is this type of resource on the internet, where we don’t try to scam them, but only focus on the science and tell the facts as they are presented to us.

I really do believe that to really bring value, we need to make the internet and this world a better place.

About The Trip To Asia These Past 2 Years

In my first ever journey out of the US for a very extended amount of time, I wanted to really see what makes the Far East so attractive to Americans these days. Why does it seem like so many young entrepreneurs in this decade are so bullish on China and this Rising Dragon State that people talk about? China is supposed to become the dominant world economic power this century so I should be studying extensively on Mandarin. What about checking out the futuristic culture of Japan with their sex dolls, pachinko machines, and bento boxes? I’ve seen enough American White girls who are in love with everything about Japan so it was a great chance to see why so many girls from Europe flock to the Land of the Rising Sun.

I just went through a horrible breakup with my ex (who had left me for a much taller dude), and I was emotionally crushed. Thankfully, I had saved some money from my last job which would let me live off of it for about 6-9 months. I realized that I needed a change from what life and American society expected of me. I sold almost everything I had, put my car into storage with a friend, put the few essentials in a suitcase, and got a ticket to travel.

My original plan was to travel across Asia (mostly Southeast and East) to experience the culture (and some of the food) and then go back home to start my life again after I’ve seen what it was like on the other side of the world. I’ve never really traveled anywhere in my life except the occasional road trip with my college buddies to Canada to Whistler to go snowboarding and maybe one case of walking through the US-Mexico border to get some Dos Equis (Those are stories I will not be be sharing on here).

After staying a few months, I decided that I wanted to stay longer in Asia. I met someone else, and I think I want to go back to traveling around the world much more. It does seem that I caught the travel bug. The more exotic places that I go, the more I want to do more of it. I plan to go back to the USA for at least 1 full year, trim and streamline my life completely, pay off all of my old debts, and have a business plan which would allow me to travel for at least half a decade to get this travel bug out of my system. I don’t plan to ever move and become a citizen of another country, but I realize now that to grow as a person, one should get out of one’s small world and normal comfort zone to see what else is in the world. New experiences, but most especially traveling to far away countries, seems to help shape my values, my viewpoints, and my beliefs to becoming more insightful and mature as a postmodern male in the early 21st century.

Here is what I can promise the readers on Natural Height Growth. This website will not be going away, at least for another decade, until something like a disruptive technology comes along and makes maybe text, podcasting, and videos obselete or useless. This website is something which will be continually updated at least once every month.

The truth is that I’ve used this website, which it has now turned into a relatively high authority website on a topic (research on height increase) for high SEO ranking metrics and high volume keywords, to build a few other websites. There are links I’ve placed around in now 1000+ posts, and learned how to monetize those other websites for a very passive income stream. I realize that where before the website was a liability since it was something I owned where money was only being lost by it, it is finally now in the black and its operation has become profitable, by maybe around $40/month which is enough to pay for its website hosting fees (but not is podcasting fees).

Even if I wanted to get rid of the website now, I couldn’t do it since it supports my other websites which is making income for me. It has become a real asset, in terms of how well the website has finally started to dominate and take over the niche of growing taller and increasing height on the internet for all the English based websites. This website is the only website I’ve created which is not really for profit, and I probably still write much more for this website and all of my others combined.

I have definitely not designed this website to maximize for profit. I have created this website to maximize the user experience for the reader and the first time visitors. Almost all of my other websites, they were created for income/profit reasons.

The design and theme for my wordpress platform based website is just the 2012 Theme, which is very clean and minimalist. It is easy to read with pretty text which doesn’t strain the eyes. If I could, I will stick with the 2012 Theme version of WordPress for as long as I can. I’ve used Premium Themes for my other websites which I built and program but this website will be stripped down to be simple and easy to navigate.

Update on the Scientific Research

I’m not going to stop reading over the PubMed studies, the Medical Textbooks, and the Professional Peer Reviewed Journals for Biologists, Geneticists, Surgeons and Biomedical Researchers. This website has taught me so much about medicine, biology, genetics, and even helped me diagnose some of my medical issues which were caused by old sports injuries. I have even flirted with the idea of going back to school and try to get through the 4 years of Medical School just to test my intelligence and abilities. I plan to learn more and more about how the human body works, how the bones are structured, how the molecular and protein pathways in the nucleus, mitochondria, and intracellular membrane works.

I would love to be able to buy one of those 3D Printers to bio-print out a layer of growth plate and at this time, I think that it would not be that hard due to the structure of the growth plate. The hard part is to figure out how to micro-vascularize the ECM to get the chondrocytes inside the cartilage to get the nutrients they need, since diffusion through cartilage is not enough, as exhibited by the articular cartilage layer on the ends of one’s long bones. One of my plans is to start my own lab close to the Local State University and buy their Lab equipment (HPLC, FTIR, Microbiology cultures, Hydrogels, Autoclaves, etc) to perform tissue growing experiments. I know that with enough time I can modify the an ordinary ink jet based printer to instead inject out Collagen Type II to form the right type of Cartilage.

My Height

My hair regrew back to become too long and tall so I haven’t been able to get an accurate reading on it for the last month (or even two months). It still seems to be stuck in the same place as before, although I have stopped taking the Glucosamine Sulphate at 1500 MG ever since the bottle was completely used up. When I get back, I will get the Vitamin K2, and the Hyaluronic Acid and get a prescription for Fosamax to try out. Some supplements and pills works well for me right now since they also help with some back pain and knee issues I’ve had from injuries I suffered from when I was younger back in High School.

Does mechanical loading activate articular cartilage TGF-Beta?

Since LSJL loads the articular cartilage which is part of the synovial joint this study may have implications on LSJL.

Dynamic mechanical compression of devitalized articular cartilage does not activate latent TGF-β.

“mechanical shearing of synovial fluid, induced during joint motion, rapidly activates a large fraction of its soluble latent TGF-β content. Based on this observation, the primary hypothesis of the current study is that the mechanical deformation of articular cartilage, induced by dynamic joint motion, can similarly activate the large stores of latent TGF-β bound to the tissue extracellular matrix (ECM). Here, devitalized deep zone articular cartilage cylindrical explants (n=84) were subjected to continuous dynamic mechanical loading (low strain: ±2% or high strain: ±7.5% at 0.5Hz) for up to 15h or maintained unloaded. TGF-β activation was measured in these samples over time while accounting for the active TGF-β that remains bound to the cartilage ECM. Results indicate that TGF-β1 is present in cartilage at high levels (68.5±20.6ng/mL) and resides predominantly in the latent form (>98% of total). Under dynamic loading, active TGF-β1 levels did not statistically increase from the initial value nor the corresponding unloaded control values for any test, indicating that physiologic dynamic compression of cartilage is unable to directly activate ECM-bound latent TGF-β via purely mechanical pathways and leading us to reject the hypothesis of this study. These results suggest that deep zone articular chondrocytes must alternatively obtain access to active TGF-β through chemical-mediated activation and further suggest that mechanical deformation is unlikely to directly activate the ECM-bound latent TGF-β of various other tissues, such as muscle, ligament, and tendon{or bones?}.”

If the TGF-Beta of the synovial joint is the only location can be activated it could explain why it is important to load there.

” During joint motion, opposing articular surfaces slide relative to one another, producing high levels of mechanical fluid shear (~ 104 s−1) in the synovial fluid”

” due to the presence of an overwhelming supply of non-specific binding sites in the cartilage ECM, active TGF-β from an external bathing solution predominantly binds to, and accumulates in the superficial zone (0–250 µm deep) and is unable to penetrate deeper into articular cartilage”

“TGF-β activated in synovial fluid can reach high concentrations in superficial articular cartilage, but it is unable to transport into the middle and deep zones of the tissue.”

” the shear rates of pressure-driven fluid flow through the interstitium of the tissue are far lower than those experienced in synovial fluid”

“mechanical loading in live tissue may alternatively modulate the secretion of various chemical activation mediators, such as MMPs and other proteases, and thus indirectly induce TGF-β activation.”

Height Increase Progress Update

Here’s the previous update. It’s hard to compare my two fingers against each other as the exact beginning of the finger is hidden by skin.

In the doctor’s office recently I measured 5’8 1/4″ versus 5’7 3/4″ previously. Now I’ve stated I was 5’10” before and the reason for the discrepancy is that it’s a short nurse and I have a long skull with the hair it’s hard to tell where the peak of the skull is. At other doctors I have measured higher 5’9 1/2″. It still shows growth as the same nurse measured me 5’7 3/4″ two years in a row.

There’s a part of the door that’s 5’11” so if I got to there that would be definitive proof. Maybe LSJL gains are just slow. The finger gains are just more drastic. Increasing the intensity on the finger I can see results in a week. Clamping the finger has a much greater intensity. Maybe more intensity on the leg is needed to generate faster results but the less intensity generates more quality height as there is no deformation of the leg in contrast to the finger. The knuckle does not seem to be affected that much except it looks denser. Thus emphasizing the importance of laterally loading the bone.

I’m going to start loading the thumb.

There’s the current picture of my finger:

You can see how much the joints have increased in width. Comparing the right hand from the left to right hand you can see the difference more clearly. But there’s the problem of getting the picture and it’s hard to align the two fingers correctly and see where the thumb ends and begins. But that finger definitely increased in length and those bumps at the side of the finger are bone growth. There is no pain in the fingers. Finger mobility is excellent. Discoloration of the skin occurs during and following clamping but it heals in about a minute. This discoloration does not occur on the leg. LSJL definitely works but you can clamp much more intensely on the finger than you can on the leg. Maybe there’s a way to get more rapid growth on the legs but not the massive increase in width that occurs in the fingers. Maybe there’s a happy medium between my current intensity on the fingers and on the legs as I’m basically applying the same intensity of clamping on the legs as I am on the fingers thus the slow growth. When Michael returns to the US and we begin work on the LSJL that will be a key turning point or maybe there’s some device to get more intensity on the legs?

Here’s the before picture of the thumb:

The advantage of the thumb versus the finger is that I can laterally clamp the base joint of the thumb whereas I can’t do that on the finger due to being blocked by the hand so I have to clamp overhead. I also want to see if my growth on the finger was a growth and how fast I can grow the thumb given that I’m much more experienced in clamping.

If you want to complain that this is no proof at all because it is just fingers. I’m still working on leg proof and you should complain to people with more resources than me who are not devoted to height increase. Millionaires like Ryan Seacrest who complain about their height all the time. I’m doing the best I can with the resources I have available and have come further in the height increase arena than anyone else before me.

Growing taller with psuedoepiphysis

The prevalence of pseudoepiphyses in the metacarpals of the growing hand

“Normally the metacarpals have an epiphysis at one end — distally for the second to fifth and proximally for the first. Pseudoepiphyses are notches or clefts that occur at the non-epiphyseal ends of bones where an epiphyseal plate would be expected and are common incidental findings in the metacarpals of the growing hand. We aimed to identify the prevalence of pseudoepiphyses on serial radiographs of 610 healthy asymptomatic children. Pseudoepiphyses in the form of notches or clefts were common, identified most often in the second metacarpal (15.25%), fifth metacarpal (7.21%), and third metacarpal (0.49%). Complete pseudoepiphyses, in which the cleft extended across the full width of the metacarpal, were seen in the first metacarpal (1.97%) and the second metacarpal (1.31%). Pseudoepiphyses are a normal variant of metacarpal ossification and should not be confused with fractures in skeletally immature patients. ”

<-Is there any way to form psueodoepiphyses to grow taller? Normally in long bones there are two epiphysis but in the finger bones there is only one epiphyseal plate except a psuedoepiphysis is a secondary growth plate like that of a normal long bone.

One of these finger bones has a second epiphyseal plate that’s a psuedoepiphysis.

“supernumerary epiphyses appear as a separate node of ossification in an island of hyaline cartilage.”

“three basic patterns of formation [of pseudoepiphysis formation]. In the first, a central osseous bridge extends outwards from the metaphysis and then expands into a ‘mushroom-like’ osseous structure. The circular notch proximal to this structure gives the bone the appearance of an epiphysis. If this notch is displaced to one side, it can give the appearance of a cleft or partial pseudo-epiphysis. The other two patterns recognized were of an abnormal peripheral osseous bridge, creating an eccentric notch in the bone, and of multiple abnormal osseous bridging points. In each situation, the area that appeared to be a ‘pseudo-physis’ lacked typical cell columns and these were incapable of significantly contributing to the postnatal growth of the involved bone.”<-Can we create these osseus bridges?

Complete pseudoepiphyses with associated enhanced growth in hands and feet: a report of 2 siblings-case report.

“We present 2 siblings with multiple complete pseudoepiphyses in their hands and feet with associated symptomatic enhanced growth. Physical examination of the 6-year-old boy revealed long slender fingers and hyperplastic great toes. Radiography showed complete pseudoepiphyses in the first metacarpals, proximal and middle phalanges of the hands, and proximal phalanges of the feet. The patient’s younger brother had a similar phenotype with slightly milder functional complaints. Genetic analysis did not reveal an underlying syndrome in these siblings. ”

Notice each finger bone has a second growth plate. Psuedoepiphysis’ do not always increase growth. Since many things do not show up in x-ray’s maybe what appeared to be psuedoepiphysis’ were actually something different entirely which would not show up on x-rays.

That these siblings both developed pseudoepiphysis’ makes a mechanical means of inducing psuedoepiphysis’ less likely but it’s still a possibility if they performed the same activities especially as they did not find a genetic link. Although they could’ve missed it. The two siblings were 5 and 6 year old boys.

Using The Law Of Attraction aka The Secret To Grow Taller And Increase In Height

I have no idea why in the last week or so the website has been getting traffic from some very unique and interesting websites and forums on the internet. There are people who have been on this forum called www.PowerfulIntentions.org (We are not linking to this specific website) which is an online community for people who believe in the Idea of The Law of Attraction aka “The Secret” which had been this New Age type of revolution sparked by the author Rhonda Byrne. I am guessing that the people are linking back to this website to validate the idea that making humans can use the Law of Attraction aka The Secret to grow taller and increase in height.

The fact that is I’ve personally written over half a dozen posts proposing the ideas that one could use their minds to make themselves taller. The ideas range form using positive affirmations to visualizations, prayer, NLP, autosuggestion, qigong, hypnosis, and whatever else we’ve written brought up. In every single one of those posts, I had concluded with the idea that a person can not make themselves taller through a change in believes or attitude.

All of these posts have one central idea that they claim, which is that if we change the state of our minds, or even our real ‘selves’ (whatever that means) we would be somehow be able to increase the length or volume of our bones.

Many people who have tried to find evidence to validate this idea that if you desperately want something enough, and just imagine it in your mind, often point to the case of Oprah Winfrey. There is a famous story often told by her about how she became completely fixated on the novel “The Color Purple” and how she desperately wanted to be in a movie about the novel. She played in the movie back in 1985. She became obsessed about the story. She moved to Chicago and got a call to audition for that exact movie. While that may be a very inspirational story, the problem is that due to law the average of large numbers, there is bound to be situations where strange coincidences happens like the one she mentioned.

The billionaire lawyer partner of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway is Charlie Munger. I personally own Munger’s book on mental models called “On Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger“. Munger has this brilliant set of mental models he uses to assess any business that reaches his desk to decide whether he wants to invest or not.

The best part of that books is probably the section where the book goes really deep in describing the set of confidence tricks, and self biases we all have to do to make our egos feel validated. As mortal creatures we often misunderstand how the universe really works because of bad judgement and ego defence mechanisms.

For example, the reason why we only hear from the winners in anything (like the local High School Basketball team who won State in a movie) is due to this thing called Survivor Bias. Oprah Winfrey is probably the clearest example of Survivorship Bias. If she thinks that her success is all due to her actions and her hard work, it would explain probably 20% of it all. Most likely than not, 80% of her success is determined just by dumb luck. No one ever tells the story of the group of people who tried their hardest to win or survive, but in the end failed or died. None tells the loser’s story, since there is no happy ending. When most people go see a movie, the need for a happy ending is derived from our human need to have hope. The key difference most people understand and fully accept is that real life does not mirror the movies. Sometimes bad things happen and we couldn’t do anything about it. Most people just don’t want to admit to ourselves that we are in denial and deceiving ourselves.

(For example, everyone can intellectually grasp the theoretical concept of death, and may be even able to hear the news of their parents being diagnosed with cancer. The fact is that in America, 1 out of 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. 1 out of 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer. None of us thinks that we will be in the half of the population which will get cancer. However, for a person himself/herself be diagnosed with cancer is the type of situation where people get a real reality check. No one wants to fully admit that they are going to die, even though we might be able to handle everyone else dying in front of us completely calmly. When death starts to knock on our door, we change and start to take notice. )

When we are the ones getting the universe’s bad mojo and horrible luck given to us, on something which we have absolutely no control over, we feel completely helpless. We create this imaginary image in the sky of a god to justify the unfairness of life. Just like how we can’t manifest what we want towards us, we can’t manifest what we don’t want away from our lives.

Of course, it is absolutely true about the old adage ‘luck = preparation + opportunity”. If you plan ahead, create some type of life blueprint or map, set goals for yourself, and take action, you are more likely to get to where you want to be. Hard work, being smart enough to realize when there is a great opportunity in front of you, and taking the calculated leap or risk at the right time, is all on you. However, most of it, is just pure dumb luck. It is absolutely true that the most successful people only focus and work on the things that they actually have a control over.

However, there is no way that we can link our thoughts to the shape and form of our bones. It has been shown that extreme negativity and abusive environments can stunt a child’s growth, but there has been no evidence to show that happy, supportive environments in a child will lead to them being taller. There are hundreds of ways to stunt a child and make them shorter but there has been not a single easy way to make them taller. I would guess that a real clinical test would show no statistically significant increase in the overall adult height.

The Law of Attraction is a believe system which is really a repackaged idea which has been stated multiple time over in human history. Before Rhonda Byrne came out, James Allen wrote the same message in his book “As A Man Thinketh“. The Buddha stated in the Dhammapada in the first line that we are what we think about. The central message behind the Law of Attraction is that “Thoughts Become Things“. This actually shows that our thoughts are objects, not processes. Our thoughts does not manifest into an object though. Just because we think of an apple doesn’t mean an apple will all of a sudden drop from the sky.

Similarly, thoughts do not change the physiology of our bodies. We admit that for some things in life, maybe we can trick ourselves and our minds to change our life slightly. With enough visualization and autosuggestion, we can trick our brains to help us run faster, or think clearer to do better on a test.

Happier thoughts may lower high blood pressure since the emotion inducing hormones are released by the brain to relax the muscles in the heart, but there are no changes with the bone structure. The bones are just too strong to mold. That is why I suggest to anyone who wants to try using the Law of Attraction to grow taller to stop doing it. It just won’t work.