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A Deeper Look Into The Multiple Pathologies Causing Gigantism Beyond Growth Hormone Excess

About 2 months ago I had wrote a very brief, superficial post on the multiple types of pathologies that would lead a person to develop extreme stature. It was entitled “A List Of The Types Of Disorders And Pathologies Which Can Cause Overgrowth, Excessive Height, And Gigantism”

This time I would find a more extensive page that goes much deeper into the medical science of the multiple causes for extremely tall stature from Endotext.org. This page seems to focus much more on the gigantism developed from growth hormone excess. 

The full page seems to be a page dedicated to gigantism as a general topic. The term gigantism refers to extreme large stature and physical size.

Let’s understand that when we are talking about stature and size, we are talking about height, not weight. Weight is something that can easily fluctuate and it seems that many americans can’t seem to stop getting bigger from increasing their weight. We are talking about height.

The way that the term gigantism is also defined is to assume that the cause or the process of gigantism starts in childhood or adolescence, while the growth plates are still open. Although the term gigantism is most often used to talk about growth hormone excess, it also is applied to non-hormonal causes of overgrowth in children.

Growth Hormone Excess

The link between gigantism and growth hormone excess was noticed even in the 19th century when giants that were big since childhood had their head, face, hands, and feet keep on getting larger in size in adulthood. The enlargement of these attributes would be termed acromegaly. Acromegaly has low rates of incidence around 3 per million people. As for growth hormone excess in childhood, that only occurs in a few hundred people. So Acromegaly and gigantism are two different things although they have some things in common. The first is that people who have acromegaly have around 10% chance of being tall statured. The acromegaly is deduced to be just the continual result of what the human body does after epiphyseal growth plate fusion when that individual also suffered from growth hormone excess giving them the tall stature. It seems that increased rate of growth hormone release is sporadic and there may be also a genetic predisposition for this type of disorder in some families.

Under the table for Etiologies of Growth Hormone Excess

  • Hypothalamic/Pituitary GH excess
  • Ectopic GH excess
  • Neurofibromatosis – I
  • McCune Albright Syndrome
  • Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type-1
  • Carney Complex
  • Familial Somatotrophinomas
  • Sotos Syndrome
  • Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome
  • Simpson-Golabi-Behmel Syndrome
  • Weaver Syndrome

All of these syndromes and pathologies seem to cause the adolescent who is still growing to have a higher rate of excess growth ending up with tall stature than a person without that pathology.

Analysis

When reading through the sections to see whether the different causes have anything in common, the main thing I noticed is that familial somatotrophinomas have a 100% chance of gigantism occuring. The term “familial somatotrophinomas is defined on the reference cite as “the development of GH hypersecretion in two or more members of a family that does not exhibit features of MEN-1 or CNC”. The other type of disorder that lead to high percentage of gigantism occurence is the multiple endocrine neoplasia type-1.

For the last four types of syndromes listed, they seem to cause not just postnatal excess growth but also prenatal excess growth. The occurence of macrocephaly is really high. Macroglossia is also a symptom of Bethwith Syndrome and Simpson Syndrome. For the mode of inheritance, all of the last 4 types of pathologies are extremely rare familial cases and sporadic.

 

Update #2: What Have I Been Doing To Grow Taller And Become Healthier – May 1st, 2013

In the last month I have started to add new exercises and ideas into my everyday schedule to optimize my body condition.

So this has been what resulted. Since I came back to the USA, Seattle specifically I went to see a new family doctor or someone who specialized in Internal Medicine. Since this is a new doctor, they took measurements of my stats.

The metal weight scale and stadiometer device in the doctor’s office said that in my socks, with me not really trying to stand up completely straight, I was at exactly 181 cms. I noted that in the doctors office they try to be very accurate on one’s measurements. I felt the metal edge touch the skin on the top of my head. So the measured value of 181 cms is sort of expected of where I am supposed to be. This was measured around 1:00 pm in the afternoon, after I had been awake for maybe 5-6 hours, so obviously I took into consideration the fact that my body did experience some time feeling the effects of vertebral decompression.

Height: 5′ 11.26″ or 1.81 meters tall

In terms of my weight, I weighed a ridiculous 219 lbs. That is 1 lb short of 100 kgs! Since my weight fluctuates so much due to different times of the day and whether I ate or not, I will just say that I weigh maybe 3 lbs less now, discounting the fact that during the weigh in I had my jeans and large belt on.

Weight: 216 lbs or 97. 98 kgs

I was very surprised with my weight since the last time I checked, which was more than 1 year ago I had weighed around 187-189 lbs. That means that I have gained around 30 extra lbs in the last year of my life. I guess it is true that one really does have trouble keeping the weight off as one grows older.

So what was my action plan to get healthier, loss weight, gain strength, and possibly regain any lost height back?

Well, the first thing I did was that after getting multiple car parking tickets, I decided to sell my car. So in terms of course of action.

1. I sold my car which I had for over 3 years. – Went on craigslist and managed to sell it for a reasonable price to a private buyer. The transaction went relatively smoothly.

2. I bought a 21 speed Diamondback Bike from Dick’s Sporting Goods store – I have been using the bike to get around anywhere within a 5 mile radius. The hardest part about getting this multiple gear bike is figuring out how to switch gears going up hill. Since I haven’t riden a bike in almost 12 years the process was really hard, painful, but very good overall for my health.

Since I used AirBnB.com to find a place for the short term, I ended up staying with a group of people who lived on a hill. The bicycling was really hard for the first week until I learned that there was a bus that was right beside the house.

For Height Increase purposes, I looked for the bike which had the largest wheels and I pushed the seat up high so that I would be forced to stretch out my legs out when I am pedaling.

3. I bought a Seattle and the Greater Puget Sound Public Transportation Pass. These are known as Orca Cards. They seem to be good for not just the bus, but also the Tram, the Light Rail, the train ,and the ferries. As it says on the website…“ORCA is accepted on: Community Transit, Everett Transit, King County Metro Transit, Kitsap Transit, Pierce Transit, Sound Transit and Washington State Ferries.” 

When I compare the cost of driving and the fact that gas seems to cost around $4.00 per gallon these days, it seems logical to choose the Bike + Public Transportation combination.

4. Just in case, there was no public transportation nearby and I had to get to places, I signed up an application for ZipCar and added the app Lyft to my iphone, which is similar to the function of Zipcar but the application process is much simpler.

5. I went to the local city Aquatic Center and bought a month or 30 day pass. – Everyday I spent around 1 hours riding the bike to the aquatic center and getting an hour of swimming.

The focus has been on stretching out the torso and doing the Butterfly Stroke. In combination, I would also add a round of stretching the back and torso twisting along with the swimming.

6. I noticed that my legs, lower back, knees, and butt area becoming very sore from so much bicycling so I found a mechanical massager that can help stimulate the muscles to relax. – I did notice that if one used the stronger massagers for a longer than average time, the vertebrae actually decompress since the muscles in the middle and lower back are not being decompressed so much. The massager that works amazingly well for me is Human Touch Swan Softouch HT-1280 Personal Massager.

As for height, I noticed that after a 20 minute application of the personal massager, the body feels looser and the vertebrate seems to decompress slightly.

7. Shaving my long hair to a very short length so that any measurements I do make will be much more accurate. I went for a very short buzz cut so now my hair is only a fraction of an inch in length. The measurements on height have been much more accurate and consistent.

So the things that I did to getting healthier and regain some lost height this months are…

  • Swimming 1 hour a day almost every day focusing on the butterfly stroke. 
  • Supplementing the swimming with back stretching exercises and torso twisting.
  • Using a bicycle with elevated seats for most of my transportation needs.
  • Using a strong hand held massager to decompress vertebrae.

Results:

I did a check on my height and noticed that my morning (right out of bed) height after just 2 weeks seemed to increase by a few millimeters (2-3) when I measured in front of the mirror and drawing a line horizontally at the place of my very first measurement. However that is my morning height.

That’s all for now today.

Two Major Breakthroughs In Research Made (Big Breakthrough!)

Something that I had discovered while I was doing research on the retinoic acid in the post “Endogenous Retinoic Acid Negatively Regulates Growth Plate Chondrogenesis And Longitudinal Growth” were two compounds which really got me excited in the research.

It seems that while retinoic acid inhibits longitudinal growth of the long bones, it’s antagonist known as the Retinoic Acid Receptor antagonist (aka RAC antagonist) seems to be able to actually reverse the inhibitory effects of RA. it seems to be able to make the mineralization, calcification, and chondrocyte maturation process go in reverse and turn cartilage extracellular matrix which have started to mineralize and accumulate with calcium deposits known as hydroxyapatite back to the collagenous and glycoaminoglycan filled tissue it was originally.

What makes the RAC antagonist so promising was the fact that the RA was fed to the lab rat of a single dosage orally and the effects on the growth plates and endochondral ossification became obvious after just a few days. If the RA can be taken orally, then it might be possible for the RAR antagonist to be taken orally as well.

If the RAR antagonist can indeed be taken orally, then what we have would be one of the first and only true scientifically validated compounds discovered which can actually accelerate growth in growing children. This would have huge implications for children around the world who developed stunted growth from bad nutrition. If the RAR antagonist can be separated and isolated, using chemistry devices like HPLCs, and then concentrated, we might be able to mass produce this compound element.

What is interesting is that the RAR antagonist can reverse the calcification and mineralization process so even if a person had a sliver of open growth plates left, they can start growing maybe even in a few weeks of a few millimeters.

Since the human body produces the retinoic acid and the retinoic acid receptor antagonist endogenously, it would be safe to intake orally/ ingest. It is safe for human oral consumption.

The 2nd compound which I discovered which may have evern bigger implications as I had researched in the previous post linked above is Parathyroid Hormone, PTH.

In that post, I had quoted a phrase from the study entitled “Retinoic acid induces rapid mineralization and expression of mineralization-related genes in chondrocytes.“

“Mineralization was completely abolished by treatment with parathyroid hormone; this profound effect…”

It seems that the PTH has the ability to break down the calcium deposits down. In terms of general biological and medical literature, the fact that PTH can cause calcium accumulation to be resorbed back into the blood is already a very well known point.

From a webpage from Colorado State University…

Parathyroid hormone accomplishes its job by stimulating at least three processes:

  • Mobilization of calcium from bone: Although the mechanisms remain obscure, a well-documented effect of parathyroid hormone is to stimulate osteoclasts to reabsorb bone mineral, liberating calcium into blood.
  • Enhancing absorption of calcium from the small intestine: Facilitating calcium absorption from the small intestine would clearly serve to elevate blood levels of calcium. Parathyroid hormone stimulates this process, but indirectly by stimulating production of the active form of vitamin D in the kidney. Vitamin D induces synthesis of a calcium-binding protein in intestinal epithelial cells that facilitates efficient absorption of calcium into blood.

Excessive secretion of parathyroid hormone is seen in two forms:

  • Primary hyperparathyroidism is the result of parathyroid gland disease, most commonly due to a parathyroid tumor (adenoma) which secretes the hormone without proper regulation. Common manifestations of this disorder are chronic elevations of blood calcium concentration (hypercalcemia), kidney stones and decalcification of bone.
  • Secondary hyperparathyroidism is the situation where disease outside of the parathyroid gland leads to excessive secretion of parathyroid hormone. A common cause of this disorder is kidney disease – if the kidneys are unable to reabsorb calcium, blood calcium levels will fall, stimulating continual secretion of parathyroid hormone to maintain normal calcium levels in blood. Secondary hyperparathyroidism can also result from inadequate nutrition – for example, diets that are deficient in calcium or vitamin D, or which contain excessive phosphorus (e.g. all meat diets for carnivores). A prominent effect of secondary hyperparathyroidism is decalcification of bone, leading to pathologic fractures or “rubber bones”.

There is no doubt that chronic secretion or continuous infusion of parathyroid hormone leads to decalcification of bone and loss of bone mass. However, in certain situations, treatment with parathyroid hormone can actually stimulate an increase in bone mass and bone strength.

Analysis & Interpretation:

Another great resource I have used to learn more about the Parathyroid Hormone is the website Parathyroid.com. The thing is that one can stimulate calcium mineral deposits to break apart using the PTH. If you can extract enough calcium, the bones turn into “rubber” (or become very easy to fracture as well) which means that we can then probably stretch the bones.

I had already concluded in two previous, pivotal posts that the compound PTHrP (Parathyroid Hormone related Peptide) is most likely the key to induce the first step for adults with no cartilage to possibly dissolve the hard bone matrix for cartilage replacement using other growth factors with more chondrogenic effects. This post seems to put more anecdotal, but still weak evidence in showing that either PTH or PTHrP can be used for our ultimate goal of achieving bone lengthening after the cartilages completely disappear.

It seems that we have quite  a few ways to demineralize bone and give it just enough elastic properties to strength the bones.

I like to conclude this pivotal post with the link for how one can actually turn bone into rubber-like using vinegar for an elementary school science project.

Non-Invasive Union Of Long Bone Fractures Using Electrical Stimulations, A Final Conclusion

Just today while I was doing research towards the patent and research done by Brighton on applying electrical stimulation and capacitative electrical fields to accelerate epiphyseal growth plate growth, I found another old article published showing that applying some type of electrical stimulation will lead to fractures in bones, whether long, short irregular to heal. Any non-unions because the fractures are too big are more likely to heal and join together.

Since I am having some trouble copy and pasting the title, author, and abstract below, I have clipped and pasted a pic of the top of the article below.

non invasive electrical stimulation

What is important to get out of this post is to realize that the idea of using PEMF or some type of capacitative electrical field would indeed help bone formation, bone healing, and bone growth, but it will not help our endeavor, unless the individual is willing to accept the idea of using some type of bone distraction method, where a fracture has to be first induced.

The researchers at the end in the section for “discussion” notes that the PEMF idea is a very simple and safe non-invasive approach to heal bone fractures that don’t heal very well. Before the application of the PEMF, the patients in cast has not had any union in bone segments. After the application of the PEMF, the union occurred in most of the broken bones around or before 6 months. The researchers at the time did not know what was the molecular mechanism which caused the bones to heal from the PEMF application. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence that callus was formed on the outside. There was evidence however that blood vessels did develop though, and this was followed by gradual interfragmentary callus formation.

The conclusion is that PEMF works, and it will lead to bone growth, just not in the way that we are hoping for. It can always be used as a part of any proposed technique or method we might come up with, when it comes time to create revascularization, and callus formation.

The Effect Of Oxygen Concentrations On Epiphyseal Plate Growth

Something that I found recently that has been proposed by Tyler in the post “Lengthening your Body with a Hyperbaric Chamber?” and by Timothy from AdultHeightIncrease is to use the idea of hyperbaric oxygen therapy to increase height for adults. 

From only a very quick look at the idea, it seems that the hyperbaric oxygen is where you increase the amount of oxygen concentration which can reach the area you are trying to affect. The idea is that increased oxygen would increase stem cell proliferation and stem cell numbers. However, I had argued in a recent post where I evaluated the scientific theory of the idea proposed by Timothy that the increased O2 concentration to the muscles would more likely increase vascularization and calcification, as well as lead the progenitor, pluripotent cells towards the osteogenic lineage than the chondrogenic lineage.

I recently found PubMed articles which seems to prove that the idea of increasing O2 concentration is probably more harmful than helpful and that it would actually have the exact opposite effect, stunting growth instead of stimulate it. Interestingly, these articles have been written by Dr. Carl Brighton, whose work I have become very familiar with ever since getting into the research.

Surg Forum. 1969;20:465-7.

The site of action of oxygen toxicity during in vitro epiphyseal plate growth.

Schaffzin EA, Brighton CT.

Calcif Tissue Res. 1970;6(2):151-61.
Brighton CT, Schaffzin EA.

PMID: 4100477

PMID: 5383117

Journal Contents   |   October 01, 1969

In Vitro Epiphyseal-Plate Growth in Various Oxygen Tensions

CARL T. BRIGHTON; ROBERT D. RAY; LAWRENCE W. SOBLE; KLAUS E. KUETTNER

J Bone Joint Surg Am, 1969 Oct 01;51(7):1383-1396

Abstract

1. A technique for growing epiphyseal-plate organ cultures in a rigidly controlled environment in various oxygen tensions is presented.

2. The cartilage portion of the epiphyseal plate, as determined by macrophotography and tritiated thymidine uptake, exhibited maximum growth in 21 per cent (160 millimeters of mercury) oxygen.

3. Maximum metaphyseal bone formation, as determined by macrophotography, microradiography, and tetracycline staining, occurred in 5 per cent (thirty-eight millimeters of mercury) oxygen.

4. In higher oxygen tensions, the cartilage portion of the plate showed narrowing, a progressive loss of acid mucopolysaccharide stainability, eventual loss of the zone of hypertrophic cells, and an accumulation of neutral mucopolysaccharide or glycomucoprotein at its base.

5. The most sensitive index to high oxygen tensions was an initial, transitory increased length of the zone of hypertrophic cells.

6. The possible mechanisms of oxygen toxicity on epiphyseal-plate growth are discussed.

Analysis & Interpretation:

While I was unable to find the abstracts for the first two articles, the last article by Dr. Brighton seems to show that the optimum O2 concentration level in proportion to the entire inhaled gas by humans is actually around 21%, which is what we are getting naturally. What is not well known is that around 70-80% of all the gas we inhale as humans is actually nitrogen. The O2 is the 2nd largest portion of the inhaled gas. The 3rd article seems to also show that the greatest rate for metaphyseal bone formation is around 5% of O2. In actually larger concentrations of O2, the cartilage portion of the plate decreased in thinkness, and the cartilage losses the stability of the intracellular matrix.

The conclusion I would give at this point is that the scientific theory of at least the 2nd compound Timothy from AdultHeightIncrease.Blogspot.com advocates does not agree with what the research done by other researches suggest.

Another Giant With Similar Symptoms To Zech Devits And Matt Mcgrory

As I was going through the forums on the website TheTallestMan.com today I came across a post which linked to a youtube video which shows a young male who seems to be suffering from the same type of medical condition or at least has the same medical traits as the late Matt Mcgrory and Zech Devits, which I had discussed before in posts. The post thread is entitled “Rare Syndrome”

guatemala giantThe video is in spanish but a poster named Roger was kind enough to translate the spanish in english which I will post below…

yes, looks like the “McGrory” gigantism, or a new variant of it…

The video is in spanish. Translation:

A strange physical malformation caused that the twin brothers Rodrigo and Javier, in Guatemala, were born with severe physical problems, which derived into an uncontrollable growth of their whole bodies. The twins confronted a great number of diseases, but Rodrigo was born with a very big rib cage, so that he died when he was 1 and half year old, meanwhile Javier continued fighting for his life.

Javier’s Mother: …because they were born with an unknown syndrome…

Months later his twin brother died, Javier started to develop a blend of different syndromes that caused him to continue growing in an excessive manner, while his bones started to twist due to his incredible size.

Javier’s father:… “there wasn’t any other case like this in the whole world. There were 10 similar cases, but weren’t exactly the same, so that made more difficult the situation.”

It was thought that Javier was going to die, like his brother. He also showed hydrocephaly, osteoporosis, and problems to speak, but miraculously he got rid of die, and now he tries to have the most normal life as posible.

Javier: well, here at home, I do set and clear the table, I fold clothes and tidy them up, I help mum a lot, I take care of my grandma…”

Javier is 2m 35cm tall, so he needs an adapted bed, and a northamerican doctor designed a wheelchair for him to be able to move more freely.

Javier’s Grandmother: .. really Javier doesn’t cause any problem to me, he is very understanding and very smart, and we take care each other.”

Analysis & Interpretation

What we see in this case is a young male in a wheelchair who has a very, VERY deep voice due to the cartilage in his larynx and trachea (windpipe and voicebox) both being enlarged. His ears are abnormally large in proportion to his head, which is abnormally large in proportion to the width of torso or body. These are both symptoms of having the chondrocytes in the cartilage enlarging.

His hands are very large in comparison as well. HIs grandmother states that he is very smart and this seems to be similar to Zech Devits’ case where the medical doctors examining him noticed that his intelligence was not decreased. In all three giantism cases, they all wore glasses which suggest that maybe the bones around the ocular cavity were also expanded and pushing against the optical nerve decreasing the vision’s ability.

It is interesting to note that Javier’s twin brother who died had an enlarged ribcage which would indicate that the twin also had chondrocyte enlargement in development. The osteoporosis that Javier had is similar to Devits’ bone maturity development, who started suffering from spinal disk collapse early in life.

A Second video of this Guatemalan giant is found from this link HERE which is a short video on him from the Spanish Media Television channel Telemundo.

From my own limited Spanish it seems that this young man is from the country of Guatemala and is around 20 years old. His height is definitely under dispute since the reported height by the journalists would convert to make him 7′ 8.5″, which would be one of the tallest in the world.

I have embedded the link to the Youtube video below. The link to Youtube is HERE