Friday, April 9, 2010

Another possibility about how Lateral Synovial Joint Loading makes you Taller

In a previous post about lateral synovial joint loading(although lateral loading of the epiphyseal ends of the bone is a more accurate term), I theorized three possible ways that LSJL could increase your height: epiphyseal distraction, stretching of the cortical bone, or increasing the intermedullary pressure.  Looking at the anatomy of the long bone I realized there was a fourth possibility:

Earlier I thought the reason that lateral loading was effective is that it generates the most torque on the bone(this effect is still true) but as you can see in this picture the anatomy of the epiphyseal ends of the bones is different from diaphyseal center of the bone.  The epiphysis contains the epiphyseal line and mostly spongy bone.  Compact bone is stronger than spongy bone so loads on the epiphysis are more effective and loads placed laterally above the epiphyseal line perform epiphyseal distraction(loads placed downward above the epiphyseal line perform epiphyseal compression).

The anatomy at the ends of the long bones is entirely different than the anatomy of the center of the long bones so it is only logical that stimuli affect the ends and the center of long bones differently.  If you take out the diaphysis of a long bone it is much like a short bone with the except that you have articular cartilage as the outer covering rather than periosteum.  Red bone marrow is present at the ends of long bones whereas yellow bone marrow is present in the center of long bones.  As you age, more and more of your bone marrow converts from red to yellow so it is only logical that red bone marrow plays some role in growth.    By laterally loading the ends of your long bones you are increasing the fluid flow of your red bone marrow.

So the fourth method as to which lateral synovial joint loading can increase height?  Increasing the flow of red bone marrow(which contain stem cells) into the distracted epiphyseal plate which can induce reactivation of the growth plates.  According to wikipedia "Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) reside in the medulla of the bone (bone marrow) and have the unique ability to give rise to all of the different mature blood cell types."  Now distraction osteogenesis(limb lengthening) induces growth without the use of red bone marrow, but wouldn't it be wonderful if we can use the existing red bone marrow in our epiphyseal ends of the bones to reactivate our growth plates?

4 comments:

  1. im thinking of jumping 25x as high as i can and land on my feet and then hang for a while, i can hang for up to 2 hours if needed..

    is this good and if so, how many minutes should i spend hanging

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's not the jumping that increases height it's the landing. Jumping as high as you can doesn't matter it's landing as hard as you can. Landing has potential to increase height by microfractures in the cortical bone of the legs, shearing forces and bone modeling of the irregular bones(such as the calcaneus and the spine). Hanging has no relevance as to this height increase method.

    Speaking of hanging, the load you use is the most important stimulus not the duration(as long as the duration is a significant amount of time at least 5 seconds or so). Hanging has the potential to increase height via traction of the spine which allows more nutrients to get to the intervertebral discs if you add a rotating motion to your hangs then you also get shearing forces on the irregular bones of the spine.

    Worry about adding weight and not about adding duration.

    ReplyDelete
  3. thanks

    so i should land flat on my feet without going through my knees

    do i need to stretch those microfractures?

    ReplyDelete
  4. It depends on where you want the microfractures to occur as to what bones you're trying to target the impact on. Are you trying to get knee microfractures to stimulate articular cartilage growth or cortical bone fractures to later stretch with microstrain?

    For knee microfractures there's no need to stretch. For cortical bone microfractures of the long bones you do want to stretch. I'd recommend LSJL as in addition to performing epiphyseal distraction it also provides a stretching force on the cortical bone.

    ReplyDelete