Who knew that mastering intake of amino acids and general nutrition could lead to you gaining height in your spine?
You can grow a long spine at any possible age and here is how:
Anatomy of the spine for better understanding:
If you have ever looked at a picture of a spine you might’ve noticed it is composed out of multiple discs which are made out of bone (24 discs to be exact) these are called vertebrae. But if you look very very closely you can see that in between every single vertebrae there are discs.
These discs are called the intervertebral discs and are made out of cartilage. The cartilage discs AKA intervertebral discs account for around 25 to 33 percent of the total height of your spine? and 10 to 16,5 percent of your full height?
There are 22 intervertebral discs in your body, if you do the math that means that if you gain 1 millimeter on each separate disc, you would have gained 2.2 centimeters or 1 inch of extra height in your spine. Gaining 1 millimeter in every intervertebral disc doesn’t seem complicated and that’s because it isn’t, this is especially because these discs are made out of cartilage, which is much easier to manipulate than bone.
The intervertebral discs can be viewed as sponges, you can easily manipulate their form by squeezing them etcetera. This is also the reason why you are taller in the morning and astronauts grow 2 inches taller from being in space. Because when you are laying in your bed at night, there is no gravity that is squeezing your intervertebral discs flat, this way the discs are sort of able to decompress and reach their true size. Being in space has the exact same effect, this is because there is no gravity in space at all, so no decompression of the intervertebrae, except maybe some tight muscles pulling on your spine hence why astronauts gain 2 inches or 5 centimeters when being in space. There is only one problem with this, when the astronauts return to earth, they most of the extra height, this is because their cartilage decompressed, but they didn’t actually grow it in permanent size, this is because of multiple reasons which I will explain now.
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Amino Acid:
One of the reasons is that they didn’t master their amino acid intake. Mastering your intake of amino acids is one of the tricks that you absolutely need to master for optimal growth of cartilage, especially the cartilage in the spine, to eventually grow taller. To master your amino acid intake you need to know which amino acids boost cartilage growth and which ones hinder it; Cartilage is for 60 to 70% made out of collagen, which is the most abundant protein in your body.
Collagen is mostly made out of the following 4 amino acids:
- - Glycine
- - Alanine
- - Proline
- - Hydroxyproline
It’s divided with 33% being glycine, 11% alanine and 21% proline and hydroxyproline. All 4 of these amino acids are very beneficial to height growth because they:
- - Increase hormones like IGF-1, Triiodothyronine, Testosterone and DHT
- - Speed up your metabolism and energy production
- - Improve your sleep
- - Are anti inflammatory and anti stress
- - Are the building blocks of your cartilage and bones GABA/Glycine and height growth
Besides that there are a few other huge benefits that may look like they have nothing to do with height growth but indirectly do have a connection.
Glycine for example, which is probably the most important amino acid functions as a neurotransmitter in the body and is very similar to GABA while Glycine also increases GABA itself. GABA and Glycine are both inhibitory neurotransmitters that calm your brain down and help you focus, this is one of the reasons GABA and Glycine supplements are taken to improve sleep.
What GABA and Glycine also do is oppose and inhibit Estrogen, if you have been following me for a while you know why this is good because Estrogen is what closes your Epiphyseal plates which are also called your growth plates. This is basically the reason why most people don’t grow after puberty anymore unless they have watched my video about the growth plates. So to add on top of the benefits list, glycine makes you more calm and keeps your growth plates open.
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Increasing intake of the anti-inflammatory aminos:
The effects of consuming more of the main 4 aminos in cartilage have been studied and the results are astonishing. The average person consumes around 1 and a half to 3 grams of glycine a day, while the daily intake of this amino should be around 40 to 60 grams!
One study showed that an increase in glycine intake from 1,5 to 3 grams to 13 grams a day would boost collagen synthesis by around 200 percent and raise plasma collagen levels 3 to 4 times.
This is huge because it means if you would eat 10 grams more glycine daily you would see a 200% increase in cartilage growth, and this won’t just add to the height in your intervertebral discs which are made of cartilage but also your bones in general. This is because bone is built in multiple stages and building the framework of the bone which is made of collagen comes first and only then calcium and other minerals are laid down on it, meaning that an increase in collagen synthesize is equal to an increase in overall bone growth and eventually height growth.
Animal protein is significantly higher in collagen than plant protein and this is one of the reasons animal protein intake has been positively associated with height and seems to be even more important than genetics. Unfortunately the intake of amino acids naturally present in collagen has been declining in the west. Where decades ago you would have traditional recipes enriched with collagen such as chicken feet or fish head soup, ‘head cheese’ or even a big bone broth cooked by grandma, nowadays the collagen is nowhere to be found and is mainly replaced by muscle meat. We have already begun to see the long term effects of this all in the western world.
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Foods high in anti-inflammatory aminos:
So what do you need to consume to ensure proper intake of Glycine, Alanine, Proline and Hydroxyproline?
You will need to consume gelatinous foods, not muscle meat. Most people their grandma have a traditional recipe which is very high in gelatin or collagen.
Let it be:
- - fish head or chicken feet soup
- - bone broth
- - bone marrow
- - organs
- - jellied meats
- - tendons
- - pork hocks etc.
One problem tho is that you might need to consume a ton of these foods in a day to get around 40 grams of Glycine in your daily diet. They also can be very inconvenient to make.
This is why I recommend you to include Gelatin powder in the diet which is a cooked form of collagen, with the exact same amino acid profile: aesthetic-alimentum.com/products/beef-
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How Pro-inflammatory amino acids degrade Collagen
What are Tryptophan, Cysteine and methionine?
They are amino acids just like Glycine, Alanine, Proline and Hydroxyproline which I talked about earlier.
How these amino acids degrade Collagen (idea supported by Ray Peat) Amino acids that make up protein have a lot of hormonal effects in their free state, they act as signals causing reactions in the body, now naturally this would act very balanced, beneficial to the body.
When our glucose (glycogen) stores are depleted the body will break down proteins to obtain enough energy, these can be the protein in your muscles but also the collagen in your cartilage. Your body signals to other parts of your body that your glycogen stores are depleted by releasing tryptophan and cysteine, using these aminos as hormones in this case. Tryptophan and Cysteine are kinda like stress hormones in this case, so when the circulating Tryptophan and Cysteine levels are high, it basically tells your body it’s low in glycogen and high in stress, even if it’s not. In this stress state the body will start to eat up proteins like collagen since it’s needed in more important places in the body than just cartilage or even bone.
Released in huge quantities these aminos also have anti metabolic and thyroid suppressing effects eventually leading to many symptoms which even further worsen your health and even height.
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Study showing effect of low vs high Tryptophan
Proof for this can be this study done on 2-4 week year old broiler chicks, where they would feed a batch deficient levels of tryptophan, and another control. And they were fed in pairs daily to ensure its accuracy. sciencedirect.com/science/articl
What they found was the chicks who were deficient got an increase in their levels of Triiodothyronine, which is the active Thyroid hormone, while their Thyroxine and Reverse Triiodothyronine went down. This is indicative of an increase in metabolism. This is because Triiodothyronine speeds up metabolism, while Reverse Triiodothyronine slows down metabolism.
The decrease in Thyroxine is a precursor to Triiodothyronine and it’s decrease tells that the conversion of Thyroxine into Triiodothyronine is being more efficient. A faster metabolism is very beneficial to height growth since bone remodeling will occur at higher rates, as will collagen synthesis.
Besides that Triiodothyronine has also been shown to increase the levels of IGF-1 circulating in your body, if you have watched more videos from me you know that IGF-1 is very important to height growth. Than the chicks eating a low tryptophan diet also found increases in circulating Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone which is are hormones that also have beneficial effects on your IGF-1.
And last but not least the size of their Pituitary gland increased, the Pituitary gland is also called the master gland since it is responsible for the production of most hormones. Studies have shown that the bigger a person his Pituitary gland is, the taller this person will likely be.
So what foods do you need to avoid or minimize when we want to balance our aminos?
Most people suffer from imbalanced aminos because they either: a. Eat tons of muscle meat with zero gelatinous meats. Eat tons of plant protein or egg whites with again, almost no gelatinous meats at all. It's okay to keep intake of muscle meat high as long as you balance it out with gelatinous meats.
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Summary of balancing your aminos
Balancing your aminos is about increasing intake of anti-inflammatory amino acids which are present in gelatin, while decreasing intake of inflammatory aminos such as tryptophan, cysteine and methionine at the same time. But for more cartilage you need more than just a balance in amino acids because there are also vitamins and minerals that are if great importance.
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Vitamin C and collagen production:
The most important vitamin when it comes to collagen synthesis is Vitamin C. Collagen synthesis is pretty much dependent on vitamin C. Most animals are actually able to synthesize their own vitamin C, However some animals, including humans, monkeys, certain bats, rodents MUST acquire it from food.
One study found that the biochemical pathways after a musculoskeletal injury suggested that vitamin C, may enhance collagen synthesis and soft tissue healing. Other studies also find vitamin C acts as a powerful antioxidant by neutralizing reactive oxygen species (ROS) which are responsible for degeneration of cartilage. We must understand how collagen actually forms to know why vitamin C aids it so much.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in mammals, making up around 50% of all the protein in the human body. Collagen, like all proteins is made up of a lot of amino acids, but in collagen's case, being the infrastructure of many tissues in the body , has the amino acids bound together to form a triple helix of elongated fibril, woven around the tissues of the body. vitamin C would not just aid forming collagen. But it would MAINTAIN it for it's ability to eliminate oxidants that fling around inside your body and wreak havoc, dismantling stable structures.. just like collagen. It's as if Vitamin C was made for collagen.
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There is much more to learn about collagen synthesis, amino acid intake and height growth. And I will surely be posting more content about those three topics.
LEARN MORE ABOUT AMINOS: raypeat.com
LEARN MORE ON HOW TO GROW TALLER: aesthetic-alimentum.com/products/the-s
keep calm and I will see you the next time, bye.