Written by Justin S. (Guest)
If you’re reading this, you’re probably looking to increase height after 18, 21, 25, or whatever your age may be.
But is going through a leg lengthening surgery your best option?
While I can’t give you a definitive answer, I will say this:
It’s not a good idea.
And in this post, I’m going to show you all the ups and downs that come with a brutal height increase surgery.
And afterwards, I’m going to give you a tips that you can apply to grow taller naturally, EVEN if your bones are done growing.
(These tips will save you tons of money, months of your precious time, and most importantly, your health)
Keep reading.
Leg Lengthening Surgery: Overview
What to Expect
Risks
Cost in Different Countries
Procedure
Results, Side Effects, Recovery Time
Painless Ways to Grow Taller (Without Surgery)
Leg Lengthening Surgery: What To Expect
You’d be hard-pressed to find even just a handful of people that didn’t wish they were just a little taller.
Yes, even NBA basketball players wish that they could have squeezed a couple of extra inches out of their genetics.
If only so, they would have a little more of a competitive advantage over their fellow players.
Regular folks like you and I usually dream about adding a couple of extra inches, too.
The average man in the United States is about 5’9” tall and plenty of them wish that they could have grow taller by three more inches to hit that “magic” six-foot tall mark.
Well, believe it or not, there are a number of solutions out there that promise to help people gain those extra inches.
(Yes, even after their natural human growth plates and genetics have already decided they’ve reached their maximum height)
But unfortunately, some of these “solutions” are nothing more than modern-day snake oil peddled by less than ethical marketers, anything but ethical medical doctors, and researchers looking to use desperate people as guinea pigs whenever they have a chance to do so.
Leg lengthening procedures in particular are some of the most dangerous and the most insidious “solutions” offered around the world for those that want to add a couple of inches to their height.
At the same time, these kinds of procedures have been marketed and sold as the only effective way to increase your height permanently.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
In this quick guide, I’m going to show you EXACTLY what leg lengthening procedures bring to the table, why they are so risky and why they should be avoided at all costs.
I’m also going to show you how to grow taller naturally (and permanently) so that you don’t ever have to worry about becoming another one of those leg lengthening horror stories.
Ready to dive right in?
Let’s get right to it!
Limb Lengthening Surgery: Know The Risks
The cosmetic surgery world has been pushed further and further into the future by:
• Amazing new medical breakthroughs,
• Game changing new technology, and
• A better understanding of how to shape and craft the human body through science.
But that doesn’t mean that all of this forward momentum has been positive.
For every amazing new breakthrough in skin grafting, and facial reconstruction, and in helping people lead happier and healthier lives through cosmetic surgery, there’s other breakthroughs in more “fringe” applications for cosmetic surgery.
Ironically, these breakthroughs put the health and well-being of patients at risk (sometimes seriously).
That fringe is exactly where leg lengthening lies.
A procedure that has been aggressively marketed towards men, leg lengthening promises to at anywhere between 2 or 3 inches of height instantly, and then cement those height increases permanently.
I’m going to be honest here, that’s a pretty attractive promise.
Like we mentioned earlier, millions of men (plenty of women) would love nothing more than to grow a little bit taller than what Mother Nature and their genetics decided for them.
And if science could come up with a solution like leg lengthening that really works, it’s definitely worth checking out…
Right?
Wrong!
The reality of the situation is that a leg lengthening medical procedure is anything but like your traditional cosmetic surgery process.
This is why so many surgeons in United States flat out to REFUSE to even contemplate offering this procedure at all.
This isn’t something that you can take advantage of as an outpatient kind of procedure, and it isn’t something that can be done after a quick visit to your local cosmetic surgery clinic.
Instead it’s a lot more like being strapped into a medieval torture system, having your legs and bones snapped in half, expanded, and operated on (sometimes for hours on end) with all of the grueling and month-long postoperative recovery that this kind of surgery brings to the table.
In fact, leg lengthening is flat out banned in some countries because of how dangerous it is.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some nations out there willing to trade anything for some cold hard cash.
Height Increase Surgery All Over The World
China, for example, is one of the most popular hotspots for “leg lengthening tourism”.
That shouldn’t surprise all that many considering the fact that a lot of personal and job advertisements in China reference minimum height expectations.
Korea is another hot spot for these kinds of procedures, reportedly conducting anywhere upwards of 600 or more limb lengthening surgeries every single year.
Russia is willing to take all, turns as well, and compared to other countries around the world this might be the cheapest place to get your legs cracked in half.
As I mentioned, only a handful of doctors in the United States are even willing to offer this surgery, and very few of them are going to flat-out offer this in anything but hushed tones.
Leg lengthening surgery in United States will set you back about $85,000 and obviously your insurance isn’t going to be there to foot the bill.
Cost of Legs Lengthening Surgery (in Different Countries)
The cost of leg lengthening surgery is all over the map, but just for a quick reference here are some of the average prices of this surgery that hotspots around the world.
(All prices shown in US Dollar values)
• Thailand – $27,000
• France – $70,000
• Syria – $15,000
• Russia – $16,000
• Germany – $60,000
• Italy – $30,000
Again, all of these prices are out-of-pocket prices individual patients will have to pony up on their own.
There isn’t an insurance plan on the planet that includes leg lengthening surgeries as part of its coverage!
Limb Lengthening Surgery Gone Cosmetic
The thing that has surprised so many in the medical community about leg lengthening surgery is that it was originally conceived of as a solution to help people born with birth defects and deformities, as well as children that had developed with one leg longer than the other – or for those that have become injured in accidents.
Today, however, the surgery is much more commonly taken advantage of as an elective surgery – a cosmetic surgery – with people being misled left and right about how dangerous it really is.
The surgery was pioneered in Russia by a medical professor in 1951. Dr. Gavrill Illizarov was looking for ways to help World War II veterans with leg injuries recover their mobility and their height, looking to take advantage of new surgical procedures that would restore these men and women back to normal.
The process has been refined throughout the years but it definitely isn’t for the faint of heart.
Every individual process is unique (obviously), but the general gist of things is as follows:
Leg Lengthening Surgery: Procedure
A doctor will first intentionally break both the tibia and the fibula in both legs surgically, snapping them in half neatly, and then inserting a telescoping metal (usually titanium) rod directly into the cartilage of both open bones.
Over time (usually about 90 days or so) the titanium rod works to expand the bones at a rate of about a millimeter per day – forcing new bone growth to be regenerated on a daily basis to fill in these gaps and adding the extra height along the way.
New nerves, new arteries, and new skin is built by the body on top of the new bone throughout this healing process which is why it takes so long.
Every week or so, individual patients may have to visit the doctor that performed the procedure to be adjusted and to be “stretched” manually in an effort to guarantee that the process proceeds exactly as intended.
As if that wasn’t horrific enough, individual patients are going to have to move through a from endlessly intense physical therapy process.
Many patients have to relearn how to walk after being immobilized for this amount of time and many of them never really adjust to their “new bones” at all.
If you have ever broken a bone you know exactly how painful that is right out of the gate, but you also understand how long that pain sticks around and how the soreness, the dull achiness, and the general discomfort never really goes away.
Well, amplify that by about 100 times when you’re talking about breaking not just one bone but for different bones in your body – rendering your legs completely unusable for a significant amount of time – all in an effort to gain a couple of inches in height.
Painkillers are almost always prescribed but doctors cannot provide any anti-inflammatory medications whatsoever.
These kinds of medications may inhibit bone regeneration which means that the body is open to all kinds of attacks and inflammation will run rampant throughout the recovery process.
Nasty, nasty stuff.
Leg Lengthening Surgery: Results, Side Effects, and Recovery Time
It certainly doesn’t help that any leg lengthening procedure – horrific in its own right to actually perform the procedure itself – is fraught with a tremendous amount of risks that patients are going to be subjected to no matter what.
According to information released in 2006 by the International Orthopedics Journal leg lengthening surgeries can involve health risks that include, but certainly aren’t limited to:
• Skyhigh blood pressure levels that stress the cardiovascular system
• Stretching of blood vessels and nerves that surround the broken bones
• Considerable nerve damage, particularly during the “regrowth” process
• Uneven lengthening in one leg or another that results in a crippled or limp
• Serious hip problems that become exacerbated with age
• Potential paralysis and an inability to walk after the lengthening procedure has finalized
… And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Sure, modern doctors are going to do everything they can to manage and mitigate these problems.
But once they cracked those bones in half it’s up to your body to fill in the blanks and there’s always going to be a lot of unpredictability there.
Many that undergo this process argue that the potential complications – which include lifelong and life-threatening complications – are worth the risk to add a couple of inches to their height, inches that could change the way they look and the way they feel about themselves.
Painless Ways to Grow Taller (Without Surgery)
At this point, you’re probably wondering:
Can You Grow Taller without Having to Deal with Leg Lengthening Risks?
You bet you can!
Right out of the gate, it’s important that we tell you that you absolutely can grow taller after your growth plates have fused together and your body has reached its genetic height potential.
But isn’t going to be as fast a process as snapping both of your legs in half, inserting titanium rods, stretching your body over a period of 90 days, and then relearning how to walk.
It’s going to take a little bit longer than that (maybe anywhere between six months and a year) but you aren’t going to have to worry about ANY of those health risks and side effects that leg lengthening brings to the table.
Everyone (and we mean everyone) has the potential to gain at least an inch or two in extra height just by doing stretches to grow taller on a daily basis, and implementing activities like yoga into their daily workout routine.
Plenty of people that take yoga classes religiously report that they find themselves to be taller after about a year of study practice compared to when they first started, and many of them report that they continue to “grow” on a regular basis as long as they remain committed to these exercises.
What’s really happening during this process is that their body is naturally lingering up, releasing muscles that are tense and tightened (particularly around the spinal column) and the soft pieces of cartilage between their individual vertebrae are allowed to expand – pumping up their height along the way.
Yoga and stretching also have the added benefit of giving people naturally better posture which gives the illusion of being taller, too.
Not only will you gain legitimate extra inches in height through this kind of exercise but you also look even taller than that – as well as more confidence, more self-assured, and more attractive with pitch perfect posture.
Another way to increase your height naturally is to consume foods that make you taller.
And of course, you also want to consider taking advantage of height growth supplements.
Plenty of supplements are able to actively trigger a release of natural Human Growth Hormone from your pituitary gland to help you squeeze a little bit more height out of your body as well.
Use these kinds of supplements in conjunction with regular exercise, yoga, and stretching and you will be able to add at least an inch or two to your height naturally.
You’ll be able to do so a lot faster than you would have thought possible before.
At the end of the day, you do not have to settle for the hand that your genetics don’t you when it comes to your height.
On the other hand, you also do not have to subject yourself to the pain, the risk, and the potential lifelong crippling impact of leg lengthening surgeries gone wrong.
There are plenty of horror stories out there from people that have put themselves through real hell trying to gain a couple of extra inches in height through surgery when they could have gained the same height advantage with exercise, yoga, stretching, and a couple of safe and effective supplements.
Make the right decision. Steer clear of the bone crackers and you’ll be just fine!
References
https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/limb-length-discrepancy
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002965.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/09/i-have-to-be-taller-the-unregulated-world-of-indias-limb-lengthening-industry
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105995/The-agonising-expensive-leg-lengthening-proceedure-surgery-patient-SIX-INCHES-taller.html
https://www.odditycentral.com/news/getting-your-legs-broken-for-a-few-extra-inches-a-growing-trend-in-the-world-of-cosmetic-surgery.html
http://www.leglengtheningsurgery.com/articles/costs-around-world.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fPPLhKbKBg
https://soranews24.com/2013/09/03/limb-lengthening-surgery-becoming-increasingly-popular-in-korea-despite-inherent-dangers/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/courting-controversy-cosm_n_74664
https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/downloads/neu:379130?datastream_id=content
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105995/The-agonising-expensive-leg-lengthening-proceedure-surgery-patient-SIX-INCHES-taller.html
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Limb-Lengthening-Surgery-Creates-Controversy-269145341.html
