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Wellness Wednesday for June 17, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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Okay, need some advice from the smart people here. I'm male 23 yrs old, history of anorexia long-term through childhood, recovered now, osteoporosis as well but recovering quickly from this. I want to try and get a bigger skeleton at my age. I don't just mean taller. I want to get thicker tendons, thicker wrists, ankles, etc. I know strength training + calorie surplus will do this gradually. I am not looking for gradual change, I want radical.

How would you go about increasing any of the following, radically: Hand size, wrist thickness, ankle thickness, height, general bone thickness (vertebrae, femur, etc.) For the purposes of athletic potential (maybe a sports med doctor?), as well as same-gender dysphoria (maybe a psychiatrist?).

If aliens came tomorrow and demanded we make ME taller and bigger skeletally or else they destroy the world, how would we do it?

Is there any doctor out there who might be willing to pursue an actual HGH treatment with me? The reason I want to get bigger is so I can do more athletic activities. I think my bone sizes are small enough that they hold me back, and secondly I have some insecurity about my bone sizes.

My IGF1 levels are normal for age (23) but not where they'd need to be to experience pubertal increase in bone thickness. My hands are too small to play some piano pieces correctly, and I hear HGH makes them bigger. That alone would be nice, my hands are <1% percentile for gender.

Realistically, could I avoid getting diabetes from heavy IGF1 treatment enough to cause acromegaly? Because diabetes is the only side effect I'm remotely worried about.

(I think there may still be a chance of something getting bigger in my body skeletally from continued weight gain, high calcium intake, and fringe supplements like royal jelly, high dose vit D, etc. But I want to make the most of any remaining skeletal immaturity.)

Is there any fringe supplement out there that could work? I hear royal jelly, colostrum, etc. have potential. It appears fresh and unfrozen is ideal, frozen is second-best. I am thinking of reaching out to local farms and paying whatever they want for raw, fresh liquid colostrum. Also thinking of scouring the internet for a royal jelly supplier in the USA (99% of royal jelly on the market is from Asia if you dig into it enough. Some brands are more reputable, but they're all frozen and shipped from Asia. I want to try and find a US-based farm and pay them for their royal jelly).

Is there any exotic food or substance that can boost IGF1? I heard eating raw, fresh beef liver contains actual trace IGF1 that is bioavailable. Some dude on reddit says his hands got bigger from eating lots of raw liver. But I don't want to get mad cow disease. Royal jelly has some testimonials. HT042 from korea, a herbal medicine, mainly astragalus extract, has some evidence in children.

Are there any rumored herbal treatments from any tradition that could radically boost skeletal growth? HT042 from korea is one that has some evidence. But I'm thinking, look into african traditions, chinese, korean, ayurvedic, etc. Anything out there that hasn't been properly studied but is plausible or anecdotal for growth?

WHAT IF: I eat 3g / lb of protein daily? Some absolutely absurd daily protein intake. What would happen? Any chance this boosts IGF1 like crazy? I know SAUNA might help too, there's some protocol out there to boost GH. I know exercise and all that etc. Any secret meditative techniques to trigger pituitary activity and consciously induce GH secretion? Perhaps meditation on the feeling of hunger to boost ghrelin?

I'm pretty sure it's over for your wrist size at 23. Maybe there's some Chinese research chemical I'm not aware of, but I'm skeptical.

The good news is that you can still play sports and meet women as a wristlet. The bad (?) news is that if you aren't already performing at a high level you're unlikely to be held back by your wrists in sport.

That's the thing though, no doctor has explained to me why it's over for things like radical bone thickness changes. Growth plates determine longitudinal growth, but there's no hard reason why bones can't get radically thicker post-puberty. Especially if, as you say, you intake some kind of research chemical. Or even just plain old HGH.

I'm pretty sure it comes down to hormonal environment. Maybe some kind of epigenetic signaling occurs when growth plates close? Because there's no mechanical reason your wrists can't get inches thicker anytime, as far as I know.

It's been a year or so since I had an MRI but it showed areas of defused bone where the growth plates are, low-intensity signals that are wider than they're supposed to be from comparing. Nobody remarked on it because it's not a full ass growth plate. But I have managed to DM a couple of orthopedic doctors on reddit and they confirmed it might be unusual to have such width of low-intensity signals at the growth plate scars, although not something anyone cares about.

Probably the growth plate fusion happened already but, like the rest of my bones being osteoporotic from starvation during puberty, it's not a tight seal, and the scar contains some (relatively to average, but may or may not be clinically) significant remaining cartilage.

Hence I wonder if the epigentic signaling that occurs when growth plates close, just didn't happen for me, and I'm in some weird never-went-through-puberty (I did briefly, before ending its progression with starvation) hence never-fully-matured state. It may be that with the right dose of lifestyle or chemicals, those plates have two trajectories possible: full fusion, with a tight seal, from the continued influx of resources, or somehow with the hormonal and lifestyle ingredients being just right, the cartilage might proliferate. Starvation is bad for you but it does retard your biological/skeletal age. I'm only getting chest hair now when my father got it at 19-20.

I do have lifestyle factors I need to fix to get stronger physically, and I believe I can get a lot of improvement from that. But I do want to fix my fundamentals if possible. My wrist is 1st percentile for women, but I'm around 15th percentile overall body size for men. That's a mismatch, maybe it doesn't matter that much, but it would be nice to correct it.

That's the thing though, no doctor has explained to me why it's over for things like radical bone thickness changes.

I'm not a doctor, but I bet an LLM could answer most of your questions around this.