Remember those vibration machines you used to see at old-school gyms and athletic training rooms? They were often heralded as a tool for weight loss or body fat reduction, and many people hoped the rapid vibrations would help them shake off or whittle away excess pounds. More recently, whole body vibration, or WBV, therapy has been investigated as an intervention for people with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, some forms of arthritis and those who are recovering from stroke, as well as for improving athletic performance among athletes.
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With WBV therapy, a person lies, sits or stands on a platform that vibrates rapidly in one or more directions. The idea is that the rapid vibrations, which are produced by a machine, “stimulate particular receptors over a muscle or tendon, and that leads to a little bit of a contraction — it’s kind of a reflex pathway,” explains Dr. Bruce Dobkin, a professor of neurology and director of the UCLA Neurologic Rehabilitation and Research Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Thus, the physical oscillations provide a form of passive exercise, in which something is done to a person, as opposed to the person actively engaging in an activity such as walking, cycling, swimming or weightlifting.
While there’s some evidence that WBV can be beneficial for a variety of conditions, the results are mixed, and in some cases enthusiasm for the therapy is ahead of the science. For many years, there was a hope that WBV could help with bone loss and osteoporosis, for example. But “it didn’t pan out because the vibration is not enough of a force to remodel bone,” Dobkin notes. Whether WBV can lead to long-term improvements for other neurological or musculoskeletal conditions remains to be proven.
One problem with the research is that WBV is “done in too many different ways with so many parameters,” Dobkin says. “There are lots of variables — different frequencies and amplitudes that can be set, how long it should be provided.” What’s more, in some instances WBV is used as a passive intervention, while in others, vibrations are used in combination with holding certain exercise-related positions like squats, thus making WBV a more active form of exercise. These discrepancies make it difficult to compare one study to another or to discern what’s really producing a particular benefit, experts say.
Given all the moving parts (or parameters) within WBV studies, it’s not surprising that their cumulative results have been equivocal. A 2016 study from South Africa found that when people with rheumatoid arthritis did two 15-minute sessions of WBV per week for three months, they gained sustained improvements in their ability to function and experienced a decrease in fatigue. By contrast, a 2014 study from Germany found that when people with Parkinson’s disease did random WBV training over five weeks, their improvements in gait, one-legged stance and get-up-and-go tests were no better than those who underwent placebo training.
“It’s an interesting intervention but there’s limited and conflicting data,” says Dr. Tanya Simuni, director of the Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “I’m cautiously interested in WBV — and there’s a tremendous need for alternative therapies for people with Parkinson’s disease — but more [research] needs to be done.”
It also isn’t clear whether a short-term improvement in, say, muscle strength or balance that’s brought about by WBV will translate into greater functionality for people with movement disorders. For example, a 2012 study from Belgium found that 10 WBV sessions over three weeks helped patients with multiple sclerosis gain improvements in the strength of their quadriceps and hamstring muscles but not in their functionality. Which begs the question: How beneficial is a measurable lab result if it doesn’t help the person function better in everyday life?
Meanwhile, some encouraging results have been found with athletic training. Research suggests that WBV training can help younger athletes gain flexibility and help sedentary and older people gain muscle power and performance. Indeed, in a 2015 study, researchers from the University of Texas–El Paso found that eight weeks of WBV training improved risk factors for falls among older adults, particularly by increasing their range of motion in the ankle joints and reducing their fear of falling.
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An increasingly popular training technique among athletes, WBV is sometimes used immediately before competition and/or during scheduled breaks in play. In a 2016 study, professional soccer players from the U.K. who underwent WBV reaped improvements in their knee isometric peak force. (Interestingly, the professional players perceived WBV to be more beneficial to their on-the-field performance than amateur players did.)
There’s a physiological basis for this effect. “The vibration initiates a subtle muscle activation that’s thought to provide a ‘priming’ or ‘muscle-tuning’ [effect] — when it’s completed within a short period of time prior to physical training or performance, [it] provides enhanced muscle recruitment and generation of muscle power and performance,” explains Dennis Dolny, a research scientist at the John Worley Sports Medicine Center at Utah State University in Logan.
Dr. Naresh Rao, a partner at Sports Medicine at Chelsea in New York City and a physician for Team USA Water Polo, has witnessed this effect firsthand. More specifically, he has seen WBV help with injury rehabilitation and performance training among Olympic athletes. “It’s a way to strengthen certain muscle groups and improve power and explosive movements in a short period of time,” Rao says.
At the U.S. Olympic Training Center, a gymnast with a sprained ankle did weight-bearing exercises such as toe raises while standing on the vibration plate. “This gave tone to the surrounding muscles, and in combination with exercise, she had a notably faster recovery,” Rao says. Similarly, a water polo player with an overuse injury of the knee performed quadriceps-strengthening exercises on a WBV machine. “Subjectively, it helped him feel better,” Rao says, “and he felt stronger when he got back in the pool to swim.”
It’s not just about strengthening muscles, though. “Perhaps WBV’s greatest potential is to contribute to enhanced joint flexibility and improved flexibility in the muscle groups surrounding the skeletal joints,” Dolny says. “So in sports such as gymnastics, where flexibility and body alignment are crucial to the physical and aesthetic aspects of competition, WBV training provides additional benefits to more traditional forms of training.”
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At this point, you may be wondering if you should try it. The answer depends on your personal goals and your physical condition, experts say. Your best bet is to discuss WBV with your physician. As long as it’s done safely, there’s little risk associated with WBV, experts say. “If you don’t have contraindications — such as a broken bone or blood clot or balance issues — it’s certainly worth trying,” Rao says. “But it should be used in conjunction with other exercises” for optimal benefits.
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Good Vibrations: the Perks and Pitfalls of Whole Body Vibration Therapy originally appeared on usnews.com
