Side Benefit of Space Travel Brings Advance in Bone Health…

Posted By Dr. Mercola | November 09 2010 | 243 views

Share

Email to a friend : 4

Previous

Sources:

Bone October 2010; 47(4):746-55.

EMax Health October 26, 2010

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Whole body vibration (WBV) platforms originate from research conducted during the 1960s space race. The more precise scientific term for this though is acceleration training. It works on the principle of Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, which you might recall from high school physics class.

Force = Mass X Acceleration

Normally we are only dealing with acceleration due to the force of gravity or 1G and the only way we vary the force in exercise is to increase the weight. However if you examine the equation you can easily see that you can increase the force by increasing acceleration by increasing the G force to 2 or more.

These systems work by having a plate that is driven by a motor to rapidly move up and down several millimeters typically between 30 and 50 times per second. The more rapid the oscillations or the larger the plate displacement the higher the G forces. Some machines will reach G forces of 8, or eight times the force of gravity.

However, acceleration training is not only effective at building muscle mass, it may help build bone mass too. NASA has tested vibration platforms to help prevent the bone loss that occurs during space travel, and now researchers are looking into more “earth-bound” uses for the machines as well.

In a new study by Medical College of Georgia researchers, using vibration therapy 30 minutes daily for 12 weeks improved bone density in mice, a finding that adds support for their use in humans, especially the elderly.

It’s thought that the vibrations prompt movement of the cell nucleus, which may trigger the release of osteoblasts to build bone.

Previous studies have also found that acceleration training increases bone density in the hip and inhibits bone loss in the spine and hip areas.

Emerging Benefits of Whole Body Acceleration

As Dr. Keith DeOrio, M.D. explained in another article, your entire body musculature, as well as your internal organs and glands, are affected by acceleration training

Your muscle spindles fire secondary to the mechanical stimulation produced by the vibrating plate, and this rapid firing of the muscle spindle causes a neuromuscular response that leads to physiological changes in your brain as well as your entire body.

Traumas and injuries can leave cellular memories in your brain or body tissue that impede normal body movement or function, even after they’re healed. Using acceleration training allows your body and brain to rapidly de-imprint these old cell traumas, re-imprinting with positive, healthy information.

This allows for better and more efficient rehabilitation of injuries from sports or surgery than traditional methods of therapy.

Since acceleration training is accomplished with very little stress to your joints, tendons and ligaments — essentially you stand or perform slow specific movements on a vibrating platform — it can be a very good therapy regimen if you’ve suffered injuries, if you’re elderly, or if you have disease conditions such as arthritis, fibromyalgia or multiple sclerosis, which would normally limit your fitness program.

According to Dr. DeOrio, studies have shown that a mere 12 minutes of training on a WBV plate is equal to a 1.5-hour workout with weights!

And a separate study performed by the University of Liege in Belgium found that after six weeks elderly participants experienced:

• 143 percent improvement in physical function
• 77 percent improvement in equilibrium
• 60 percent improvement in vitality
• 57 percent improvement in the quality of walking
• 41 percent reduction in pain
• 23 percent improvement in general health

This was all accomplished by performing four one-minute sessions, three times a week, so in just 12 minutes a week!

Is Whole Body Vibration Right for You?

If you are simply interested in keeping your bones strong and healthy, I’ll detail some tips to help below. Diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle will be your keys to keeping your bones healthy.

However, for people who are unable to exercise, or even if you simply want to add another training tool to your fitness regimen, acceleration training platforms can be useful. There are actually quite a few research studies out on their potential uses, which include a range of benefits such as:

• Increased muscle strength, especially explosive strength
• Increased hormone secretion: IGF-1, testosterone, and HGH (human growth hormone)
• Enhanced muscle and bone building
• Increased flexibility and mobility
• Increased circulation
• Pain reduction
• Increased lymphatic drainage
• Cellulite reduction
• Decreased cortisol levels
• Increased secretion of serotonin and norepinephrine,

An acceleration training system is also useful for athletes to improve speed and vertical jump height and decrease warm-up time, making them alluring for professional sports teams.

There are a number of different machines on the market and I would not rush out and purchase one. I am just completing a four year comprehensive evaluation of this technology and I hope to report on it soon.

These machines can range from a few thousand dollars to well over ten thousand — so please wait for my report before you make this type of investment as there is a good chance you will purchase an inferior type of machine that will not provide all the benefits.

In the meantime, though, there is a much simpler technology that will provide many of the same benefits and that is a mini trampoline. You can get up to 3Gs on some tramps.

The two technologies are not mutually exclusive and I actually use both. I particularly enjoy the trampoline after a Peak 8 exercise and I use it to help stimulate lymphatic drainage of the toxins that are released after I exercise. Great recovery tool and actually somewhat fun to do.

The mini trampoline will definitely increase your bone density although not as much as a high-quality acceleration training machine.

More Tips for Building Your Bones

Most of you reading this will not have regular access to acceleration training or a mini trampoline, but you can still keep your bones strong. The simple guidelines that follow can help you maintain, or increase, your bone strength safely and naturally and actually work synergistically with these types of exercise to optimize your bone density:

• Increase your consumption of vegetables and eat based on your body’s unique nutritional type. If you find it difficult to eat the recommended amount of vegetables you need daily, you can also try vegetable juicing.Eating high quality, organic, biodynamic, locally grown food will naturally increase your bone density and decrease your risk of developing osteoporosis.
• Avoid processed foods. If you eat a diet full of processed foods, it will produce biochemical and metabolic conditions in your body that will decrease your bone density, so avoiding processed foods is a first step in the right direction.
• Consume a healthy balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats, and especially reduce or eliminate the amount of processed vegetable oils such as corn, canola, safflower, and soy that you consume.
• Most everyone needs to take a high quality, animal-based omega 3 fat. I recommend krill oil, as I believe it’s a superior source of omega 3’s.
• Avoid gluten, a grain protein that has been shown to decrease bone density. Gluten is found in wheat, barley, rye, oats and spelt.
• Avoid soda and sugar, which increase bone damage by depleting your bones of calcium.
• Avoid steroids, especially if you have asthma or any other autoimmune disease. Steroids increase your risk for osteoporosis.
• Consider supplementing with vitamin K2 if you are not getting enough from food alone. Vitamin K2 serves as the biological “glue” that helps plug the calcium into your bone matrix. The dose is about 185 mcg per day.Fermented foods, such as natto, typically have the highest concentration of vitamin K found in the human diet and can provide several milligrams of vitamin K2 on a daily basis.
• Optimize your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D builds your bone density by helping your body absorb calcium.
• Exercise. Studies show that exercise is just as important to your bone health as eating a calcium-rich diet. Strength-building exercises like weight training are especially helpful here.
• Consider natural progesterone, which can increase your bone strength. It does this by serving as a growth promoter for the osteoblasts (the cells that build bone). For more on progesterone, please review Complications Regarding Progesterone Cream.

• Published by connie on November 8th, 2010 in Eating Right, Equipment, Exercises, Health & Wellness, Information, Uncategorized, Whole Body Vibration.
• 0 Comments

Vibration Physical Exercises as the Rehabilitation in Gerontology

Vibration biomechanical stimulation as the physiological basis of vibration physical exercises (whole body vibration) causes reflecting muscle contractions like tonic vibration reflex. This type of intervention leads to high intensive stimulation of proprioceptors as called muscle spindles which result in alteration in parameters of activity and developments of human physiological functions. This type of training has broad positive influence on organism. Acceleration physical exercises improve muscle performance, flexibility, nervous function, significantly increase bone mineral density, physiological secretion of anabolic hormones, growth and anti-aging factors; normalize/decrease cortisol as anti-stress effect and are beneficial for balance and mobility as well. It is showed acceleration training caused by vibration stimulus is beneficial for people suffering from osteoporosis and obesity, for rehabilitation of nervous and motor function in patients with Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and stroke. PMID: 19947400 [PubMed - in process]

Pub Med. Gov

U.S. National Library of Medicine

National Institutes of Health

• Published by connie on April 12th, 2010 in Health & Wellness, News & Research, Whole Body Vibration.
• 2 Comments

Whole Body Vibration Therapy, a Revolutionary Technique that Efficiently Treats Parkinson’s Disease

A novel non-traditional physical therapy method is available for advanced Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients that do not respond well to medications such as L-dopamine. Scientists from the Sun Life Financial Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre from Ontario, Canada have shown that short term whole body vibration therapy significantly improves the clinical symptoms (loss of gait, tremors and akinesia) of PD patients.  In this clinical study, a sample population of 40 PD patients were subject to intensive therapy for a few weeks using a Physioacoustic Chair, an sophisticated device containing speakers that are strategically placed throughout the chair in order to deliver programmed low frequency sound waves throughout  the body of the patient.

This study is remarkable in the sense that acoustic therapy had a significant impact on the well being and quality of life of PD patients.  In brief,  the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), gait assessments and upper limb control tests showed significant improvements on gait stability and posture, increased stepping time and speed on the peg-board task,  a significant decrease in tremors and less rigidity in PD patients receiving whole body vibration therapy compared to a control group that received no therapy. More importantly, this study showed  that whole body vibration therapy may also be applied to PD patients that do not respond well to L-dopamine medication or deep brain stimulation, a complicated risky surgery that involves delivering mild electrical shocks to the brain via implanted electrodes. The latter technique is used as  a last resort to stabilize tremors and rigidity in PD patients.

Whole body acoustic stimulation vs. conventional physical therapy for treating PD

Before this study, another previous study conducted about a year ago showed that whole vibration therapy is even more effective in reversing many of the clinical symptoms of PD patients compared to conventional physical therapy. Specifically, this particular study showed that whole body vibration therapy improved equilibrium and gait four weeks after undergoing an intensive three week regimen consisting of 15 minutes a day for five days a week.

Remarkably, this study quantitatively also suggests that whole body vibration therapy is more efficient (25% more efficient) than conventional physical therapy for partially reversing clinical symptoms in PD patients that do not respond well to L-dopamine.  It will be interesting to know whether a combined therapy that uses both whole body and conventional intervention techniques has an additive/ synergistic positive effect in reversing clinical PD symptoms compared to single treatment intervention.

Whole body vibration therapy has also been used in the past to treat patients affected by neuromuscular debilitating and neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis, stroke, cerebral palsy, Huntington’s chorea, and other movement disorders. It is not known how whole body acoustic therapy works in Parkinson’s disease patients but it is believed that high vibrational frequencies help to partially restore some of the sensory perception  (proprioception) that is lost during the progression of the disease and is also used to enhance muscle coordination, a physical trait that is lost during the progression of PD. Finally, high frequency sound waves delivered via physicoacoustic devices has been shown to improve blood flow, electrical conductivity and metabolism of muscle tissue.

What is Parkinson’s disease?

PD is an age-related, relentless, chronic and incurable neurodegenerative disease that affects different regions in the brain (the midbrain)  that are enriched with dopaminergic neurons, neurons that produce dopamine. A 90%  loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain results in motor impairment and muscle coordination in the affected patient.  These symptoms include but are not limited to postural tremors, instability and loss of gait, slow movement (bradykinesia) or complete loss of movement (akinesia). Many of you are familiar the PD related tremors exhibited by the actor Michael J. Fox, a successful actor famous who starred in the Back to the Future movie sequels and who founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

To this date, there is no cure for this devastating disease that affects a little more than 1% of the total U.S. population. Over more than 90% of cases of PD have no known cause (sporadic cases). The only effective treatment so far is the administration of Levodopa, a synthetic analog of dopamine, and/or dopamine receptor agonists (bromocriptine) which efficiently alleviates tremors and bradykinesia in PD. Adjunct pharmacological therapy include administration of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (selegiline and rasagaline) and Carvidopa (an aromatic decarboxylase inhibitor) with the goal of increasing the levels of dopamine in the brain by inhibiting the enzymes involved in the breakdown of dopamine. Other more sophisticated and extremely expensive treatments include deep brain stimulation, a very complicated procedure that involves electrically inactivating small inhibitory regions of the brain in order to increase excitatory dopaminergic stimuli through electrical stimulations.

What causes Parkinson’s disease?

PD is a multi-factorial disease in which environmental and genetics play a role. One theory that has gained widespread attention in the medical and scientific community is that exposure to environmental factors, such as pesticides and oxidative stress (free radicals), lead to a rapid decline in the function of mitochondria, the energy generators and powerhouses of the cell, in dopaminergic neurons over time. Moreover, certain genes (PINK1, Parkin, DJ-1, alpha-synuclein, and Parkin) which are found to be mutated in PD patients, have been shown to lead to mitochondrial dysfunction, decrease energy production along with an increase in free radicals in animal models of PD.

Jan. 3, 11:45 am.  Pittsburgh Medical Technology Examiner  Ruben Dagda

• Published by connie on January 25th, 2010 in Health & Wellness, News & Research, Whole Body Vibration.
• 7 Comments

And Now, A Word From One of Our Customers:

“I just had to let you know how thrilled I am with my Whole Body Vibration (WBV) Platform. I have cerebral palsy and use braces and a wheel chair to get around. I’m also of the age where osteoporosis is a concern. Well, your machine has given me new life! I can now get on and off the platform on my own (couldn’t a few months ago), and it has increased my strength, stability and circulation to a degree I never imagined possible. Degenerative arthritis in my joints makes weight-bearing exercise impossible and the pain in my hips and knees was extreme. What a difference now! The pain is almost non-existent and I’m able to stand on the platform for the full 10 minutes. Wow! I’m 60 years old and getting a second chance at life. THANK YOU.”
Andi, Florence, Oregon

Immediately upon receipt of Andi’s email, we shot back an offer to her to do an ad for WBV. She said, “Sure, if it will help others like me it’s helped me.” The ad ran nationally in Readers’ Digest a couple of years ago.

WBV is especially important for people like Andi. But it’s also important to those who have difficulty sticking with a regular exercise program…. and that’s almost everyone!

We’ve been manufacturing and selling home strength training equipment for 30 years. We are convinced that Whole Body Vibration is the most important discovery since the Greeks and Romans perfected barbell and dumbell exercises, just like the ones we do today, 2500 years ago!

So, how is WBV working for you? Please let us know. You can comment here or click the Testimonials tab at the top of the page.

• Published by carlie on February 17th, 2009 in Success Stories.
• 1 Comment

WBV Training; a great discovery!

WBV is a platform that vibrates while the user stands, sits, lifts weights, does yoga or any kind of exercise on it.  WBV training has been shown to increase muscular strength, explosive power and anabolic hormone level when performed for as little as 4 minutes, three times a week.  It requires relatively little exertion compared with traditional forms of exercise, yet studies comparing this training method to traditional strength training have found similar gains in strength and in some cases more gains in explosive power.  Since WBV is low impact, it may be a particularly good choice for older or obese people who have trouble doing traditional weight bearing exercises.

WBV’s benefits include an increase in muscle flexibility, strength, bone density, balance and blood flow. Research shows many positive effects in pain management and the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis and other ailments.  For postmenopausal women the use of vibration is a far better alternative in our opinion than the dangerous osteoporosis drugs now on the market.

In a 24 week study (Verschueren et al, 2004) hip bone density showed a significant increase in postmenopausal women who used WBV three times a week.  In a 12 month study (Rubin et al, 2004) WBV training effectively prevented bone loss in the spine and femur.

The current theory is WBV stimulates the body’s natural stretch reflex.  The stretch reflex is controlled by stretch receptors called muscle spindles.  These are usually activated when a muscle is under static stretch causing a reflex contraction of the muscle.  With WBV, this reflex action is continually stimulated, so a muscle continues to contract and relax until the vibration stops.  Studies show that activation of one muscle spindle will cause a reflex contraction and relaxation in the adjacent muscles.  WBV stimulates fast-twitch motor units, which are usually stimulated during high-intensity movements.  Studies suggest that WBV training is just as effective as resistance training in developing gains in muscular strength and power.  In fact, some findings suggest the WBV training may be more effective since WBV stimulates those hard-to-get fast-twitch motor units.

Vibration has been proven to be beneficial to athletes but it can be beneficial for basic activities of daily living.  WBV has been demonstrated to significant gains in muscle performance in sedentary and elderly people. Your entire body musculature, as well as your internal organs and glands, are affected positively by WBV stimulation.  Even the brain experiences physiological changes.  Studies have shown better and more efficient rehabilitation of injuries or surgery than traditional methods of therapy.  It’s very good therapy if you have conditions such as arthritis, fibromyalgia or multiple sclerous, which would normally limit your fitness program.

One study performed by the University of Liege in Belgium (4 one minute sessions, 3 times a day), after 6 weeks the participants experienced:  143% improvement in physical function, 77% improvement in balance, 60% improvement in vitality, 57% improvement in walking, 41% reduction in pain and 23% improvement in general health.  Imagine, just 12 minutes a week!

WBV has been reported to produce immediate effects on anabolic hormone levels.  Researchers noted a significant increase in blood circulation of testosterone and growth hormone following 10 one-minute sessions of WBV training (26Hz) in healthy men.

Some of the benefits of WBV training: Increased muscle strength, enhanced bone and muscle building, increased flexibility, increased circulation, pain reduction, increased hormone secretion, increased serotonin, increased lymphatic drainage, cellulite reduction and decreased cortisol levels.

WBV is a fast, effective addition or alternative to resistance training for both sedentary and athletic people. The low impact nature of the exercise and the relatively low exertion required make WBV a good exercise for obese and elderly people.  Additionally, it can be a good cross-training option.

• Published by marilyn on February 12th, 2009 in Exercises, Health & Wellness, Success Stories, Whole Body Vibration.
• 3 Comments