Jiggling Fat Away
Reported September 18, 2008
STONY BROOK, N.Y. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — About two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and about 20 million suffer from osteoporosis. What if standing on a vibrating platform could help people like these make more bone and less fat? That’s what researchers are studying — and it’s giving them new insight on two very serious medical problems.
You’ll try running pedaling and climbing. Anything to shed those pounds!
And remember those vibrating exercise machines that promised weight loss? Now, researchers are studying the effects of vibration — with surprising results!
Mice that stood on this platform for 15 minutes a day formed more bone mass and less fat.
“The funny connection between bone and fat is they all come from the same cell,” Clinton Rubin, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, told Ivanhoe.
That stem cell can become muscle, bone or fat. Scientists believe the gentle vibrations cause the cell to turn into bone to tolerate the jiggling.
“So, it’s a different way of thinking about why we become obese,” Dr. Rubin said.
In the study, mice exposed to the vibrating platform formed about 30 percent less fat.
The platform also showed promise in humans. Postmenopausal women who stood on the vibrating plate maintained their bone mass, while those who didn’t lost about 3 percent. Rubin says tennis players are a good example of how shaking leads to bigger bones. They have 35 percent more bone in their playing arms.
These vibrations may one day be a simple way to fight both osteoporosis and obesity — problems that plague millions of Americans.
One important note: Researchers say the vibrations do not remove fat cells — they just help fewer to become fat cells. Rubin warns that high magnitude vibrations are extremely dangerous, so this isn’t something you should try at home. The jiggling sensations used in this study were extremely low level vibrations.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Nubia Andrade
Department of Biomedical Engineering
State University of New York
Stony Brook, NY
(631) 632-2302
nandrade@notes.cc.sunysb.edu