394 | Does a Vibration Plate Help Prevent Muscle & Bone Loss?

[00:00:05] Welcome to the Optimal Body Podcast. I'm Dr. Jen. And I'm Dr. Dom. And we are doctors of physical therapy, bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains and restrictions, and answer your questions. Along with expert guests, our goal of the Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you discover what optimal means within your own body. Let's dive in.

[00:00:28] So this episode is about vibration plates, which is a sensory thing. And something that's so important when it comes to sensation is our ability to feel the ground through our feet. And that's why we recommend being barefoot more often and wearing a barefoot shoe like Vivo Barefoot Shoes. Vivo Barefoot Shoes is what Jen and I have worn exclusively over about the past five years, and they have made a tremendous difference in the way that our feet operate and our foot health.

[00:00:57] The bottoms of our feet are one of the most innervated places in our entire body, and it is meant to help us feel the ground below us to help with things like balance, movement, being able to react to our surroundings. And that's why it's so vital to have a thin bottom on your shoe like Vivo Barefoot Shoes do have. Just by wearing barefoot shoes, it also helps with foundational mobility and strength that your feet might be missing.

[00:01:22] Rather than adding in technology like orthotics or wedges or a heel cushion, why not put your foot in a shoe that will help it build the strength and mobility it needs to feel comfortable, strong, and safe on its own? So you should all head down to the link in the show notes and make sure you use code OPTIMAL20 at checkout. That'll give you 20% off your entire order, and they have shoes for everything. We love to use them when we work out or go on walks, but they also have water shoes. They have boots. They have hiking shoes.

[00:01:51] They have dress shoes. They have something for every occasion so you can always be gaining these benefits that the barefoot shoe brings, and you can also get 20% off while doing it. So go down to the link in the show notes and use code OPTIMAL20 at checkout to get that discount. Okay, so whole body vibration. We're talking about those vibration plates today, and this was actually a topic requested by a listener asking, can you do a topic on whole body vibration? What's it do?

[00:02:20] What might the benefits be? Because I feel like this is something that there's a lot of claims out there as to what it's going to do. It's going to help prevent muscle loss. It's going to help with osteoporosis. It's going to help with relaxation, and we're going to dive in a little bit to what we think and what we're seeing in some of the research papers that we were able to find on whole body vibration.

[00:02:41] Yeah, and I mean there is a lot of research, but I think looking at how they're pulling the research together and some new evidence is really important so that you can kind of suss through maybe some of the bias in papers. Because, I mean, especially if you go to a place that has vibration plate therapy or vibration plate fitness, like, of course, they're going to be pulling from the research that biases their opinions.

[00:03:08] And just research in general, we always want to be aware of this because research has to be funded by something or someone, and there aren't a lot of organizations that don't have an interest in finding that a certain intervention, that a certain technique has benefit. And so it's really hard to find research studies that don't have some sort of inherent bias to them. And we'll point out a little bit of what we were seeing in the vibration plate research.

[00:03:39] But first, just like talking about vibration a little bit in general. And first of all, like I'm sure a lot of people have seen those plates. It's like the full little plate that you can stand on and it vibrates and it feels kind of funny if you've ever been able to stand on one of them. But what purportedly, like when you think about vibration plate, what do you feel like neurologically or physiologically the body's going to do in reaction to that?

[00:04:09] Well, you know, the claim is that it is, you know, because it's vibrating, it's making your muscles work at such an accelerated speed to have to contrast everything that's going on. And so you're getting a lot more muscle contraction. So you're going to burn more calories and you're going to, you know, lose more weight essentially. But here's where those claims get kind of muddied.

[00:04:34] First of all, weight loss, we know it does come down to a caloric effort of. Yeah, calories in, calories out, that whole equation. Yes, it's not just down to what we're doing exercise wise. Of course, that can help. However, we have to be monitoring food and other things like that is bottom line there. You know, and so it's really hard to just like, oh, it's going to burn more calories.

[00:04:59] Well, if you modify for calories, then yes, you can burn more calories. And it's interesting to me that like a lot of the claims that you see people trying to make are related to muscle gain or, you know, like strength gain. Where in my mind, vibration seems to make me think more relaxation. Right. Right.

[00:05:23] And where that makes sense to me is that like we have in our nervous system these specific mechanoreceptors, like these nervous system receptors in our muscles and tissues that sense vibration at different like levels and speeds and can give us a response in that aspect. And so, I don't know.

[00:05:45] And just when I have stood on them before, it seems to give me like my own anecdotal feeling is that I feel like I get more relaxation coming off of them rather than feeling like, oh, I just worked the muscles. Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, I've done a an exercise class with them because, of course, it became popular in L.A. when we lived in L.A. Yeah, I did a class.

[00:06:11] I cannot say that I felt any improvement or any more soreness than I would if I did a traditional lifting class like I usually do. And I think you're bringing up a great point is that in the research, that's where the bias comes in. It's like some research studies would basically compare doing a strength class on a vibration plate to nothing, to like a control group where people aren't doing anything.

[00:06:38] And then they say, oh, yeah, these people had an increase in strength or strength markers and whatever. But in that case, you're not able to isolate, OK, well, what was giving them the improvement doing the strength training class or standing on the vibration plate? And that's where a lot of the studies we looked at, we made sure that they were comparing apples to apples.

[00:07:00] They were comparing someone doing an exercise on the vibration plate or an exercise program versus people just doing the exercise program without the vibration plate. And that's where I think a lot of that bias, just like this as an example, people can say, oh, vibration plates improve strength. Well, maybe doing an exercise program or a strength training program on a vibration plate compared to nothing will improve your strength. But let's compare apples to apples here.

[00:07:29] So we'll get into some of the research. And I just want to also touch on because you brought up like, you know, the bone health and osteoporosis. And here's where it just doesn't even make a little bit of sense to me is the amount of force that we need into the bone in order to create change is huge. And you cannot walk to get that enough of that. You cannot lift light weights in order to get enough of that.

[00:07:53] You have to be putting a substantial amount of load axially compressive wise through the body in order to create enough change in the bone. And we'll have another episode on what exactly can help with osteoporosis.

[00:08:07] But this is why there is no really research that verifies that it's going to help with osteoporosis and bone health because, you know, where it may have some modifications on, okay, it can improve posture or I mean balance, right? Which helps to reduce the risk of falls, which helps to then reduce fractures from osteoporosis.

[00:08:32] Maybe we can get there through that, but we can't get there by saying, you know, this is what's going to help my bone mass. Yeah, that one didn't really make sense to me saying, oh, vibration plates will help prevent osteoporosis. Because, again, with the mechanoreception, I'm trying to make it make sense in my mind, like, does that stimulate what we call the osteoclasts? Right.

[00:08:55] Which are the things that form bone, like, does the vibration get the osteoclasts all excited and they start doing some bone remodeling? Or, again, is this stemming from studies that did strength training in combination with vibration plate? In which case, my mind would tell me, okay, it's more the load coming from the strength training. I don't know, but you brought up balance.

[00:09:18] And that was one interesting thing as we looked at one study that compared a vibration group with a strength group. And they were actually testing balance as well as strength gains. And then there was a third thing that they were testing, wasn't there? Or no? Balance and strength.

[00:09:40] And essentially what they found at the end, these two groups did a 12-week program three times a week, three sessions a week, same strength, you know, program. But one was on the vibration plate, one was not. And what they found was that there was no significant difference in the improvements they saw on the strength side. So both of these groups saw strength gains without a significant difference between them.

[00:10:07] But the vibration plate group saw significant improvements beyond just the strength group in their balance. The strength group actually didn't have more balance improvements than the control group that did nothing. Right. So I think that's a really good takeaway, though. Like balance is something that we have to be so conscious of as we continue to age because the risk of falls only, you know, increases as we get older.

[00:10:33] And, you know, if you fall and you do break a hip, the statistics of then when, you know, immortality comes after that is pretty high. So we want to reduce the risk of falls from the get. Yeah. Right. And so if we can have something that is actually helping to improve our balance, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. So that's where I would say this has been shown to be beneficial in improving balance.

[00:10:57] Now, if you're a younger person who can do more advanced balance exercises where you don't, where you, you know, you can have a ball being thrown at you on a single leg. Like you don't need to be on a vibration plate. That's why I would say it probably isn't going to be as beneficial for you. Yeah. And just finding ways to challenge your balance within the exercises you're doing, doing more off balance, doing more single leg stuff, single leg RDLs, Bulgarian split squats.

[00:11:22] You know, I don't know the exact program they use, but maybe they weren't using a significant amount of those type of single leg or unbalanced exercises. Um, and again, the balance thing makes sense to me with vibration. We're going to get a lot more co-contraction around the joint. It's probably going to help us proprioceptively. It's going to help us have a better, a lot more perturbation, you know, you have a lot of more perturbation, I think. But yeah, you have a lot more, uh, input coming from the outside world.

[00:11:51] So it's going to kind of stimulate that sensory nervous system more. So the balance improvement makes a lot of sense to me. Right. Then we go into, we looked at a paper that said vibration exercise makes your muscles and bones stronger. Fact or fiction? And really what they ultimately said is that in the short term, we can see whole body, uh, vibration with the use of, or the use of vibrating dumbbells be beneficial in gaining strength.

[00:12:20] However, again, comparatively, when you look at that compared to just using regular dumbbells or just using regular strength gains, like there's not going to be a significant difference. And what they're really, you know, what they kind of looked at, you know, going deeper into this study is that there's just a lack of understanding of the physiological mechanisms involved in the adaptive responses of vibration exposure. Um, and the most appropriate vibration parameters to be used, um, in order to see those maximized gains.

[00:12:50] So it's like, we don't have a set, like what exactly should the vibration plate be at in order to see this specific gain? Like we just don't have that kind of research. So it's hard to say that whole body vibration plate in general is going to make you stronger than just doing regular, um, lifting. Or make your bones stronger, you know, prevent the osteoporosis.

[00:13:17] And to do a study like that would be, I don't even know if it makes sense to put resources into a study like that. Right. Because you're going to need to do something very long term. You're going to want to have studies in people like that are premenopausal or, you know, before they go through some of these big physiologic changes in life. This study, this paper specifically said there's, you know, a lack of well-designed studies in elderly.

[00:13:41] But you don't really just want to do it in elderly because their bones have already done a lot of the modeling that they're going to do. You want to do it for 20 years from late 30s, early 40s into the late 50s, early 60s with DEXA scans all along the way. And it's just like, that's not, and that's why we don't have research on a lot of this stuff. Right. It's just not, you know, doesn't make sense.

[00:14:06] So also interesting to look at, you know, one of these papers kind of looked at a case study of a 44-year-old woman who was using whole body vibration and showed that she actually got what's called BPPV. So it's a type of positional vertigo that happens in the inner ear. And it said that it resolved itself.

[00:14:27] However, you know, we have to look at some of these potential negative side effects that can happen from continual use of a whole body vibration plate, such as dizziness, headaches, sensation of imbalance. And just be aware that if you are naturally someone who has dealt with some of these issues or you feel like you're easily triggered by some things, this might not be a beneficial thing to even explore for you. So I think it's just important to note that.

[00:14:57] And of course, this is one person, this is one case study, and this is just like a suggestion of what to be aware of. However, I think it's interesting to know and understand what is it really doing up into the head, into the brain, especially when we're going on it continuously. Yeah. And that's what like the prolonged use, these risk factors obviously get a little bit more risky or a little bit more profound if you're losing, using it for long term.

[00:15:21] I even read in one of the studies that there have been listed risk factors of potential joint pain or back pain. And so people who might have a significant history of arthritis in certain areas in their body, you know, long, prolonged use of it might not be recommended where maybe short term use could feel good.

[00:15:43] But, you know, if you're doing it for a long time, you're causing a lot of those joints to do a lot of work they're not used to, especially if you have instability in those joints or, like I said, arthritis in a way that that could get triggered and cause different pain.

[00:15:59] Yeah, I think the last study that we kind of wanted to highlight had to, and to me, the takeaway from the study relates to the balance thing because this was done on people who had gotten ACL surgeries or ACL reconstruction. And they basically compared two groups, one doing the normal ACL rehab, the other group doing that same ACL rehab with full body vibration plate inserted.

[00:16:26] And they noticed that there was a benefit on the increase in knee muscle isokinetic strength, which essentially means knee strength as the knee is moving compared to the regular rehab group. And so can it be beneficial in a rehab setting? Potentially, especially when you're coming from like an ACL reconstruction.

[00:16:48] I think that, you know, it could really aid in just gaining a little bit more of that muscular strength, especially early on after you've come from surgery. And I think that's where it's like most important. I remember I saw another study kind of on like patellofemoral syndrome and there was no different, there's no significant difference. There's no, you know, that it would help. And again, you're not, you're treating someone who already has the capacity within their leg and within their muscles to be able to work. So just use regular training.

[00:17:18] If you've come from surgery, maybe this could be an added benefit. And the reason I said that kind of relates to the balance one is like the whole proprioceptive thing. Anytime after you have an injury, especially if we're tearing any sort of muscles or tendons, we're going to have reduced sensory awareness of that area and vibration could, it looks like, could potentially help improve that more quickly. So another benefit.

[00:17:44] And I know in some professional athletes and, you know, and this is where it's like, well, who has access to this kind of stuff? You know, you're going to be looking at more of like a rehab clinic or, or maybe more professionals. So if they're dealing with chronic ankle sprains, can this be an additive to potentially put on? Again, the research was a little mixed when I really looked at that. But if you have the ability, it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to add in. However, is it something that you should be exercising and training on all the time,

[00:18:14] expecting that you're going to have more muscular gains because you're getting all those co-contractions all the time? I don't think so. Yeah, that's not really supported. And again, with anything in research, like so many of these studies use different types of vibration, different frequencies of vibration. They're doing different exercises on the plate in general. So that's where sometimes I say like, do you enjoy it? Yeah. Does it help you enjoy a workout a little bit more? And if you're not feeling any adverse reactions to it, great.

[00:18:43] If it encourages you to move and do strength training more, great. Use it. Not going to be a bad thing necessarily. Might not be giving you a significant amount more gains, but if it encourages you to work out more, then it could be contributing to your gains. Like if it's something you enjoy. So overall, yeah, the balance improvements, the potential increased improvement with people after ACL surgery. Like there are some applications outside of that.

[00:19:13] For me, it's just like, do you enjoy it? If so, do it. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you found that interesting. And of course, if you're really looking to get your body strong, especially that core, you want to understand how the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, the entire core works together, get rid of any hip popping or just feel more supported along your back. This is where I highly recommend joining us this month. We are starting the core plan on Gen Health and we're all moving together.

[00:19:39] So doing it with a community only helps so that you actually commit to it. And you can get started with a week completely free. And because you're our audience on the podcast, we give you a discount code. So you can start your first month for just $20. So you can actually do the full 30 day core plan week free. Plus you only have to pay $20 for your first month. And you decide if you want to stay on with us from there, but use code optimal.

[00:20:09] When you're checking out, it is gen.health backslash free trial. We'll have that linked up in our show notes as well. And I hope you join us.