A new scientific study presented at the European Congress on Obesity, found that overweight or obese people who regularly used vibrating equipment with a calorie restricted diet were much more successful at long term weight-loss and losing the fat around their abdomen compared to those who combined dieting with a more conventional fitness routine."These machines are increasingly found in gyms across the industrialized world and have gathered a devoted following in many places, but there has not been any studies proving that they help people lose weight. Our study, the first to investigate the effects of vibration in obese people, indicates it's a very promising approach. It looks like these machines could be a useful addition to a weight control package," said the study's leader, Dirk Vissers, a physiotherapist at the Artesis University College and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
The researchers divided the study group into four groups.
DIET GROUP: One group was prescribed an individually calculated calorie restricted diet.
DIET PLUS EXERCISE GROUP: The second group received the same diet instructions, with the addition of a traditional fitness program.
CONTROL GROUP: A third control group got no diet or exercise instructions.
DIET PLUS VIBRATION EXERCISE GROUP: The fourth group got the diet instructions plus supervised vibration plate training instead of conventional exercise. They were instructed not to do any aerobic exercise during the six-month study period.
THE RESULTS
Over the year, only the conventional fitness and vibration groups managed to maintain a 5% weight loss, which is what is considered enough to improve health.
DIET GROUP: During the first six months, the diet only group lost about 6% of their initial body weight, but could not maintain a 5% weight loss in the subsequent six months. The diet group had a visceral fat loss of 24.3 square centimetres after six months but were unable to maintain the loss and dropped down to only 7.5 square centimetres after a year.
DIET PLUS EXERCISE GROUP: The group that got diet plus conventional fitness lost about 7% of their initial body weight in the first six months, and by the end of the study, they had managed to keep off a 6.9% loss. Visceral fat shrank by 18 square centimetres in the conventional fitness group in the first six months, but by the end of the year, it was only 1.6 square centimetres less than at the beginning. Not very impressive.
CONTROL GROUP: The control group predictively gained about 1.5% of their original body weight.
DIET PLUS VIBRATION EXERCISE GROUP: Finally vibration exercise group lost 11% of their body weight during the intervention phase and by the end of the follow-up period they had maintained a 10.5% loss. The vibration fitness group lost 48 square centimetres of visceral fat during the first six months and still had the impressive loss of 48 square centimetres after 12 months.
These are very encouraging results, and this could be a viable alternative to traditional exercise and weight lifting. Vissers explained that the plate works by making muscles rapidly contract, which builds lean muscle mass.
The results were presented at ECO 2009 -- The 17th European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Learn more about vibration exercise here:
http://www.vibrationexercise.ca
http://www.vibration-fitness.com