New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/24/2010 -- This time of year we are bombarded with claims from companies offering pills, programs, diets and meal plans that will make you slim. Many of these are misleading and recently the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) fined the marketers (Xenadrine EFX, One-A-Day WeightSmart, CortiSlim and TrimSpa) of four weight-loss pills $25 million for making false advertising claims including fast weight-loss and even cancer prevention. It is nice to see the government acting on and going after these fraudsters.

Who is Using Vibration Machines?
For the past few years I have been reporting my findings on vibration exercise machines and gathering more research. I have now worked with and talked to many people that using vibration exercise fitness machines to get in shape and to lose weight. Like most, I was very skeptical when I was first introduced to the technology but the more I researched the science behind the more intrigued I got. I found that most professional sports teams in the USA were using vibration machines for one reason or another. Some for training, some for rehab/therapy and some for stretching and core workouts.

I also found that vibration exercise had been adopted by medical professionals such as physiotherapists, chiropractors and spinal therapy specialists. The interesting thing is that many of these professionals a few years ago laughed at whole-body vibration fitness as a real science and medical treatment. Now that they had become educated and experienced on vibration exercise machines their view had completely changed. I found this is a common evolution with most people and their experience with vibration machines.

Benefits of Vibration Plate Fitness
So how can vibration do so much good for us? The basics are very simple and I found that once I had used the machine just once, I understood how it worked. When you exercise you contract and stretch your muscles under force. This causes small tears in the muscle which then are repaired and rebuilt even stronger. The vibration machine exercise does exactly this but in much smaller movements, about 3mm to 10mm. Your muscles do not care how much they are moving as long as they are contracting and stretching under force. The result is not only the same but better. In one minute on a vibration machine you can get 1500 muscle contractions, compared to maybe 60 to 200 doing traditional exercise. This is how the whole-body vibration workout only takes 10 to 15 minutes.

Beyond the muscle workout there are many other benefits that are not so obvious starting with Weight-loss. A new study presented at the Congress on Obesity showed that vibration exercise fitness was up to 4 times as effective as traditional exercise with fat loss. 60 minutes of cardio versus 15 minutes of vibration exercise machine use and vibration fitness won? This surprised everybody and has created a shockwave around the globe. Not only did the vibration fitness group lose much more fat but they were able to keep it off even after stopping using vibration for 6 months. The cardio group all experienced the yo yo effect and gained back the weight they had lost. Somehow vibration exercise is able to reset the bodies "Weight Set-Point" which is key to long term weight-loss. This is a game changer in the weight-loss industry and Vibration Exercise has is becoming adopted into many weight-loss program now.

North America is currently experiencing an epidemic in Osteoporosis and the drug companies are having a hay day selling drugs to treat it. In reality the drugs have been proven to have very little benefits and are costing consumers hundreds of millions a year. Vibration Exercise machines build bone mass naturally and are very effective at preventing bone loss.

My Results
As for myself and my wife our results continue to be impressive. We have both lost more weight and continue to get stronger. Our energy levels are up and overall we really feel better. My experience has been so positive that I have got many of my friends to start using whole-body vibration and they have really benefited from it.

Vibration Exercise Machine Buyer Tips
The most common question I get is "what machine to buy" and the answer is depends on how much you want to spend. We have had a VibraSlim Europlate for a few years now and we love it. There are many other good brands out there though such as Power Plate, Turbosonic and Pila-vibe although they do cost considerably more.

Beware of the dozens of websites and stores selling Chinese made vibration machines. These machines are notorious for breaking down and trying to repair them is futile. The Chinese machines, like most things from china, are made to be disposable and not made to repaired easily even if you are able to find parts. I have heard many horror stories of $2000 machines breaking after a few months and ending up in the garbage.

Unless you buy from a reputable company like the ones I have mentioned you are gambling with you're your hard earned money. Many websites say they have service and warranties, but most of them are just selling machines and never providing any customer service. So beware!

I hope my investigating and reporting has helped you and I will continue to present my findings.

Until next time!
Kevin Rellis

Links to Vibration Machine Suppliers:

VibraSlim - http://www.myvibraslim.com - Whole-body Vibration Machine
Power Plate - http://www.powerplate.com
Pila-vibe, M-power - http://www.pila-vibeamerica.com
Turbosonic - http://www.turbosonicusa.com

Research on Vibration Exercise:
http://www.vibration-exercise-store.com/research_vibration_fitness.htm

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

New research study backs up the vibration fitness experts and finds vibration exercise machines help to shed weight and even reduce harmful belly fat

New York, NY-- (SBWIRE) -- 12/17/2009 -- 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. Dietician visits were scheduled every 2 weeks for the first 90 days and every 30 days for the second 90 days. The dieters were instructed not to undertake any exercise for the duration of the 6 month study.

DIET PLUS EXERCISE GROUP:
The second group received the same diet instructions, with the addition of a traditional fitness program. They attended supervised exercise classes twice a week for an hour and were instructed to exercise a third time each week. Their exercise included cycling, swimming, running, step aerobics and some weight lifting exercises.

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 physiotherapists gradually increased the speed and intensity of the vibration training each week, as well as the variety and duration of the vibration exercises from 30 seconds for each of 10 exercises to 60 seconds for each of 22 exercises, such as squats, lunges, calf raises, push-ups and abdominal crunches. The average time spent on the vibration plate was 12 minutes per session in the first 90 days and 14 minutes in the second 90 days.

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. People say vibration exercise machines are fitness for lazy people. It may feel like a short cut, but it is real exercise.

Vissers plans further research on a larger group of obese patients confirm how beneficial the machines are. His team is also planning to study why vibration seems to be more effective than aerobic exercise in trimming visceral fat, including whether increased blood flow to the abdomen and hormonal response to vibration might play a role in more efficient fat breakdown. His study was funded by the Artesis University College of Antwerp.

The results were presented at ECO 2009 -- The 17th European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
SOURCES: ECO 2009 -- The 17th European Congress on Obesity, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2009. News release, ECO 2009 - The 17th European Congress on Obesity.

Learn more about vibration exercise here:
http://www.vibrationexercise.ca
http://www.vibration-fitness.com

Carrie Simpson
Fitness Info

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm