Building Bone Safely and Naturally
Extensive research over the last forty years has shown that WBV safely promotes and increases bone density, more so than conventional exercise, which has long been understood to be important for healthy bone development. Originally developed for space travelers, who lose bone density at a rate of up to one hundred times faster than a normal person on earth, this breakthrough is of critical importance to postmenopausal women in developed countries, who are experiencing epidemic levels of bone loss. Add to this scenario the very real dangers associated with bone-density drugs, and you have a lifesaving technology that has spurred hundreds of studies and interest all over the world.
Research results with animals and younger, healthy people have been dramatic. The development and use of vibration in the 1970s allowed Russian cosmonauts to be in space twice as long as their nonvibrating American counterparts (approximately two hundred days versus one hundred days). In 2013, a NASA website cited the effects of vibration on turkeys, sheep, and rats as “profound… promoting near-normal rates of bone formation” under laboratory conditions simulating the zero gravity conditions of space flight. In other research, Dr. Clinton Rubin, director of the center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, reported increasing the bone density in mice nearly 30 percent with vibration for fifteen minutes a day for fifteen weeks. And a research study with younger, well-trained cyclists showed an increase in bone density of 1.6 percent in just ten weeks.