Jiggle Away Harmful Fat

This was emailed to me today and I thought people might find it of interest.

Jiggle Away Harmful Fat

Vibrating exercise platforms, which are becoming increasingly popular in commercial gyms in Europe and elsewhere, might help people lose the particularly harmful deep "hidden" fat that surrounds abdominal organs and is linked to Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
"We conclude that it would be good to combine aerobic exercise with whole body vibration in a weight loss program," study chief Dirk Vissers, a physiotherapist at the Artesis University College and the University of Antwerp in Belgium, told Reuters Health.
With whole-body vibration training, people do squats, lunges, calf raises, push-ups and sit-ups on a platform that sends mild vibratory impulses through the feet and into the rest of the body. These vibrations make muscles contract rapidly, which builds lean muscle mass. Whole-body vibration training is touted as a more effective method of resistance training. Its true value, however, has been unclear.
To investigate, Vissers and his colleagues divided 79 overweight or obese adults into four groups. One group dieted but did not exercise; another group dieted and did conventional aerobic and general strength training exercises; a third group dieted and engaged in three sessions a week of supervised whole-body vibration training but no aerobic exercise; and the control group did not diet or exercise.
Just over 60 of the participants completed the study, which consisted of a six-month "intervention" period, followed by a six-month period in which they were encouraged to do their best to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regimen.
"Over the year, only the conventional fitness and vibration groups managed to maintain a 5 percent weight loss, which is what is considered enough to improve health," Vissers said at the European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam, where he presented the study findings Friday.
During the first six months, diet-only participants lost about 6 percent of their initial body weight but could not maintain a 5 percent weight loss in the next six months. Those who dieted and engaged in conventional exercise lost about 7 percent of their initial body weight in the first six months and managed to keep most of it off by the end of the study.
The whole-body vibration participants, on the other hand, lost 11 percent of their body weight during the intervention phase and had maintained a 10.5 percent weight loss by the end of the follow-up period.
The control group gained weight.
"But the biggest surprise," Vissers told Reuters Health, "was that we saw an effect of vibration exercise training on the visceral adipose tissue, which is the intra-abdominal fat that is the most important because it really plays a central role in metabolic syndrome."
The vibration group lost significantly more of this particularly harmful hidden fat during the intervention period than the other groups and was more likely to keep it off during the next six month period.