good vibrations

It seems I moved away from Washington, DC, just in time: Earlier this week, the Washington Post announced the arrival of The Rumbler, a high-tech blaster now being used in conjunction with the traditional siren on a select few police cars in the District. Imagine: you're in the car, stopped at the corner of 16th and R during rush hour, waiting for the long line of cars (and one Metrobus) ahead of you to start moving now that the driver of the  Hyundai has finally managed to make that left turn. Suddenly, the ground literally starts to shake. Then you hear the telltale siren. I don't know about you, but I'd be thinking "terrorist attack," sooner than I'd be thinking, "Hey, must be a police car -- I'd better try to move out of the way!" (Here in Los Angeles, we'd all be thinking "earthquake.")

There's nothing more high-tech about the Rumbler than some expensive woofers and an amplifier. It uses low-frequency sound waves to shake things up (even your real-view mirror),and it's being implemented because police officers have complained that they've been having trouble getting drivers to move out of the way. (Personally, I often found it impossible to budge in any direction during rush hour in DC, however badly I wanted to move aside for a police car or ambulance.) What with the rise in iPods, cell phones, and blasting car stereos, a lot of drivers claim they can't hear the sirens. With the Rumbler, even if they can't hear the siren, they can damn well feel it, at least for 10 seconds, after which it automatically turns off. That's a boon for the deaf or hard-of-hearing; I'm guessing it'll be more of a nuisance for everyone else. But hey -- it's always fun to get new toys, and I'm sure the DC police are well deserving of some spiffy upgrades.

Vibrations have been in the news all week -- must be something in the air. A less annoying buzz, rather than a powerful vibration, might hold the key to reducing fat and building up bone without resorting to drugs, according to an October 30 article in the New York Times by Gina Kolata. A SUNY-Stony Brook researcher named Clinton Rubin put a bunch of mice on a tiny buzzing platform for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. At the end of the experiment, 15 weeks later, those mice had 27% less fat than the mice who didn't get a buzz, along with more bone. His explanation? The fat precursor cells are turning into bone instead of fat. It's a responsible article; Kolata's a careful reporter. Everyone quoted cautions the public not to jump to conclusions, even those who think the findings are "provocative" and worthy of further research. Heck, Rubin himself, while sticking to his guns about his results, admits it sounds implausible.

Scientists now know that a stem cell in bone marrow can turn into either fat or bone, depending on the signal it receives. People suffering from osteoporosis have bones that are not just thinning, but also becoming lacy in texture, and those holes in the bone marrow fill up with fat. And there does seem to be an "exercise effect" that increases bone density, most noticeable in professional athletes -- professional tennis players, for example, who apparently have 35% more bone in their playing arm.

The assumption is that it arises from all those forceful impacts. But over the years, Rubin has found that the predominant signals affecting bone were "high in frequency but low in magnitude: -- a buzzing instead of a pounding. Hence the experiments with mice on tiny buzzing platforms. He even co-founded a company to manufacture the vibrating plates. And his findings do seem to support that hypothesis, although skeptics argue that it's also possible the mice lost the fat because they were burning more calories from the effort of trying to stay on a the vibrating platform. (What might be a buzzing to us could feel like major tremors to a mouse.)

The skeptics might very well have a point. After all, the latest rage in cutting-edge exercise regimes is the vibrating exercise platform, like the Power Plate, currently favored by several celebrities, most notably Madonna. The idea is that doing squats and such on a vibrating platform will strengthen muscles, increase flexibility and build bone. But those vibrations might not be all good, according to this October 29 article in the Los Angeles Times. The machines exceed occupational safety standards that apply to trucks and heavy machinery, according to researchers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, who measured the direction and magnitude of the vibrations produced by the Power Plate and a second exercise device, the Galileo 2000.

Too much shaking, even low doses over a long period of time, have a cumulative effect, leading to things like spinal injuries, osteoarthritis, and visual impairment, among other complications. So are the exercise machines doing more harm than good over the long haul? The jury's still out. It might not be a fair comparison. Advocates of vibrational training say that proper body alignment in a controlled environment isn't the same thing as randomly applying vibrations to a passive seated body, like someone sitting in a helicopter or operating a tractor. One assumes their famous clients would agree. Although personally, the way Madonna's arms have been looking since she started her Power Plate regime, the results are just as scary as the prospect of osteoarthritis...

 

Comments

[Lab Lemming]

Rumblers sound good. When I had a motor bike, I was always freaked out about how hard it was to hear a siren with a helmet on- getting cleaned up by an emergency vehicle properly running a red light would suck.

[RNB]

Noise pollution is one of the evils of our time. As with chemical spills, polluters should pay.

And fat people rumble when they walk ... shouldn't that have a Madonna effect?

[Huey Van Iadore]

Those arms are great! Women with muscle tone are amazing! But all it really takes is a few pull-ups every day. I don't think the Power Plate is really necessary.