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Social media has a new fitness obsession: vibration plates, or scale-sized platforms that vibrate at a range of frequencies and claim to boost fitness and improve body composition. And a whole lot of lifestyle and fitness influencers are buying into it.
Brands and influencers claim vibration plates promote lymphatic drainage, help with weight loss, improve muscle tone and strength, and reduce bloating.
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And medical professionals have many thoughts about these claims.
There’s a saying by astronomer Carl Sagan that goes, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and this couldn’t be more true when it comes to many social media fads, said Matthew Welch, an exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.
“We do have a lot of really knowledgeable people and some great information that’s out there, but this information exists on a spectrum. So, we get really qualified people putting out high-quality information and really good tidbits, but then we also get people that are really just looking for clicks, engagement and basically just trying to gain traction on their pages,” Welch said.
There is often no research to support the claims of this latter group, which is (sorry) the case with vibration plates, Welch noted.
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