 Hello everybody once again for Dr. Jill live glad to meet you here every week. Today I have a special guest that I'm going to be learning along right along with you about the benefits of whole body vibration. Super excited to learn more about this topic. And before I introduce our guests just a little background you can find me at Jill Carney and calm loads and loads of years of articles there for free. So if you're in mental health.com you can find resources there. And of course you can find this recording on anywhere you watch with or listen to podcast and on YouTube. And if you want to watch former previous episodes they're all there. So I am delighted to introduce my guest Dr. Jason Convizer he's a leading expert in metabolic assessment and exercise prescription for special needs population. He's also one of the leading experts in fitness fitness assessments and exercise prescription for special needs population. He's best known for his work with patients dealing with metabolic syndrome, obesity, and providing exercise strategies for those who have given up. Oh I love this doctor because I'm the same we always call it the holist or the resort doctor right the doctor of last resort. Right, you and me both. He is the author of eight books and invited speaker to 38 international conferences he was a past consultant and exercise physiologist to the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Super excited to have you here because what we're going to talk about is whole body vibration and the benefits and like I said, I'm going to learn right along with you, I'll just tell you as a background literally yesterday I got out of the foam with the in her fifties diagnosis osteoporosis what can I do so I'm super excited to especially hear the links, and I've got other patients as well with pretty severe osteoporosis, and I want to know dive into that for sure. Before we dive into whole body vibration I always like to hear your story how did you get into the work you're doing what's your journey and tell us just a little bit about you. Thank you for inviting me. I was never turned on or very excited about Olympic athletes or division one collegiate athletes, but I'm always interested in athletes, and I consider somebody with a second heart third kidney second set of hips, someone who's in town, someone with Parkinson's those folks who would not be considered traditional athletes. I've always had this passion for medical fitness and how fitness can be used as one of the tools to help people gain control in their lives. And I don't want to treat them as rehabilitation or as less than individuals, I want to push them as if they were in a sport and that sport is life. And my clients don't ask for personal records they say, I want to be able to have activities of daily living. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids. I want to be able to walk to the mall I want to be able to spend the money that I spent a whole lifetime accumulating going to travel or to do things. And they're not, they're not always the pretty folks that are in great leotards or a great workout clothes they're not on television, but they're, everyone has one of these, or more of these individuals in their family. And all they want to do is be able to do more. And my job, my passion, our clinics are all focused on how do we take people who can't do something but have the capacity to, they just don't know how. And they've been pushed away or forgotten by the traditional professionals. And that's where I like to come in. That's my passion and spend my passion for 40 years. And I love that so much in my clinic I do functional medicine so the patients who've been everywhere tried everything and will really look for that root cause and some of them are very disabled some of them are not. But I love that passion for those people who've kind of been forgotten by the traditional system and we share that in common don't we like just love. Do you know one of the things the, what, yes, we have clinics and we make money, but there's nothing better when somebody says, I was able to go back to Normandy to the beaches that I was, I was there when Normandy was was stormed, and I was physically able to go back with my family, or somebody said I was able to pick up my grand kid and I didn't think I'd ever be able to do that. No one has goals and and activities that they want to do but they're afraid or they've been told they can't. And it's our job. I think our professions job is to not cut their dream short, but to help them find a way to get there. And what I love is what you talked about to so many even fit people are afraid of gyms they're intimidated because like you said there's a lot of fit people with lots of muscles and spandex and there are 90% of the population that doesn't fit that model right. So I love that you're working with these people. And really, let's talk what is whole body vibration tell us more about this first of all what is it and how how do you use it in the work that you do. So let me take two minutes to go back 4050 years in history where imagine if we were to send an astronaut into space and we put them in a weightless environment. Well there is no such thing as weightlifting in space because it's weightless. So what what do we do we bring the astronauts back to earth, and they have lived in a in an environment, which is the most unhealthy environment that you can imagine. And those who have been in a weightless environment for a long time, they come back with with osteoporosis and they come back with muscles that have atrophied. So how do we, how do we stimulate muscle how do we stimulate bone, so that it does the right thing, but in that environment that doesn't work so well for them vibration was first used by the Russians. And one of the things that you may have remembered when you when you, when all of us were younger that quite often we never saw the the astronauts come out of the space capsules, they were pulled out crawled out and they were lifted into a to a helicopter. That's because they couldn't walk their muscles were not working very well. So vibration, you don't have to have a weight that you're pressing you're allowed you're able to use the vibration to stimulate muscle contraction, which takes the place of, you know, variety different ways of that lifting the weights the traditional way. The second way, again, 4050 years ago, imagine if you were a speed skater, and they have these big ovals that you you race in and you might warm up two hours before you have to compete. How do you keep warmed up how do you stay flexible and fluid and ready to compete after you've warmed up two hours ago. Well, Europeans figured out that if you use vibration, the muscles can maintain their flexibility and their warmth. And I use an analogy that I think is a, I think does well. Imagine if you were going to your kitchen and took out a box of spaghetti. And if you tried to bend that spaghetti would be very brittle. But if you put warm water over it, it becomes very loose and pliable. Well, imagine if you take a muscle in cross section looks identical to spaghetti. If you take warm blood, and you, you transfer that warm blood to the exercising muscles, then they stay warm and flexible, so that now we have, we prepare for activity, more efficiently than just going out and doing movement. So that was 4050 years ago. Now we've used vibration in a variety of settings from individuals who are so heavy that they can't do traditional walking and traditional exercise. As a stimulus to do more resistance, putting a multiplier on the weight that they might be lifting or performing as a way to prepare warm up, perform, do the activity and recover faster, so that the body goes back to a more resting or normal state. And that's what vibration does. It cuts the head off and says we're not going to worry about cognitively telling the muscles to contract. We're going to use vibration to stimulate the contraction of the muscle. We shunt, led to the muscle, the muscles work just as if we were telling it to, to go exercise. Wow. So, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around this because again I've known of vibration, tried at a time or two at the gym, but I've never really dove into the research. And I love one of my favorite things to do is how can we bio hack our physiology and do more with less or do something that actually, you know, short circuits like you said I bet I would love to hear about some of the kinds of clients you work with because these are probably people who can't do the normal things and yet you can get great physiological response when you add in vibration. Tell me more about like how you'd use this and what kinds of patients are especially effective for. So I'm giving a physiology example and if if I'm going over the head you just tell me and I'll bring it back down. Every muscle doesn't attach to a bone, only tendons attached to bones. And inside those tendons is something called a Golgi tendon organ. And that it's about the thickness and size of a hair. And it's a stretch receptor and all it does is send information back that says, you're pulling that muscle too tight, or we're just fine no problem at all. We're just relaxing. That protects us from pulling muscle and to prepare those muscles for activity and Golgi tendon organs are stimulated by vibration. So that if that Golgi tendon organ is being vibrated, it will release and allow the muscle to just expand or stretch a little bit more. If we have a rubber band, if we have a rubber band, and we stretch it this far and let go, it has a certain amount of energy that's created. But with vibration that Golgi tendon organ becomes very loose and pliable. So we can stretch that muscle even further and when we let go, more force or more capacity to contract. We're biohacking as you described. We're allowing the Golgi tendon organ to know you're okay. Your muscles are okay. We're warming up the tissue. We're not going to rip it away from the bone. We're going to warm up and get you ready to do the activity that you want to do. Every professional football team, every baseball team, every basketball team has vibration in its training camps and in their training facilities. But if you come to my facilities in Illinois, we have whole body vibration in our waiting room, because we don't want people to sit down. We want them to come into the waiting room and get on a vibration platform and start warming up so that their muscles are prepared for activity that we're going to do once the professional calls them into our spaces. I love that. I might think about getting one of my waiting room. That's a great, great idea. I just love that and it makes so much sense. So then you can take people. Obviously, I want to go into the bone density and osteoporosis because that's a big part of some of the patients that I treat. This can have so many applications from professional athletes to rehab to housewives to children. Is there any contradictions at all of people who shouldn't use it? Is there any other, is there any reason why someone should be careful? Whole body vibration is a form of exercise and exercise is good. Are there risks associated with exercise? Yeah, if you've just had surgery, you shouldn't be on a vibration platform. But if you've just had surgery, you should probably be speaking to your physician or your medical team about how much, how long, how intense exercise you should be doing. All it does is raises the level. If you have any of the issues that the American College of Sports Medicine would say be cautious with exercise, high blood pressure, chest pain, you have a joint replacement recently. All those kinds of issues get permission to exercise. But even if you don't use whole body vibration get permission to exercise. What vibration does is it makes the warm up a little bit more efficient and faster. It allows you to perform at a higher level, and it allows you to recover faster so you can go about your day to day activities. So if you're, if you're a pharmacist and you're on your feet all day, you may want to have vibration in order to keep the calf or the gastrocnemius muscle loose and flexible, the Achilles tendon loose and flexible. So there's circulation in your lower body. If your back is tight, you could use whole body vibration to massage and to get the back loose and more flexible. If you want to get a more intense exercise, instead of just doing a bicep curl or a pushup, a vibration, we usually set it at 30 to 40 hertz or 30 to 40 vibrations a second. So now you're not only doing the activity, but your muscles are going like this. It's an incredible challenging workout, so that you don't have to exercise for an hour at a time. You can still get a very good workout in a much shorter time. It doesn't take away the need for exercise. It's just a way to do it more efficiently, faster, and with with no increased risk. So I love this and I'm just going to start with the pride. I'm going to try to restate what I heard you saying and I wanted you to correct me if I've heard anything wrong. Say someone like me I love to walk I do some weight resistance I don't do a lot of high intensity but if I were to add it to my regimen, I could add it as like a warm up either doing some small either push ups or squats or something on there or I could actually do it two or three days a week as a alternative, doing the with the power plate how would you incorporate into someone's healthy kind of average, like how many minutes what kind of exercise would you do on it would be like a typical program for someone who's fairly healthy like myself. I'm going to give you a couple different real life scenarios for one, if you're going to go out for a walk today, you might, you might be on the vibration platform for two to three minutes, just to warm up the calves the hamstrings the lower and it's just allowing vasodilation in the periphery, more blood goes down to the periphery blood carries oxygen, you're warming up in the same way you would be warming up when you go out and exercise but you do it a little bit more efficiently. Okay, it's as simple as that, or maybe when you go out and walk you go, you know my calves tighten up or my hamstrings tighten up or I have that that muscle pain in my my buttocks or my lower back. So you can warm up a particular tissue, a little bit more efficiently. Okay, so nothing more than just a great way to warm up. Okay, but then you could also do so I didn't know that you're going to say it I think I'll say I can actually do a workout on it right but you can absolutely do a workout on it. So if you don't have that 45 minutes or an hour to go out and exercise, and you want to do some stretching, you can do both static and dynamic stretching. You can do strength training, you can do upper body lower body core. One of the nice things about power plate which is the vibration units that I use, they have a website that has, I don't know the exact number 1100 different exercise scenarios so you say, I'm this weight and this height, this is the body area that I want to work on. So here's 20 different ways of doing it for core. Here's 20 different ways to warm up. Here's 20 different ways to exercise with more intensity. So, once you take it out of the box and you plug it in. You have an app that allows you immediately to know what to do and not have to call someone like me to go. Okay, let's put us a program together. You have a personal trainer with the power plate, right. It's, and it's on your phone. Wow. This is what I want to, you're going out for your walk. What do you do. Your, your lower back hurts, how do you use it so that it feels good, and you're there for three, four or five minutes, and you go thank you very much, and now I'm ready to go and do some of other things I want to do for with my day. Wow, I love that makes it so easy. So let's move to the topic I keep bringing up with bone loss osteoporosis, or even deconditioning someone who hasn't been able to do much. Tell us more about the data around osteoporosis and bone density and why this has an effect on that. This is real important because there's so many articles that are across the spectrum, both positive and negative so I want to help help your listeners be be focused on what they should be looking for is vibration a panacea in a cure for osteoporosis. No. We know that exercise and putting force on bone is one of the ways to keep bones healthy. And with vibration, the part of the bone that you really are working on is not the cortical or the outside of the bone, but the trabicular that lattice structure that gives us the strength. And we know that vibration makes that lattice structure of the trabicular bone stronger. But when when I don't want someone to think that I'm going to get a power plate, and in five minutes, I'm going to be all done with my, my osteoporosis program, you still have to have a traditional exercise program of cardiovascular flexibility. You still have to eat well. But what vibration allows is that that vibration allows the muscles to pull on the tendons, the tendons pull on the bones. It creates the tension or force on the bones. And that's how trabicular bone increases. We do a lot of publications and they're all public information. They can go online and see that we use vibration as part of an exercise program, not as the only part of the exercise program. So they still have to get stronger. They still have to eat well. They still have to participate in balance activities, all the things that you want from a traditional exercise program. But with vibration, you're putting a lot of force safely on bone, you're making the muscle stronger, you're pulling on that bone, and the literature is fairly clear that that kind of stimulus is great for bone growth. Okay, that makes now comes the big but but it doesn't happen in just two weeks, you don't you don't use vibration and then two weeks later you move from osteoporosis into osteopenia. The time frame to make bones stronger is approximately a year. And someone says, well, a year, how terrible, how terrible. Well, if you use various pharmacology to hopefully make bones stronger, the physician desk references 18 to 36 months with side of potential side effects, and you still need exercise to get strong. So the year doesn't seem like such a bad trade off in my opinion. I love that. So first question is, does your center or do you have a website where people could access some of the stuff you've published, because I'm happy to share that here, your resources. Like power plate calm. There's a, there's a tab for research. And all of our studies are there. And my, my, my company, I don't, I'm not an employee of power plate. I have my own clinics. I just, I love the equipment because I see what it does for our patients. And that's why I'm here today. But if you go to bio density.com, we also have all of all of our studies of all in referee medical journals, and I encourage people to download them and see what what's there. I love this because I have a lot of physician to listen and a lot of very educated patients so they love going into the physiology and some of the papers and stuff so I'll be sure and link to both of those. Can I share with you what one study that I really am proud of is with spring point senior system living center in New Jersey. And we use vibration with individuals are living in a senior environment. And for 24 weeks, we were using vibration. And we were using different scales of activities of daily living, walking distance walking speed, being able to go upstairs, being able to come downstairs, better balance things that everyone wants to do in a daily daily routine. And the results were incredible that we were able to take 80 and up to 94 year old individuals, and they were able to walk further walk faster be able to lift more weight. They were able to move away from the stereotypical. Give them a cane, give them a walker, give them an implement, and the implement that we gave them was stronger bodies better balance more capability in the study with the spring point senior system living center. I'm very proud of to show what vibration can do. Wow, so that's tremendous that a couple questions on that first of all, what was the amount of time what was that the study implementation like as far as how many time, how many minutes per day that they use. So it was three days a week. 15 minutes of exercise but we don't do vibration 15 minutes in a row. We do a minute on a minute off a minute on at 15 minutes, you would be toast you wouldn't be able to. We are contracting it vibrations a second. Wow, 15 minutes of 30 vibrations a second. Not even the best strongest athlete in the world is going to be comfortable environment. So we recommend a minute on a minute rest a minute on a minute rest. And so that's a 30 minute protocol. And you in this study there was also a control group. And you can see that it's not just well they were doing some exercise, of course they were getting better, even with with the control group it was a very clean study that people would be. I think, oh, it's, it's an easy study to read. Oh, that could be me. I can make that into my life I could add that without making a big change in my, my lifestyle. I bet this isn't super three days a week for a 30 minute program is really doable right I knew that was probably the case and I wanted to hear it from you. The other thing, the other thing I'm thinking that we see with aging and with decrease in ability to do ADLs and all this kind of stuff is the sarcopenia which is muscle loss as we age and difficult with proprioception which is that and I'm guessing that both of those are strongly affected by the vibration, both the proprioception ability to be balanced and be able to tell where you are in time and space and then also with the muscle loss like sarcopenia, is that true. So that that's 100% true that's not my area of research, but I'm guessing there are 34500 wonderfully refereed published studies that that have demonstrated exactly what you're describing. Yeah, I'm thinking about elderly and how we and this is really like you said the function thing is so key even to keep you out of the hospital and hip fractures and all of that so there's a lot of heart long reaching effects of this. I do want to mention now that power play has been so generous as you hear, and again I know you don't work for them I don't either, but I was real excited to learn but they are giving any listener who's listening to this $600 off and 0% financing if you want to purchase. So be sure and check I'll put a link anywhere you hear this on podcast or on the webpage or on YouTube, you'll see a link and if you want to know more you are going to get a discount if you're interested, just want to mention that because I thought that was a really big deal, like that's a big discount. My kids always make fun of me that I'm not a very technical person I don't, I don't know how to program things I don't know how to do it. And one of the things I like about power play products is that you open up the box you plug it in, and it's ready to go. And if it's Jason proof, then I know that it works well. I'm just like you I don't know anything mechanical so I could fix the body but nothing else. So I love that because again I've been I've been I honestly don't own one but I might want my friends is involved in the company I've been thinking about so I think I'm going to have to purchase one and try it and me will have a follow up interview in a few months and I can tell you what's happened in my life with that. People want to move. They just don't know how sometimes and my job is to take the mystery out, or people asking for perfection. Yeah, there's nothing perfect here it's just get started. Yeah, and if we can get them started for five minutes, then we can make that 10 minutes and if we can make it 10 minutes. They usually feel a little bit better when they're sleeping when they're when they're getting in out of the car when they're on an airplane for four or five hours, when they're working at a desk for X amount of time. And if you go, if 10 minutes gives me this feeling of more control and more capacity. Well what does another few minutes do for me. Instead of saying you have to do it in our every day, which for some is just great, but most of my clients go, I don't have that time I don't have that ability. Show me what I can do in 10 or 15 minutes. And that's why we like vibration so much. I love this because again I'm always looking for ways to optimize performance with less time because we all have these time constraints so super exciting. Gosh, that's so much good information I wonder if you'd like if there's anything else you'd like to share that we haven't talked about, or perhaps there's a story or two of someone you've seen that you've seen some really amazing success in your clinics and and you have actually it's like a fitness center right and isn't in Chicago. Our fitness center would disappoint a lot of folks. I don't, I want our clients to feel like they don't need to be in a fitness center in order to get fit. I want them to be able to use the carpet on the floor in their living room, and to use gravity as as a resistance to use range of motion to know how to put the body in a position where they can be more flexible more to be fit, better muscular endurance, and I use vibration to enhance those particular components. My, my clients are not are not on the front page of sports magazines, my clients are look outside and go who's walking outside, who are your who's in your family, who's in your circle of friends who say this hurts, or I wish I could do now fill in and it's my job to create a program in an atmosphere where they get, we can do that, we can, we can modify that activity, we can start small and build up in with vibration. It gives me a tool that allows me to take even the most deconditioned individual and get them started in a safe environment. I have lots of 350 and 400 pound clients. Well, just physically moving can be a challenge. So I can put them on a vibration platform and keep them safe. Have their muscles contracting and give them a really good workout. And then we can start adding more cardiovascular more movement, because their body is better prepared. I see a lot of people who are 8590 my oldest client is 94. Most people say, you know what, just sit and relax. And they usually use some, some derogatory term like just sit down, honey, and you've done enough, you've had a long life, and my clients don't, don't want that at all. They don't want to be seen as, as less than they want to know what capacity do I have, and everyone has told them, you have nothing left. And it's my job, it's our job to not only say you have lots left, but how do we get there. And vibration is a tool, it's a. I have a tool, I have lots of tools in my tool kit vibration is one of the tools that I can use for almost everybody that allows them to prepare or warm up more comfortably and faster to perform and do the activities that they want to do, and to recover so that they don't have those muscle that muscle soreness, and they're able to come back tomorrow and go, Well, that's pretty good I think I'll try it again. And that my clients come back all the time. Wow. I love that this is so practical so and again I've learned a ton because I've seen these, and I tell you what my, my, my feeling of thoughts as I haven't owned one before. I look in the gym and I'm intimidated I'm like what do I do with that thing right, but I'm excited because the best thing about this is it kind of brings you to have a home trainer you have the programs are all built in there with the app. I don't have to figure out what to do that's my most exciting thing. And your needs today. Yeah, may not be the needs that you have next week or next year. There may be issues with with rehabilitation with pelvic floor issues. So say someone did have a knee surgery or hip surgery and when their doctor cleared them. I'm assuming this would be a great tool for rehab to work with their physical therapist and rehab right. Like the best living for 40 years. I want to make sure this really clear because you know if you're listening out there and you've been through surgery and your doctor clears you I'm thinking that's what I'm going to recommend for patients. This is a not. This is a an exercise device that's been around for 40 years that people are just discovering. Yeah, right. It's important that we turn the switch on so that we're not a immobile or a inactive population. Yeah, this is one of the ways I found that. Okay, I feel better the muscles are warmed up. There's a little bit better circulation. Now I can get out and do things instead of going. That's when we get that feeling where someone can move and move more effectively. I can do almost anything with them, because they go that feels movement feels good. Exercise does feel good when you do it correctly vibration it prepares the body to do it a little bit more efficiently. Wow. This has been absolutely tremendous. I am so grateful for your time and expertise and all the 40 years of work that you've done to help people who maybe didn't know they could move or thought they were you know too heavy or too ill or too old all these things that were told and it's really really exciting and like I said especially my people who with osteoporosis with post surgical issues where they're trying to rehab joints or tendons or whatever. So exciting. Thank you again for your time. I really really appreciate it. Thank you. In our office we have a sign that says if someone tells you you can't do that, fire them and find a team that can help you do it in a safe way. And with vibration, we learn how to help everybody do it in a safe way. Brilliant. That's a perfect way to end Dr. Convizer. Thank you so much for your time. I really really appreciate it today. It's exciting to learn new ways to do things and to help all of our patients no matter what age they are. It's a pleasure meeting you and thank all your listeners. Thank you very much.