Could the key to losing weight, building muscle and bone density and improving circulation be as simple as shaking for five minutes a day?
That’s what I set out to discover over the last month by using a vibration plate for 5-10 minutes daily.
The machine – a 2-3-foot wide plastic and rubber pedestal that vibrates at the command of a remote – has been around for more than 20 years. But it has found new fans across social media, featuring in more than 130,000 TikTok videos and Instagram Reels.
A recent social media challenge asked users to film themselves trying to drink a cup of water on the plates.
“I’ve seen the girlies who use this and they have abs, like actual abs,” says beauty influencer Maiya Sagoo, one of many toned women in workout gear posting videos while standing or sitting on the plates.
Some influencers and fitness gurus have claimed that using a vibration plate for fewer than 20 minutes a day will boost your digestive health, help induce labor and even stop their child’s tantrums.
I bought a plate online that I had seen in several influencer videos for a little over $100. The plate is a 24-inch wide platform raised about six inches off the ground. There are suction cups on the bottom to ensure it doesn’t migrate across the room while you’re shaking on it.
My typical workout would be a two-hour full-body workout at the gym or an hour-long run outdoors. Most fitness influencers said they supplemented their existing workouts with a vibration plate session, so I added five to ten minutes of shaking after exercising.
Getting on the plate is fairly jarring – your whole body shakes like you’ve had 15 cups of coffee. Bending my knees slightly helped to alleviate the feeling that I would vibrate right off the plate and into a wall.
With bended knees, I felt I had to tense the muscles in my abs, legs and glutes, similar to the intensity of yoga.
I imagine this might be what surfing feels like? The vibration plate involves balancing and flexing simultaneously while trying to stay on your board.
After a couple of minutes, you get used to the intensity. A five-minute session is over before you’ve even managed to list to a few songs on a Spotify playlist. Getting off the board, I still felt like I was shaking for a few minutes afterwards.
The sensation suggested that some muscle toning could be happening, but I decided to consult the experts.
The limited science on vibration plates, following related research on occupational vibration therapy, has provided varied results since they first emerged in the early 2000s.
“The biggest misconception is that standing on a vibration plate alone will lead to dramatic fat loss or [more] muscle tone,” Hana Ivandic, a certified personal trainer and lymphatic therapy expert, told Good Housekeeping last month. “That’s not how the body works.”
Everyone wants a quick and easy way to burn fat, and there is some research that vibration therapy could help with weight loss when you also cut calories. One 2017 study on mice from Georgia’s Augusta University showed that 20 minutes on a vibrating platform reduced body fat and insulin resistance in the diabetic and overweight rodents.
University Hospitals Healthcare says the plates can help boost metabolism when combined with cardiovascular exercise and a healthy diet.
“The rapid muscle contractions require energy and can contribute to weight loss when paired with a balanced diet and cardiovascular exercises,” the healthcare system wrote in a blog post.
A 2019 review of seven controlled trials showed that whole body vibration could reduce bodyweight from fat, but didn’t have much of an effect on whether a person was a healthy weight for their height.
Tiffany Angulo Ragozzino, a certified group fitness instructor, also told Good Housekeeping that vibration plates don’t raise the heart rate enough to burn a significant amount of fat.
“Fat loss requires a calorie deficit, which this machine alone cannot create,” she said.
The other supposed benefit of a vibration plate is improved lymphatic drainage – a treatment for a swelling condition known as lymphedema, common in cancer patients and in people living with chronic venous insufficiency – like President Donald Trump. Lymphatic drainage is usually done by a massage that helps to remove excess fluid accumulating between your cells.
Vibration plates can help to stimulate blood flow and send oxygen to muscle and tissues, according to University Hospitals. Still, it’s largely unclear whether fluid being removed from the legs is from the lymphatic system or the veins, experts told NBC News.
There’s “no convincing evidence that vibration plates alleviate lymphedema or lipedema,” Dr. Håkan Brorson, a professor of plastic surgery at Lund University Cancer Centre in Sweden, told the network.
Claims have also been made by health care systems and social media users that vibration plates can tone muscle and increase muscle strength.
The Augusta University study on mice found that the daily vibration improved muscle and bone strength. Separate research shows that whole-body vibration may help improve muscle strength, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Maybe there’s a health effect by getting your muscles to move around with these massage devices [compared to] not having any sort of movement at all,” Dr. Peter Johnson, professor emeritus at the University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, told The Independent.
Vibration plates are inferior to weight lifting, fitness expert Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple told New York Magazine. as you need increased resistance to build muscle. “Part of that is because effective strength training means using a challenging resistance,” she said.
Lastly, experts said that the vibration plate may help to strengthen your bones – assuming you’re vibrating at the right frequency. Many vibration plates are shaking above 30 hertz – a level higher than forms of occupational vibration like jackhammers and concrete drills, Johnson noted.
“The vibration plates, you’re usually standing on them and it’s a higher frequency than occupational vibration and I think your legs can act like a shock absorber before the vibration reaches your back,” he said.
A new MD Anderson Cancer Center study showed using plates vibrating at between 20-100 hertz for up to 20 minutes a day provided “significant benefit to bone health in models of certain cancers, such as ovarian cancer and multiple myeloma.”
Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, an associate professor at Duke Orthopedic Surgery, told The Independent that there is reasonable data showing the plates can improve lumbar spine bone density.
She pointed out that how the plates worked seemed to be dependent on a person’s health and how long and frequently they used vibration plates. It would take 20 minutes a day – or around 7,000 minutes a year – to have a positive effect on bone density, according to Wittstein.
That might be a smart use of time for someone with limited mobility, osteoporosis or knee arthritis. But as a woman in my thirties, I’d be better off in the gym or at a pilates class, the surgeon said.
“I think a lot of these decision-makings about buying something like a vibration plate or how to spend your time also should take into account, like, ‘What are your own abilities? How much time do you have? How much cash do you have to invest?’” Wittstein said.
“But it shouldn’t, in general, be a substitution for strength training.”
