HEALTH UPDATE: Power Plate used by stars from Madonna to Kylie really does help shift fat
A new vibrating exercise machine used by celebrities such as Madonna and Kylie Minogue is twice as good at fighting fat as traditional workouts alone, a study claims.
Women who dieted and used a Power Plate three times a week lost almost twice as much weight as those who did more conventional exercise. The machines were particularly effective at trimming dangerous fat from around the stomach, researchers said.
Power Plates look like weighing scales with a vibrating platform which users stand, sit or lean on to do gentle exercises. While it is still not known how the machine works it is thought that the vibrations triggers involuntary muscle contractions that burn energy. ‘It looks like these machines could be a useful addition to a weight control package,’ said the study leader Dirk Vissers, a physiotherapist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
Mr Vissers, who presented his findings to the European Congress on Obesity, studied 61 overweight or obese people - mostly women - for a year.
The scientists found that overweight people who regularly used the equipment in combination with a calorie restricted diet were more successful at long-term weight loss and shedding the fat around their abdominal organs than those who combined dieting with more conventional workouts such as aerobics, running and cycling.
After a year the Power Plate users had lost 11 per cent of their body weight compared with 6.9 per cent for the conventional exercise group.
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