Osteoporosis Treatment

There is a new experimental non-drug treatment for osteoporosis. The method involves standing on the special little oscillating bathroom scale for ten minutes per day which is sending an appropriate signal to the regions like your hip bone, or the spine which are at risk of fracture for osteoporosis.

"The vibrations are very slight," notes Stefan Judex, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who worked on the research. The plate vibrates at 90 Hz (1 Hz = 1 cycle per second), with each brief oscillation imparting an acceleration equivalent to one-third of Earth's gravity. "If you touch the plate with your finger, you can feel a very slight vibration," he added. "If you watch the plate, you cannot see any vibration at all."

Although the vibrations are subtle they have had a profound effect on bone loss in laboratory animals such as turkeys, sheep, and rats. The results show that the vibration treatment maintained normal bone formation rates.