How to Use Vibration Plates for Back Pain
Medically reviewed by: David M. Joyner, MD, FACS
Back pain is one of the most common afflictions out there. Over 65 million American adults suffer from back pain episodes and 16 million report chronic back pain in their everyday lives. Although surgery and injections have become standard treatments for back pain, there are ways to experience relief without invasive procedures and medications that can produce nerve-wracking side effects.
Among these alternatives, vibration plates stand out as one of the most promising options. In fact, learning how simple vibrations can help alleviate back pain, may allow you to take a huge step forward in improving your quality of life.
Using a Vibration Plate for Back Pain
If you have back pain, you know that it can impact all areas of your life. Depending on the cause of your pain, it may even limit your mobility and prevent you from completing basic tasks like bending over to tie your shoes or picking up your children.
As a result, having chronic back pain can be a major impediment to your mental health and overall quality of life.
Fortunately, whole body vibration training has the potential to offer serious relief to people suffering from back pain and other types of neuropathic pain. By sitting, standing, or lying on a vibration plate, you can activate your muscular and vascular systems in ways that promote pain relief naturally.
In fact, vibration training is a low-impact, low intensity modality that may even help you delay more serious and debilitating musculoskeletal conditions, such as joint damage.
Understanding Whole Body Vibration
How exactly does a vibration plate for back pain work?
Whole body vibration essentially works by using rapid vibrating movements to stimulate your muscles, causing them to contract and then relax. But why exactly does this create a pain-relieving effect?
The exact way vibration works to relieve back pain is multifaceted. Prevailing theories focus on the connection between the parts of your brain that process pain and touch. Vibration can also increase circulation, which has the potential to reduce causes of back pain, such as stiffness, inflammation and joint dysfunction.
Using PrecisionWave technology, Power Plate devices can deliver vibration precisely and comfortably with adjustable frequencies and amplitudes that can relieve short-term discomfort and help combat chronic back pain. Power Plate also uses tri-planar vibration technology, which vibrates across three different planes, maximizing the impact of each session.
Benefits of Vibration Plates for Back Pain
By providing a range of holistic benefits, regular vibration sessions may offer relief for multiple types of back pain. For instance, you can use vibration devices to help ease pain from arthritis, overuse, and acute injuries.
Let’s take a look at some of the main ways vibration plates can help address back pain:
Muscle Relaxation
Back pain is often related to muscle spasms; when muscles near your back and spine suddenly seize up. If you have tight muscles in your back, it can place painful tension on the joints in your spine. Finding ways to relax and release these tight muscles may help in alleviating your pain.
When you use a vibration plate, your muscles rapidly and repeatedly contact and relax. Even lower-frequency vibrations can cause these reflexive contractions which help provide lasting relief in areas with built-up tension. As your muscles loosen up around your spine, you can expect to feel less stiffness, discomfort in your back.
Improved Circulation
It’s well-documented that whole body vibration improves circulation, as each muscle contraction promotes increased blood flow. Circulation is a critical aspect of your body’s healing mechanisms—your blood cells deliver oxygen and other nutrients to your tissue, supporting cellular regeneration and repair. Any time your body’s tissues are damaged or inflamed, your circulatory system plays an important role in healing of these soft tissues.
In this way, if you have back pain caused by an injury or other chronic condition, increasing blood flow to the site can help promote healing in that area. This is especially beneficial since one of the main challenges of having a back injury or an inflamed disc is finding ways to promote blood flow while still allowing yourself time to rest and recover. Incorporating vibration into your recovery program can support your circulation without requiring you to exert yourself with high-impact and high intensity exercise.
Increased Core Strength
One of the most direct benefits of stimulating your muscles with vibration is the physical development of those muscles. Strengthening core muscles, located in the body's midsection, helps support and stabilize various parts of the body. During vibration sessions, your muscles will contract and relax, as if you were doing a traditional workout. And the more your muscles move, the more they develop. This explains why vibration is proven to increase both muscular strength and mass. These improvements in muscle strength, particularly in your back and core, create a more supportive structure for the joints in your spine.
Underdeveloped core muscles can contribute to problems especially for those experiencing osteoarthritis in your spine; a condition that occurs when cartilage within the joints wears down and your bones rub directly against one another.
Having a strong core is essential for taking pressure off of the joints, ligaments, and tissues in your spine. By building your core strength over time, you can alleviate tension in your back, reducing pain and stiffness. However, keep in mind that, just like with traditional exercise, it can take time to develop the muscles in your torso through vibration.
Enhanced Weight Loss
If you’re living with back pain, you likely know how important it is to take as much pressure as possible off of the affected area. That’s why many doctors recommend weight loss for individuals dealing with back pain. Meta-analyses have found strong correlations between weight gain and increases in back pain; stoplighting the outsized role of body weight in chronic back pain.
What does this have to do with vibration plates?
Several studies have pointed to vibration training as an effective, sustainable weight loss aid. In fact, when paired with a healthy diet, vibration programs have the potential to promote fat loss at faster rates than traditional exercises. Additionally, because back pain vibration machines are convenient and low-impact, they can be easier to adopt as part of your daily routine. As a result, people who lose fat through vibration are more likely to maintain their lower weight long-term.
Integrating Vibration Plate Training into Your Routine
Curious about how you can start using vibration to reduce your pain and increase your quality of life? It’s important to have a plan before you get started. Just like classic physical therapy exercises and tools, vibration training is most effective when you use it consistently as part of your wellness routine.
Before starting vibration, always speak with your healthcare provider to ensure vibration is right for you given your condition and any preexisting health concerns.
In general, you should aim to use your vibration plate for lower back pain for 15 to 30 minutes per session, two to three times per week.
When you first get started with a Power Plate vibration machine for low back pain, you may not be used to the vibrating sensation. Especially when you have back pain, you want to make sure that the vibrations don’t irritate your nerves and aggravate your pain further. For this reason, it’s best to ease into your first session by trying out the lowest vibration setting for just a few minutes. You can slowly increase the frequency, amplitude, and duration of your sessions as your body grows more comfortable with the vibrations.
Depending on your goals, you can design your vibration sessions differently. Along with adjusting the vibration settings, consider trying out different positions or activities while using your plate:
- If your main goal is to develop your core strength or to lose weight to reduce spinal strain, consider doing exercises aimed to strengthen the so-called “core muscles” which support critical areas of the body such as the spine.
- If muscle relaxation is your top priority, try standing or sitting on the plate while doing breathing exercises or just listening to music.
Remember that your Power Plate vibration machine will have the greatest impact when it’s part of a holistic wellness plan. Communicate with your healthcare team about other stretches, exercises, or tools you can use to holistically target both the cause and symptoms of your back pain.
Vibrate Toward Improved Wellness and Enhanced Quality of Life With Power Plate
Power Plate vibration technology provides people living with back pain with a convenient way to address some of the most common causes of their discomfort. The wide-reaching, versatile benefits of vibration training make it possible for anyone to take an active role in their pain management from the comfort of their own home.
If you want to experience the benefits of vibration training for yourself, start by browsing Power Plate’s collection of whole-body vibration plates. With several designs to choose from, you can easily find a model that best supports your unique pain management goals. If you need more information before making a decision, explore our vibration plate buying guide.
Get on the path to enhanced wellness by checking out your options today.
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