Page 2 - 38Vibration_Therapy_for_Health_Promotion

Complementary Therapies

Particularly, in the health sector, these challenges have a special dimension.
Health professionals must be able to critically analyze the available information
to choose the safest and most beneficial interventions, incorporating scientific
evidence, clinical expertise, patient preferences and values to make decisions.
This is the basis for evidence-informed practice, which allows patients to have the
maximum benefits from these new technologies without being subjected to unnec-
essary risks [5–7]. Vibration therapy, is an example of a technological intervention,
supported by research findings and with neglectable risks for the patients [8–10].
The exposition of the body to mechanical vibration, as a clinical intervention, is
not recent, but the use of mechanical vibration in the context of health promotion
(in different conditions), with well-defined criteria started in 6th decade of the
last century. Vibration therapy has been used as a clinical intervention, in which
mechanical vibration is transmitted to the part [10] or whole body [11, 12] of the
individual. Specific biomechanical parameters, position of the individual, exposition
and rest time, and periodicity are established according to the condition to be treated
and the desired effect. Whole-body vibration exercise is an exercise promoted on a
vibrating platform, while mechanical vibration is being transmitted [8, 9, 12].

2. Mechanical vibration

2.1 General characteristics

Mechanical vibration is a physical agent of wave nature. It can be produced
by different devices, such as a refrigerator engine, a motor vehicle engine, an air
conditioner, and others. A vibrating platform is one of such examples. In all the
examples provided, the device is outside the person’s body, but if the person is in
contact with it, the mechanical vibration is transmitted to the person [11, 12]. As
shown in Figure 1, the waveforms of mechanical vibrations produced by different
devices, can be deterministic (Figure 1A) or random in nature.
The mechanical vibration, that is generated in a vibrating platform [11, 12] or
portable [10] devices, is characterized by the sinusoidal form, and this determinis-
tic approach has particular interest for everything that will be covered in this book
chapter on vibration therapy.

2.2 Mechanical vibration as a daily stimulus

It is very important to highlight that mechanical vibration is a natural stimulus
that is part of the daily life of all living beings and is periodically added to the
organism during movements [11, 12]. It is closely associated with the physiological
responses of all organisms, including human being. The addition of mechanical
vibration happens in a wide number of routine situations [11], such as walking,
running, playing, being in a car or public transport, or doing a domestic activity,
such as using a vacuum cleaner for cleaning or a fruit extractor while making a juice.
Likewise, in professional activities such as driving a car, truck, train, or using dental
equipment, mechanical vibration is transmitted to the individual that is in contact
with the device that is producing the referred vibration [13, 14]. In addition, several
structures of the human body naturally produce mechanical vibrations, such as the
heart, digestive system, the shortening and stretching of muscle fibers, vessels of
the vascular system, the vibrational energy of electrons in a chemical bond, or the
vibration of molecules in the cellular metabolism. Likewise, many of the organic
functions depend on mechanical vibrations at different levels of anatomical struc-
tures [12, 15, 16]. Of course, in general, this addition of mechanical vibration is

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