Standing on a gently vibrating platform for fifteen minutes a day was found to cause bone growth and corresponding fat loss in laboratory mice. Dr. Clinton T. Rubin, Director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, whose experiments led to this discovery, has developed and taken out a patent on a vibrating device for humans. However, no one, including Dr. Rubin, is yet sure if it will work on humans, or what the correct dosage should be, or even what might be happening.

There is speculation by some that stem cells in bone are given the signal to turn into either fat or bone. Others have wondered if the mice did not simply become victims of fear and stress from standing on the platforms (what may be barely perceptible vibrations to us might be an earthquake to them), resulting in the physical changes. Some of the questions raised by these findings may be answered in tests involving elderly volunteers that have already been planned by the National Institute of Health as a direct consequence of Dr. Rubin’s work. Read more in New Scientist and the New York Times.