Watching late-night TV lately, I have noticed several types of electronic ab workout machines (Flextone, etc…) advertised. Do these machines actually work at trimming and toning your abs, or are they just like a massage. While in knee rehab several years ago I was hooked up to a machine similar to these, and I was told by my therapist it was only a massage. What is the Straight Dope?
I would suppose that were you to up the voltage past massage into the muscle cramps region and eat correctly, you’d see results. Personally, I’m more interested in the higher-end version of those products, where a pad with a wire is taped to whatever muscle you want to work out and stimulates it electronically, because the AbTronic belts wouldn’t appear to work on my latissimus dorsi, obliques or shoulders.
I’s sheer crap.
Snake oil.
The devices were developed to keep people in coma from going to jello.
And thats all they’ll do for you.
Keep you from going to jello.
If you want muscle mass you might want to get off your ass.
Guys in prison lift water in bags. Bet you could figure something out.
I’ve seen threads dealing with this before, but being 4am here, I’m not gonna look for them. I think it basically boils down to them giving a small workout to muscles that for some reason can’t be worked normally, usually to do with an injury of some kind, like EvilGhandi said. But they don’t come close to giving the results that real exercise does. I think if they actually worked to produce those kinds of results, they wouldn’t have to be sold on late-night infomercials - they’d be in gyms. Just compare these machines to steroids, which do work (with some ugly side effects)… things that really work well become mainstream and regulated to some degree.
DO you have any links of a scientific sort that show these machines to do nothing more than prevent muscular atrophy?
http://www.quackwatch.com ran something on these a bit ago
This comes from quackwatch:
“Muscle stimulators are a legitimate medical device approved for certain conditions–to relax muscle spasms, increase blood circulation, prevent blood clots, and rehabilitate muscle function after a stroke. But within the past few years health spas and figure salons have promoted new uses. They claim that muscle stimulators can remove wrinkles, perform face lifts, reduce breast size, and remove cellulite. Some even claim these handy little devices can reduce one’s beer belly without the aid of sit-ups! FDA considers promotion of muscle stimulators used for these conditions to be fraudulent.”
I have just send an email to the FDA asking them is the Abtronic is in violation of any regulations. One website I found has users claiming to receive shocks and burns during use of the device. The FDA should be aware of that. See here:
Previous thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=89514
We’re talking about Tasersize!
Are epileptics thin? It’s just another uncontrolled just to a muscle, either small enough to have no effect or large enough to be really dangerous.
I did get a brief electrical shock from a lamp as a kid. I would say I felt more paralysed than cramped. Maybe that makes it more like isometrics, where you excersize muscles against each other.
I once saw a doctor interviewed about such products. He said that they technically can work, but to get real results they need to more powerful by an order of magnitude. Problem is that when you do that you are inducing the mother of all Charlie-horses, and have to keep it for several seconds, then repeat. So, unless you are using it to get away with an extra long break between workouts, they won’t do you much good