Vibration therapy has emerged as an industry standard method to aid weight loss, increase bone density and relieve pain. It’s often employed in fitness facilities and physiotherapy services.
Peter Tass, a neuroscientist from Stanford, has developed and patented gloves which deliver vibrations directly into fingertips and hands for use by Parkinson’s patients, providing relief from tremor and stiffness. His research suggests these gloves help alleviate symptoms associated with Parkinson’s.
Convenient
Have you seen the recent video clip from TODAY show showing Stanford researchers developing gloves which apply vibration to fingertips to alleviate symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease? These devices have proven successful in small trials to combat tremors and stiffness associated with this illness.
Vibrating gloves are designed for everyday wear around the home or while engaging in recreational activities, making them convenient and discreet pain relief options. Not requiring prescription or drug interactions, their rechargeable design makes use simple while being discreet – many even look like regular winter gloves on the outside! Vibrating knee, elbow and calf wraps offer similar pain relief solutions.
Vibrating gloves and wraps use small vibrating motors to temporarily divert pain signals before reaching the brain, while providing mild compression that improves blood circulation and warms joints.
Portable
Vibrating gloves are easily portable, fitting into pockets or bags so they’re always with you when needed. Perfect for relieving everyday aches and pains as well as warming up and aiding recovery after exercise sessions, vibrating gloves can be used anywhere on the body; from hands, knees, back and shoulders.
Your TV may have featured an episode of TODAY that showcased an ingenious vibration-based device developed at Stanford that uses vibration to manage Parkinson’s symptoms. The glove-style device, which transmits vibration directly into fingertips, has proven successful at decreasing tremors and stiffness among PD patients, while researchers are conducting larger clinical trials to see if this approach can also aid with nerve damage and ALS symptoms.
An exciting innovation is the use of haptic feedback to teach motor skills such as typing or musical instrument playing. Researchers have been working on this technology for some time, and now it has come onto the consumer market in the form of vibration therapy gloves that transmit vibrations directly into fingers – helping improve typing speeds or learn a new instrument without expensive classes!
For accurate vibration exposure assessments in workplace environments, it would be beneficial to measure glove vibration transmissibility spectra across three dimensions (x, y and z). This method has been supported by numerous studies (Rakheja et al. 2002 and Dong et al. 2002a) as an approximate way of approximating VR glove performances over an adequately wide frequency band (Glove transmission transfer function test results measured during laboratory tests over such frequency bands.)
This study evaluated four typical vibration-reducing gloves against four typical vibration-reducing tools for attenuating frequency-weighted palm-transmitted vibrations when used with various powered hand tools. According to results obtained, gloves certified under ISO 10819 significantly reduced palm-transmitted frequency-weighted vibrations by anywhere from 5%-58% depending on tool type compared with standard work gloves worn for similar tasks, offering comparable reductions as seen when standard work gloves were worn.
Targeted
Researchers are exploring new methods of mechanical stimulation that mimic electrical bursts in the brain without implanting electrodes. One promising solution is using vibration therapy gloves that strap around the palm of the hand; their vibration creates vibratory bursts through pin-sized holes on plastic pads strapped around index, middle, and pinky fingers for delivery through pinholes on plastic pads strapped around index, middle, and pinky fingers for maximum effectiveness and comfort during daily activities like wrist, tendon, joint and muscle discomfort relief and healing. This device looks like something out of a science fiction movie and can provide relief and healing of pain as well as promote healing for wrist, tendons, joints and muscles afflicted areas in daily activities that helps alleviate pain relief as well as promote healing within wrist, tendons joints and muscles afflicted areas which often involve wrist injuries and pain as well.
Although vibration reduction devices such as gloves have been demonstrated to significantly mitigate tool-induced vibrations on hands, their effectiveness in protecting fingers remains uncertain. To address this issue, a recent study estimated the vibration transmissibility of VR gloves across three orthogonal directions (3-D). With this information at hand, researchers were then able to use VR gloves’ three orthogonal transmissibilities estimates as an indicator for whether they provide sufficient protection of fingers.
Estimations were performed using a transfer function method (Rakheja et al., 2002) which relies on laboratory measurements of VR gloves’ vibration transmissibility across an extensive frequency spectrum and vibration spectra from workplace tools and machines. Estimated glove performances indicate that VR gloves can effectively reduce frequency-weighted vibrations occurring mainly along z-axes or forearm axes while failing to significantly decrease finger-transmitted vibrations.
VR gloves’ effectiveness at mitigating vibration transmission between their fingers and their glove is determined not only by their passive suspension function but also by how they affect hand contact stiffness distribution and grip effort distribution. The passive suspension function appears to have the greatest influence in the vicinity of the fingers, while higher frequencies appear largely determined by handgrip effort influences. Therefore, the effectiveness of VR gloves to reduce vibration transmission between fingertips and hands may exceed expectations. These findings are especially significant as current VR glove testing standards require at least a small reduction in finger-transmitted vibration reduction for anti-vibration gloves to qualify.
No Prescription Required
After suffering a stroke, people can suffer involuntary contractions that twist their hands and arms into fists involuntarily. Treatment options typically include injections of botulinum toxin or strong oral medications to put them to sleep; however engineers at Stanford and Georgia Institute of Technology have developed an inexpensive glove-like wearable device which transmits vibration to fingertips for relief with comparable or better results than injections or drugs.
Have you seen the incredible innovation by neuroscientist Peter Tass and his team, which developed gloves specifically tailored for Parkinson’s Disease that can reduce tremors and stiffness in hands and fingers. Check out his TED talk or TODAY show episode for more info!
Patent-pending Therapy Gloves provide an effective remedy for arthritis pain in hands, knees and elbows. Simply slip on these gloves and press a button to activate their vibrating motors – this may stimulate blood circulation, warm the joints, mask chronic pain signals that travel from hand to brain as well as mask them altogether! These no prescription gloves can be used as often as needed at home, work or during favorite activities without an ongoing prescription – they recharge quickly in minutes with high frequency mode running for 45 min on high frequency mode!
