Effect of combining traction and vibration on back muscles, heart rate and blood pressure

Eighty-five percent of the population has experienced low back pain (LBP), which may result in decreasing muscle strength and endurance, functional capacity of the spine, and so on. Traction and vibration are commonly used to relieve the low back pain. The effect of the combing traction and vibration on back muscles, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) was investigated in this study. Thirty healthy subjects participated in 12 trials lying supine on the spine-combing bed with different tilt angle (0°, 10°, 20° and 30°) and vibration modes (along with the sagittal and coronal axis with 0 Hz, 2 Hz and 12 Hz separately). EMG was recorded during each trial. Power spectral frequency analysis was applied to evaluate muscle fatigue by the shift of median power frequency (MPF). Pulse pressure (PP) was calculated from BP. HR and PP were used to estimate the effect of the combination of traction and vibration on the cardio-vascular system. It was shown that vibration could increase HR and decrease PP. The combination of traction and vibration (2 Hz vibration along Z-axis and 12 Hz vibration along Y-axis) had no significant effect on the cardio-vascular system. The MPF of lumbar erector spinae (LES) and upper trapezius (UT) decreased significantly when the angle reached 20° under the condition of 2 Hz vibration along Z-axis compared with it of 0°. Furthermore, the MPF also decreased significantly compared with it of static mode at 20° for LES and at 30° for UT. However at 12 Hz vibration along Y-axis, the MPF had significant increase when the angle reached 20° in LES and 30° in UT compared to 0°. For LES, the MPF also had significant difference when the angle was increased from 10° to 20°. Therefore, combining 2 Hz vibration along Z-axis and traction (tilt angles that less than 20°) may to reduce muscle fatigue both for LES and UT compared with either vibration or traction alone. The combination of 12 Hz vibration along Y-axis and traction (tilt angles greater than 10° for LES and more than 20° for UT) could provide good treatment of lower muscle fatigue for back pain compared with either vibration or traction alone. It is helpful to provide biomechanical quantitative basis for the selection of the clinical treatment methods.