Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question.
Speaker 1: Do these power balance wrist bands that you see on
Speaker 1: TV actually work or is this a scam? If you
Speaker 1: watch certain channels on TV, you have been bombarded with
Speaker 1: ads for power balance wrist bands and people have been
Speaker 1: buying them. The band is supposed to immediately improve your strength, flexibility,
Speaker 1: and balance by working with your body's electrical field. There's
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff about the natural resonant frequency of
Speaker 1: your body, and you know the amazing things that happen
Speaker 1: when you get your body in tune with nature and
Speaker 1: so on. That's the pitch, and there have been many
Speaker 1: celebrity endorsements as well, everything for basketball players to horse
Speaker 1: jockeys have one tournaments or one races using the power
Speaker 1: Balance wristband. If you look at the ads on YouTube,
Speaker 1: you can see the hype. There's all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: about how great this thing is, as well as some
Speaker 1: really convincing demonstrations. For example, they'll have a person stand
Speaker 1: on one leg with their arm outstretched and press on
Speaker 1: their arm and obviously the person falls over. But then
Speaker 1: they'll have them hold this power balance wristband. Do the
Speaker 1: same thing again, and now when someone presses down on
Speaker 1: their arm, they stand there firmly. There's no loss of balance.
Speaker 1: It looks like a miracle. There's also tests of strength
Speaker 1: that are demonstrated and tests of flexibility. The person is
Speaker 1: asked to rotate their torso as far as they can.
Speaker 1: Then they're given the power balance wristband and they can
Speaker 1: rotate even further. So it appears that this actually works.
Speaker 1: So what's going on. It turns out that this is
Speaker 1: not the first time that this particular picular scam has
Speaker 1: been perpetrated. This thing has been going on for a
Speaker 1: long time. It's really just a carnival trick, and you
Speaker 1: can find videos on YouTube that will show you what's
Speaker 1: going on. Let's take the balance test for example, when
Speaker 1: the person stands on one foot and the salesman comes
Speaker 1: and knocks him off balance simply by pressing on his arm,
Speaker 1: that's obvious. The person really is just pressing on his arm,
Speaker 1: or maybe pressing on the arm with a little outward
Speaker 1: pressure to draw him off balance more quickly. That's what
Speaker 1: you would expect to happen when they have the subject
Speaker 1: hold that wrist band. However, they press down on the
Speaker 1: arm and they apply a little bit of extra force
Speaker 1: towards the center of the person's body. Instead, that moves
Speaker 1: that forced towards the person's center of gravity, and obviously
Speaker 1: they're not going to fall over anymore. So if you're
Speaker 1: watching the demonstration, you can't see this subtle shift in
Speaker 1: the angle that the pressure being applied, and the person
Speaker 1: who's holding the wristband isn't going to feel it either,
Speaker 1: because there's no easy way to measure it. But that
Speaker 1: subtle shift in the direction of force on the person's
Speaker 1: arm is enough to determine whether they fall over or
Speaker 1: whether they stand firmly with that wrist band in their hand.
Speaker 1: The same kind of thing is happening with the strength test,
Speaker 1: and it's even happening with the flexibility test. And that's
Speaker 1: just a funny thing about your body. If you tell
Speaker 1: your body to rotate the torso as far as it
Speaker 1: can in a certain direction, it's only gonna go so far, obviously.
Speaker 1: But the thing about your body is if you just
Speaker 1: hold that position for a couple of seconds and then
Speaker 1: try it again, you'll be able to stretch further. Your
Speaker 1: muscles have gotten you know, stretched out a little bit,
Speaker 1: there's a little more freedom, and you can always add
Speaker 1: a couple more degrees to it. If they hand you
Speaker 1: the wristband in that interval of time when the muscles
Speaker 1: are relaxing and so on, they're going to be able
Speaker 1: to show you that you have more flexibility. But you
Speaker 1: would have had that flexibility with or without the wrist band.
Speaker 1: It's just a carnival trick. Now. The great thing is
Speaker 1: that regulators finally caught up with the company and the
Speaker 1: company has been forced to admit that this really is
Speaker 1: a scam. If you go to their website, you can
Speaker 1: find this notice. In our advertising, we stated that power
Speaker 1: Balance wrist bands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We
Speaker 1: admit that there's no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims,
Speaker 1: and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of
Speaker 1: section fifty two of the Trade Practices Act of n four.
Speaker 1: If you feel that you've been misled by our promotions,
Speaker 1: we wish to unreservedly apologize and offer a full refund.
Speaker 1: So Power Balance wrist bands don't work. That has been
Speaker 1: proven with videos and lots of demonstrate and now it's
Speaker 1: also been admitted by the company, so you don't need
Speaker 1: to spend your money on this. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.