Since its inception, MBT has collaborated with health care professionals and scientists to expand on and improve health benefits associated with the product.
In modern life, most people don’t move enough. In fact the World Health Organisation suggests upwards of 60% of the world’s population do not receive the recommended amount of physical activity to produce health benefits.
A sedentary lifestyle can lead to physical problems, such as low back pain, joint stress and balance problems. Weakened muscles can exacerbate these conditions and muscle activation is generally not optimized when walking on hard, flat surfaces while wearing shoes that stabilize movement.
Our philosophy at MBT is to add more movement into everyday life so that muscle activation is enhanced. In 1996, we discovered the link between instability and movement could be applied to footwear design, which gave us the code we needed to put our idea into action.
MBT’s physiological footwear, the MBT, utilizes patented technology to create instability that can help increase movement and muscle activity throughout the body while standing and walking. They are complemented by instability training exercises that can be applied to both everyday life and to therapy. To date, over 40 studies indicate MBTs can help with certain health conditions and more than 20 different articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals about MBT footwear. Research is ongoing into other possible applications.
The MBT Academy is our central R&D facility, providing a forum for our ongoing dialog with international experts and researchers in the fields of biomechanics, clinical medicine and physiotherapy. In cooperation with numerous universities on an international basis the Academy is committed to the testing, verifying and optimizing the effects of MBT footwear on the human body.
1 W.H.O Physical Inactivity: A Global Public Health Problem, (accessed January 2011)