Gravity Guidance

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The Gravity Guidance System, developed by American physician, osteopath and chiropractor Dr. Robert Martin and manufactured by Gravity Guidance, Inc., the company founded by his son Robert Martin Jr., was an inversion therapy system that allowed patients to hang upside down with the help of gravity boots and a metal bar wedged within a doorframe. The system gained widespread fame in the early 1980s after their product was used by Richard Gere in the movie American Gigolo. The company benefitted from this exposure and in 1983 was listed second among Inc. Magazine's Inc. 500 fastest growing companies. The success was short-lived though as both lawsuits over injuries and the concerns expressed in medical publications about stroke risk and ocular pressure made the public wary of the health risks of inversion therapy. Even though initial research was later qualified and the system was no longer considered more damaging than other exercise equipment, consumers had lost confidence in the system and Gravity Guidance, Inc., defaulted.

[edit] References

• TIME: "Hang Ten", May 2, 1983 [1].
• TIME: "Selling Relief", September 19, 1983 [2].
• Inc.com: "Products of Their Times", by Leigh Buchanan, September 2006 [3]
• Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA): "Warning given about fad of hanging upside-down – Using gravity boots may aggravate eye diseases", by Rex Dalton, Copley News Service, April 22, 1985.
• Detroit Free Press: Couple Sues Over Boots Injury", February 10, 1984.
• Klatz RM, Goldman RM, Pinchuk BG, Nelson KE, Tarr RS: "The effects of gravity inversion procedures on systemic blood pressure, intraocular pressure, and central retinal arterial pressure"; J Am Osteopath Assoc. 82(11), pp. 853-857 (1983). [4]
• Goldman RM, Tarr RS, Pinchuk BG, Kappler RE, Slick G, Nelson K.: "More on gravity inversion"; West J Med 141(2), p. 247 (1984). [5]
• Friberg TR, Weinreb RN: "Ocular manifestations of gravity inversion"; JAMA 253(12), pp. 1755-1757 (1985). [6]