Benefits of Yoga – reconfirmed
Extracts from a news report dt Dec 28 ’07 “Studies show yoga has multiple benefits” (if proof was needed)
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…Yoga induces a feeling of well-being in healthy people, and can reverse the clinical and biochemical changes associated with metabolic syndrome, according to results of studies from Sweden and India.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and high blood sugar.
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Dr. R.P. Agrawal, of the SP Medical College, Bikaner, India, and colleagues evaluated the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation in 101 adults with features of metabolic syndrome.
…Waist circumference, blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglycerides were significantly lower, and “good” HDL cholesterol levels were higher in the yoga group as compared to controls, Agrawal’s team reports in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.
In the second study (from Sweden)…Fifty-five adults were advised to practice “Sudarshan Kriya,” which involves cycles of slow normal and rapid breathing exercises.
…At the end of the study period, feelings of anxiety, stress and depression were significantly lower and levels of optimism significantly higher in the yoga group compared to the control group, Kjellgren and colleagues report.
Yoga induces a “relaxation response” associated with reduced nervous system activity and a feeling of well-being probably due to an increase in antioxidants and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, they suggest.
Not that most readers of my blog needed this reconfirmation…but it is nice to know that practitioners of Yoga are not just dumb, superstitious Hindu fundamentalists 🙂
Related Posts:
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Adjacent Post: Expropriation of Hindu Concepts and Traditions…
More evidence.
Meditation ‘cuts risk of heart attack by half’:
Patients with heart disease who practised Transcendental Meditation cut their chances of a heart attack, stroke and death by half, compared with non-meditating patients, the first study of its kind has found.
Stress is a major factor in heart disease and meditation experts say the technique can help control it.
More benefits of Yoga:
Researchers have found that three sessions of the exercise a week can help fight off depression as it boosts levels of a chemical in the brain which is essential for a sound and relaxed mind.
Scientists found that the levels of the amino acid GABA are much higher in those that carry out yoga than those do the equivalent of a similarly strenuous exercise such as walking.
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The research is good news for yoga which along with pilates was criticised earlier this month for not pushing the body as hard as other exercises. The University of Wisconsin said that it fell short of what was considered an all-round workout.
They found that while yoga did improve strength, endurance, balance and flexibility, they burned very few calories — suggesting they had not pushed their bodies hard enough to gain substantial aerobic improvements.
In fact, researchers found that a typical class used 144 calories in 55 minutes— the same amount burned during a slow walk.
Even power yoga, which requires participants to perform poses in quick succession, was found to burn only about 237 calories per class and to boost the heart rate to only 62 per cent of the maximum that constitutes a light aerobic workout.
Well, Yoga was not supposed to substitute a cycling or plain old running using your foot. Those were the techniques to improve the body so that mind can become capable of deeper concentration. Gaining a six-pack was never the end-game of yoga and it is these faulty expectations that makes me very suspicious of the new-age yoga business-clans.
More on benefits of Yoga..>Excerpts from Ancient Moves for Orthopedic Problems by Jane Brody (emphasis added):
Many years ago, I wrote about Dr. Fishman’s nonsurgical treatment of piriformis syndrome…
Dr. Fishman developed a simple diagnostic technique for piriformis syndrome and showed that an injection into the muscle to break up the spasm, sometimes followed by yoga exercises or brief physical therapy, relieves the pain in an overwhelming majority of cases.
Nowadays yoga exercises form a centerpiece of his practice. Dr. Fishman, a lifelong devotee of yoga who studied it for three years in India before going to medical school, uses various yoga positions to help prevent, treat, and he says, halt and often reverse conditions like shoulder injuries, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and scoliosis. I rarely devote this column to one doctor’s approach to treatment, and I’m not presenting his approach as a cure-all. But I do think it has value.
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For many years, yoga teachers and enthusiasts have touted the benefits to the body of this ancient practice, but it is the rare physician who both endorses it and documents its value in clinical tests. Dr. Fishman has done both.
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Instead of an operation that can cost as much as $12,000, followed by four months of physical therapy, with no guarantee of success, Dr. Fishman’s treatment, is an adaptation of a yoga headstand called the triangular forearm support. His version can be done against a wall or using a chair as well as on one’s head.
…Dr. Fishman, who has since treated more than 700 patients with this technique, said it has helped about 90 percent of them. “It doesn’t work on everyone — not on string musicians, for example, whose shoulder muscles are overtrained,†he said in an interview.
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Perhaps more important from a public health standpoint is the research Dr. Fishman is doing on yoga’s benefits to bones. Bone loss is epidemic in our society, and the methods to prevent and treat it are far from ideal. Weight-bearing exercise helps, but not everyone can jog, dance or walk briskly, and repeated pounding on knees and hips can eventually cause joint deterioration.
Strength training, in which muscles pull on bones, is perhaps even more beneficial, and Dr. Fishman has observed that osteoporosis and resulting fractures are rare among regular yoga practitioners.
A brief excerpt from a NYT article:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/its-not-too-late-to-become-a-yoga-believer/
After reading my colleague William J. Broad’s new book, “The Science of Yoga,†and observing a class at my local Y, I see there may be a lot more to this centuries-old activity, more to its benefits and its risks, than I had ever imagined.
…Mr. Broad concluded, based on his research, that the benefits of yoga “unquestionably outweigh the risks. Still, yoga makes sense only if done intelligently so as to limit the degree of personal danger.â€
…Good scientific studies, including many supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an arm of the National Institutes of Health, have demonstrated that regular yoga practice can improve cardiovascular risk factors like elevated blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol and clot-inducing fibrinogen, and it can raise blood levels of protective antioxidants.
Yoga was shown to improve balance in elderly women and thus may reduce their risk of falls, a leading cause of injury-related death in older people. And, I was pleased to learn, perhaps by enhancing blood flow and the production of growth factors, yoga can counteract the deterioration of spinal discs, a plague of millions of Americans, young and old.
Possibly through its stimulation of the vagus nerve, yoga appears to counter inflammation throughout the body, and may reduce the effects of diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. And by relieving physical and mental stress, which can erode the tips of DNA, which are called telomeres and program cell death, yoga may slow biological aging and prolong life.
Two unrelated but fascinating studies on the benefits of “Yoga” and Meditation..
Meditate For More Profitable Decisions by Chris Howells in Forbes:
What was surprising, says Kinias, was the magnitude of the affect that came after such a short period of meditation. “In one of our experiments more than half the participants in the control condition committed the sunk cost bias whereas only 22% committed it following the 15 minute mindfulness meditation–that’s a pretty dramatic effect.â€
“There may be cases when processing of the past can be useful for making decisions,†she concedes, “but what our research suggests is that people make better choices in the present moment when letting go of sunk costs is required to make the best decision.â€
and :
How yoga is helping prisoners stay calm by Tim Mansel in BBC News, from which:
But two academics at Oxford University recently published the results of a study conducted among inmates in seven prisons in Britain, which they say does show that yoga and meditation in prison can have profound benefits.
From Ancient Practice Can Heal Brains Damaged By Chronic Pain:
Yoga can be an effective way to reduce the effects of chronic pain on the brain.
So said Dr M. Catherine Bushnell, an expert on reducing pain without the use of drugs, at the American Pain Society’s recent annual meeting.
Chronic pain causes changes in gray matter volume, studies have shown.
These can lead to memory deficits, emotional problems and lowered cognitive functioning.
Excerpts from Harvard study finds yoga and meditation reduces healthcare cost by 43%:
…A study done by Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)’s Institute for Technology Assessment and the Benson-Henry Institute (BHI) reveals that evoking the relaxation response or a physiologic state of deep rest, helps alleviate stress and anxiety, while also affecting heart rate and blood pressure.
…By doing a comparative analysis of information available on Research Patient Data Registry (RPDR) of Partners HealthCare and data on individuals participating in the BHI Relaxation Response Resiliency Program (3RP) from 2006 to 2014, researchers came to the conclusion that practitioners of yoga/ meditation/ prayer spent significantly lower than non-practitioners, on medical services.
From LA, , the story of how yoga is helping boys and girls incarcerated in Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles by Rob Schware, 14th Jan ’16
Excerpts from an article that refers to ‘Radical Wholeness’ by Philip Shepherd & some of its assertions (notice strong similarities with the concept of Kundalini and Chakras in Yoga)r:
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In his book Radical Wholeness, Philip Shepherd…
…recommends developing the sense of “spacioception”; a feeling of space or constriction in our own bodies. He also suggests experimenting with moving our center of consciousness down our body in his “elevator shaft” meditation. ..
Note that elevator shaft meditation sounds suspiciously similar to ‘Kundalini Jagran’