If you are struggling with hypertension, diabetes, obesity and associated diseases, yoga may be your route to a healthy life
A recent study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports has found that one year of yoga training in people suffering from metabolic syndrome, boosts a person’s ability to resist inflammatory agents.
Yoga appears to have an antihypertensive effect… Improvements of MetS risk factors in middle-aged and older adults have been demonstrated to be associated with yoga intervention. One-year yoga training was shown to exert beneficial effect on reducing abdominal obesity
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. While inflammation is in effect a defence mechanism of the body, chronic inflammation can lead to many diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and even some cancers.
The researchers led by those from the HongKong Polytechnic University concluded: “These findings support the notion that yoga exercise might serve as an effective lifestyle intervention to reduce chronic inflammation by downregulating the proinflammatory adipokines and upregulating the anti-inflammatory adipokines in individuals with high-normal blood pressure and MetS. A panel of adipokines as circulatory biomarkers might be useful for monitoring the beneficial outcomes of prolonged yoga exercise interventions.”
Adipokines are cell signalling proteins secreted by fat cells that are often associated with obesity. Central obesity and insulin resistance are considered important underlying contributors to MetS. Furthermore, some researchers believe that hypertension might be another chief contributor to MetS as hypertension increases the risk for obesity and insulin resistance. Approximately 65%-75% of hypertensive individuals are obese, and 50% of hypertensive individuals are insulin-resistant. Notably, it has been shown that the prevalence of elevated blood pressure or hypertension among people with MetS could be as high as 85%.
“These findings help to reveal the response of adipokines to long-term yoga exercise, which underpins the importance of regular exercise to human health,” said senior author Dr. Parco Siu, of The University of Hong Kong.
During the study, participants in the control group were not given any intervention but were contacted monthly to monitor their health status. Participants in the yoga group attended three yoga sessions weekly for 1 year. Each 60-min session consisted of a 10-min warm-up, 40 minutes of hatha yoga practice, and a 10-min cool-down that consisted of a breathing and relaxation exercise.
Among the postures practised were Uttanasana, Vrksasana, Ukatassanna, Gomukhasana, Dandasana and Salambhasana.
This is one of many studies that prove the positive health effects of yoga, the researchers pointed out. Yoga appears to have an antihypertensive effect as well as a positive impact on self-rated quality of life. Improvements of MetS risk factors in middle-aged and older adults have been demonstrated to be associated with yoga intervention. One-year yoga training was shown to exert beneficial effect on reducing abdominal obesity and tended to decrease blood pressure in MetS people. Moreover, a short-term intensive yoga program (90 minutes/day for 15 consecutive days) has also been demonstrated to cause favorable changes in body mass index, waist and hip circumference, total cholesterol, postural stability, and handgrip strength.
