Yahoo Lifestyle How yoga can protect your heart
When it comes to protecting against heart disease, it usually involves a prescription of vigorous cardio exercise.
But if you can’t do vigorous exercise, a review of 37 studies has found that yoga is also linked to a lowering of heart disease risk factors including high blood pressure and cholesterol.
In the study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, researchers reviewed randomised controlled trials involving almost 3000 people. Researchers sought to compare the benefits of yoga against people who did other forms of exercise or no exercise at all.
They discovered that when compared to those who didn’t exercise, heart disease risk factors improved for those doing yoga, and its effect on cardiovascular health was comparable to traditional forms of exercise.
When compared to no exercise, yoga significantly lowered body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, LDL (bad) cholesterol, and raised HDL (good) cholesterol.
“The results indicate that yoga is potentially very useful and in my view worth pursuing as a risk improvement practice,” said study author, professor Myriam Hunink from Erasmus University Medical Centre.
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While it’s not clear why yoga may be effective in lowering heart disease risk, it's hard to rule out it's calming effect. Researchers theorise the stress-lowering effects of yoga could lead to “positive impacts on neuroendocrine status, metabolic and cardio-vagal function.”
These findings may not be surprising to long-time yogis who are well-versed in the health benefits of yoga, but for high-risk patients, researchers say it “has the potential to be a cost-effective treatment and prevention strategy given its low cost, lack of expensive equipment or technology, potential greater adherence and health-related quality of life improvements, and possible accessibility to larger segments of the population.”
