Yoga can cut heart disease risk

 

Following a systematic review of 37 randomised controlled trials (which included 2,768 subjects), investigators from the Netherlands and the US have found that yoga may provide the same benefits in risk factor reduction as such traditional physical activities as biking or brisk walking. “This finding is significant as individuals who cannot or prefer not to perform traditional aerobic exercise might still achieve similar benefits in (cardiovascular) risk reduction,” the team said.

 

In comparisons with exercise itself, yoga was found to have comparable effects on risk factors as aerobic exercise. The investigators note that this might be because of yoga's impact on stress reduction, “leading to positive impacts on neuroendocrine status, metabolic and cardio-vagal function”.

 

 

However, no improvements were found in parameters of diabetes.

 

“These results indicate that yoga is potentially very useful and, in my view, worth pursuing as a risk improvement practice,” said senior author professor Myriam Hunink from Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston.

 

The similarity of yoga and exercise's effect on cardiovascular risk factors, say the investigators, "suggest that there could be comparable working mechanisms, with some possible physiological aerobic benefits occurring with yoga practice, and some stress-reducing, relaxation effect occurring with aerobic exercise".

 

The evidence also supports yoga's acceptability to “patients with lower physical tolerance like those with pre-existing cardiac conditions, the elderly, or those with musculoskeletal or joint pain”.