People have always thought that yoga can do more for your body than just keep it fit and flexible. Researchers have found that it can help with weight loss, lower back pain, sleeplessness, and even heart disease. Studies show that yoga helps people lose weight and keep it off. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center looked at 15,000 adults and found that those who didn't do yoga gained about 18.5 pounds more over 10 years than those who did yoga for at least four years. The Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, also did a study. This study found that people who did yoga and meditation regularly worked out, and watched what they ate lost more weight than those who worked out and ate well but didn't do yoga.
Yoga can also make your hips more flexible, which can help ease lower back pain. The American College of Sports Medicine did a study that shows yoga makes the lower back more flexible and less painful. It was a small study done on women between the ages of 44 and 62. If you have back pain that doesn't go away, you should always see a doctor before starting any exercise program, including yoga. Backbends and forward bends in yoga may make some back problems worse.
Yoga can also help you relax your body and mind, which can help people who have trouble sleeping. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., an instructor of medicine in the Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine, just put out a study. He found that people who had trouble sleeping all the time could sleep through the night if they did yoga every day for 30 to 45 minutes and focused on breathing and meditation. The people got an extra 12 percent of sleep overall.
Your heart rate can slow down and your nervous system can calm down if you do yoga breathing. The breathing techniques can help people who have a lot of stress, anxiety, or depression. Your heart can get healthier in just six weeks if you do yoga for an hour and a half three times a week. A recent study from the Yale University School of Medicine looked at 33 men and women who did yoga. This lowered their blood pressure and made it 17 percent easier for their blood vessels to widen and narrow. Researchers think that the improvements are because yoga makes people less stressed.
