What are the Health Effects of Yoga?

Everyone is different and will respond differently to yoga. I encourage my patients practice yoga if they so desire. Below are some potential benefits from doing yoga.

Fitness – Yoga can help improve your overall fitness. This will depend on the type and duration of your routine.

Strength – Yoga can increase a variety of measures of strength. This may be an option if you are improving your strength.

Flexibility – Yoga can be a great way to increase your flexibility. This is true for people of various ages. If you want to increase your flexibility, yoga may be a good fit for you.

Balance and mobility – Yoga includes a number of postures that focus on balance and could help improve your balance and mobility.

Stress and anxiety – Yoga helps people focus on breathing, calming down, and being still. Overall, yoga can help you be more present-oriented which may help reduce your stress and anxiety.

Quality of life – Yoga has the potential to improve the quality of life of people. Physical activity and stress reduction typically helps people feel better.

Inflammatory markers and immune functioning – Yoga and other mind and body practices, especially meditation, may down-regulate markers of inflammation and increase virus-specific immune responses to vaccines.

Sense of spirituality – Yoga may contribute to a person’s sense of spirituality and may contribute a person’s overall well-being.

Cognitive function and impairment – In 2015, there was a meta-analysis that concluded yoga could be associated with moderate improvements in acute and chronic cognitive function. In addition, there was a 2017 study found yoga similar to memory enhancement training in people with mild cognitive impairment.

 

Resources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=24988414

Pascoe MC, Crewther SG. A systematic review of randomised control trials on the effects of mindfulness on stress measures and anxiety. In: Anxiety Disorders, SMGroup, 2016.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=26186435

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=28088925