Yoga Improves Cardiovascular Health by Reducing Risks, Reveals a Study

According to the findings of a study in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, yoga can help in reducing the risks associated with cardiovascular disease just as other conventional physical activity such as brisk walking or biking might.

Senior author, Professor Myriam Hunink, based on the study’s findings, concludes, “Although the evidence of yoga’s beneficial effect in cardiovascular health is growing, a physiological explanation for this effect remains unclear. Also unclear, are the dose-response relationship and the relative costs and benefits of yoga when compared to exercise or medication. However, these results indicate that yoga is potentially very useful and in my view worth pursuing as a risk improvement practice.”

As for the study, researchers from both the Netherlands and the United States found this after reviewing results from 37 randomized controlled trials that had about 2768 subjects.

The study itself was conducted so as to determine whether yoga could be used to manage and limit cardiovascular disease risk factors while also ascertaining whether this form of exercise is effective in improving cardiovascular health.

The researchers also mentioned that the analysis of the results of yoga’s effectiveness was compared between cases who worked regularly as opposed to those who had no exercise.

The aspects that showed improvement were body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, low and high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, body weight, total cholesterol and heart rate.

It was only with diabetes that no improvement was found while for the others, yoga was better than medication.