The Benefits of Yoga

The Benefits of Yoga

Yoga is a very popular health and fitness trend for its benefits of feeling more centered and doing some mindfulness practice, some sort of movement mediation which on its own is already highly beneficial for improving wellbeing and overall health.

However, the benefits of yoga don’t end there and it can be a very powerful tool in our journey to maintaining a healthy weight and feeling better every day. Today we look into the research on how yoga can help us with our weight loss goals and more importantly to live a healthy and thriving life.

WHAT RESEARCH SAYS ON THE BENEFITS OF YOGA

Yoga can be good for everyone but it is worth mentioning some specific populations that might get even greater benefits from striking the poses daily. Some of these are:

• Diabetes type 2: a meta-analysis showed improvement in muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness.

• Elderly: shown to improve balance, flexibility, body composition, and mental health even more than other forms of exercise for older adults. 

• Patients with prostate cancer: showing not only improve quality of life in patients with prostate cancer by increased circulating T cells which could be attributed to enhanced antitumor activity in the yoga participants. On top of that, there was a significant reduction in the expression of inflammatory cytokines in the yoga group.

• Rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune or inflammatory conditions: Research showed improved mitochondrial health in patients with autoimmune arthritis which translated to reduced inflammatory markers, lower levels of oxidative stress, reduced symptoms, and improved physical function.

• Pregnancy: Several studies show that prenatal yoga can help pregnant women get better sleep, lower the risk of preeclampsia and preterm delivery, and alleviate stress in high-risk pregnancies leading to better outcomes

But the benefits are not limited to those specific populations, there are several proven benefits for everyone such as…

IMPROVING BODY COMPOSITION THROUGH YOGA 

There are many ways in which yoga can help you get into better shape and improve your overall health in the process. Some of these benefits are: 

• Improved sleep quality: a study shows improved subjective markers of good quality sleep like how fast patients get to sleep and reducing the times they wake up in the middle of the night. Other studies also show it can be effective to improve symptoms of insomnia. And we all know just how important good sleep is to maintaining a healthy weight and staying in shape.

• Improve mental health and help regulate emotions better: Research shows an improvement in cardiovascular response; emotion reactivity; and regulatory behavior in the face of stress, and improving markers of depression, anxiety, stress, and fatigue.

• Body recomposition: Yoga has been shown to improve respiratory health, maintain muscle mass, improve endurance, help maintain a healthy weight, and even help develop better habits and keep a positive mindset while trying to lose weight. Yoga can be a quite demanding exercise that can help you burn a lot of calories while getting stronger, research shows it is effective for reducing waist circumference, losing weight, reducing BMI, and losing body fat.

• Healthier eating: as mentioned before practicing yoga can lead people to engage in healthier habits like making better meal choices and self-regulating hunger better which will lead to eating fewer calories during the day and achieving fat loss and maintaining a healthy weight.

• Feeling energized and moving more: Research shows that the improvements in balance, coordination, and strength combined with a reduction of stress and a feeling of being more energetic during the day can lead to more physical activity outside the yoga practice, leading to more calories burned during the day.

• Injury prevention: Whether it is your main form of training or supplemental to other exercises, yoga can help make your body more resilient to injury and recover faster by improving balance, coordination, joint stability, and strength. This means that you can keep training with less likelihood of getting injured, and the more consistent you are with your training the better weight loss results you’ll get.

TLDR

So as you can see there are tons of benefits for your health and your weight loss goals from frequent yoga practice. If you’re interested in giving it a try keep in mind our main takeaways:

• Always consult with your main health care provider to give you clearance to start a new training program and to advise some cautions specific to your unique situation.

• Always start gradually and at your own pace when trying a new form of physical training. It would also be very smart to seek a professional trainer to teach you the basics and make sure your form is good.

• Always experiment and see what works best for you. There are several different modalities of yoga and you are more likely to find one that suits your abilities and goals best and then make your practice your own.

• You can start with as little as 10-20 minutes daily to start getting the benefits of yoga and then adjust intensity and duration according to your capacity and goals. Do what works best for you based on the results you’re getting and be ready to change the course of action if necessary.

• It might be a great idea to keep a journal of your yoga practice, specifically the benefits you feel from it. This is even more important if you’re engaged in yoga for it’s specific benefits to some health conditions like diabetes or arthritis.