Yoga Can Cure You – Soon There Will Be Tangible Data To Prove It

Do you believe in healing beyond traditional medicine? Alternative paths to wellness are widely practised nowadays – right from meditation/mind-body therapy to naturopathic treatment to energy medicine. But it is also likely that your family doctor hesitates to recommend these for a very simple reason. Lack of data and concrete proof of effectiveness. In-depth research and scientific testing are yet to happen in this space while most of the medical practitioners believe that alternative methods simply create a pleasant, feel-good sensation in the brain instead of any actual physical healing. Simply put, alternative therapies like yoga and meditation may increase your mental and physical toughness to fight a disease, but can’t cure the disease itself. There can be no ‘true’ physiological effects on those suffering from medical conditions.

Wrong! The above concept no longer holds water as research scientists are now leveraging neuroimaging to measure the biological effects of yoga on the body. So that it will be a proven fact that the age-old practice is physically effective in curing stress and other diseases, instead of simply driving the so-called placebo effects.

According to a study published last year in the scientific journal PLOS One, a single relaxation-response (RR) session produced immediate changes in gene expression of immunity, energy metabolism and insulin secretion. It also reduced the expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and stress. Investigators from Harvard analysed the expression of more than 22,000 genes and found that RR reduces symptoms of anxiety and improves heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption and brain activity through genetic changes in the DNA.

Scientists from other institutions are also investigating the biological changes happening due to yoga. According to a Bloomberg report, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles and Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn have found that 12 minutes of daily yoga for eight weeks suggest an improvement in stress-induced ageing. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009 with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for research on the ageing process of cells.

That is, undoubtedly, good news. Till date, experts have tried to track the health benefits of yoga and meditation through some routine tools like heart rate and blood pressure monitoring. But now that sophisticated neuroimaging and genomics technologies are put to use, measuring physiological changes will be more authentic and may persuade doctors to adapt a standard yoga therapy for various ailments, based on the research data.

Although stress is a normal pat of life and a little bit of it keeps us ready and alert for impending challenges, being constantly under pressure without any relief or relaxation often leads to critical medical conditions – right from depression and hypertension to infertility, untimely aging and even heart attacks. In the US alone, 43% of all adults suffer adverse health effects due to negative or intense stress and 75-90% of doctor’s office visits happen due to stress-related conditions.

Stress has been dubbed “the health epidemic of the 21st century” by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is estimated to cost American businesses up to $300 billion per year. In fact, moderate-to-severe stress impacts almost half of all workers while they are on the job, a survey by ComPsych has revealed. So the current findings are heartening, especially if a non-invasive therapy like yoga can physically cure the condition instead of the much-abused anti-depressants.

John Denninger, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, is also conducting a major research to confirm that yoga affects the genes and the brain activities in the chronically stressed. The $3.3 million government-funded study, to be concluded next year, tracks 210 subjects with high levels of chronic stress, for a span of six months. The subjects are split into three groups and undergo various yoga therapies to determine which would be the most effective for long-term relief.

Can yoga and meditation do it for us what traditional medicine has failed to accomplish? The jury is still out on this, but the positive developments keep us hopeful.