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.
Science