Long term yoga reduces inflammation and helps with metabolic syndrome

The consequences of these series of studies are enormous. Its becoming clear now how yoga, a practice that involves mindful and conscience breathing synchronized to any one of 36 poses, can make a difference in weight loss and Metabolic syndrome management. Metabolic syndrome is defined as having three of the following symptoms: high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, high blood glucose level, high serum triglycerides and low HDL. Metabolic syndrome is a serious health concern as it leads to increased incidences of diabetes mellitus, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases. Abdominal fat for example was found to be a source of inflammatory cytokines, called adipokines. Adipokines are cytokines that are used for communication between cells and are involved in repair. Adipokines such as platelet activating factor PAF and are inflammatory.

The research demonstrated that one year of yoga induced a favorable modulation of these adipokines, due to abdominal fat loss. Yoga reduced the level of these inflammatory adipokines and reduced levels of depression, stress, anxiety, waist circumference and even blood pressure.   Yoga therefore may serve as an effective activity by reducing chronic inflammation thru downregulating the proinflammatory adipokines and upregulating the anti-inflammatory one in those with high to normal blood pressure and other metabolic syndrome conditions. Although the mechanism to explain the link between yoga and improved inflammatory biomarkers remains to be discovered, this is what’s obvious: Long term yoga lessens the visceral fat, and since abdominal fat acts in ways like an endocrine gland, in this case storage and release of inflammatory cytokines called adipokines, improving metabolic syndrome which include a variety of diseases such as cardiovascular, diabetes, high blood sugar and insulin insensitivity, high blood pressure, stroke.  A fact worth emphasizing is the long term requirement for yoga for positive results to be seen. All this again points to the importance of regular exercise in human health.