Practise yoga to strengthen immune system: study

PRACTISING yoga may strengthen the immune system, thus contributing to the prevention of certain diseases, a new study suggests.

"The study is the first one, I think, to really suggest how yoga could have some distinctive physical benefits in terms of the immune system," said researcher Janice Kiecolt-Glaser of Ohio State University.

"It suggests that regular yoga practice is really good for you," she said. In the new study, women who had practiced yoga regularly for at least two years were found to have lower levels of inflammation in their bodies than did women who only recently took up the activity.

Inflammation is an immune response and can be beneficial when your body is fighting off infection, but chronically high levels of inflammation are known to play a role in certain conditions, including asthma, cardiovascular disease and depression.

Inflammation is known to be boosted by stressful situations. But when yoga experts were exposed to stress (such as dipping their feet in ice water), they experienced less of an increase in their inflammatory response than yoga novices did.

Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues recruited 50 women between the ages of 30 and 65 and with different degrees of yoga experience. Those labelled "yoga experts" had practised yoga once or twice a week for at least two years, while "yoga novices" had participated in only six to 12 sessions. The two groups were very similar in terms of age, physical fitness level and amount of body fat, three factors known to influence inflammation.

The researchers examined the blood samples for key markers of inflammation, one of which is a protein called IL-6. Across all the tasks and other experimental scenarios, the novices' IL-6 levels were 41 percent higher than the experts'. The novices also produced more IL-6 in response to the stressful tasks.

"Yoga helps people learn to pay attention and to be more aware of their stress and better able to control their response to it," said the researchers.

Xinhua