Allover Wellness: Benefits of Yoga for Heart Health

Yoga seems to be more popular than ever. If you haven't tried it by now,  you probably know someone who has or have heard of its benefits. Yoga is a mind and body practice, often involving movement, breathing exercises, and a focus on thoughts and feelings as they happen (mindfulness). Researchers are now studying whether practicing mindful movement activities like yoga may help improve heart health including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart rate. More research is needed on the health benefits, but it’s clear that yoga is becoming more popular. In the last 10 years, the number of Americans practicing yoga has grown by over 60%. It’s now practiced by more than 34 million people in the United States.

How Yoga Helps Your Heart

The connection between yoga and heart health is a developing field, so we can only discuss its likely benefits. Even if a stronger link between yoga and heart health is proven, it’s not a cure-all. Still, yoga can be a valuable part of a well-rounded approach to maintaining heart health and managing heart disease.

Yoga is a gentle exercise that keeps you moving and strengthens your muscles, and this fact alone is good for your heart. Additionally, yoga can help people reduce and manage the stress that occurs as a result of a traumatic heart event, such as cardiac arrest or a heart attack. 

Overall Health and Stress Levels

Regular yoga practice improves overall health by increasing strength and range of motion and improving flexibility and balance. The slow, structured breathing of yoga calms the sympathetic nervous system, which can reduce the production of stress hormones, and constantly moving through poses helps your body manage insulin better. The practice may also help manage pain, depression, and anxiety, further helping to address risk factors for high blood pressure and heart disease.

Yoga's effect on our emotions and stress levels makes the link to better heart health much more apparent. Our understanding of emotional stress as a significant risk factor for heart disease is increasing, and women are particularly at risk. Emotional stress may result in existing heart disease worsening or heart disease developing at an earlier age. Therefore, practicing yoga to reduce stress can be an important step for improved heart health.

Is Practicing Yoga for Heart Health Right for You?

Before starting yoga, you should discuss it with your doctor—especially if you have any kind of health condition. If the following situations are relevant to you, discussing yoga with your medical team is of particular importance:

• Blood clots or a risk of blood clots.
• Glaucoma or other eye conditions.
• Herniated disk.
• Uncontrolled blood pressure.
• Pregnancy.
• Extreme balance issues.
• Recovering from a long period of bed rest or immobility, with muscles losing significant strength and tone.

In many of these situations, a good yoga instructor can make adjustments to accommodate the condition in question, but proceed with caution and be sure your physician is aware.

Yoga is a low-impact activity that's easy to modify. This makes it a wonderful form of exercise for people who are out of shape or hesitant or wary of working out. Just remember that you get out of it what you put into it. The more you invest in yourself and the more you make it a part of your routine, the more it will be able to improve your quality of life—and the benefits might impact more aspects of your physical health than you think.

Copyrighted material adapted with permission from Ignite Healthwise, LLC. This information does not replace the advice of a doctor.