YOGA AND MINDFULNESS: INFLAMMATION’S WORST NIGHTMARES

PART I.

IN 2013, THE JOURNAL OF THE American Medical Association released a stunning discovery: 60 to 80% of primary care doctor visits were related to stress. Even more shocking? Despite seeing high volumes of frazzeled patients, only 3% of American doctors counseled patients on stress management. In fact, according to the study’s leader, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, “Stress management counseling was the least common type of counseling.”

Recent research shows that stress management is one of the easiest ways to avoid a visit to the doctor’s office. And one of the easiest and most beneficial tools in our stress-reducing arsenal is yoga.

Stress is more than an emotional or mental problem: It directly affects your physical well-being. The body’s levels of cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone” naturally fluctuate throughout the day. But when you feel constantly crunched, cortisol levels stay sky-high. If cortisol stays elevated for too long, your immune cells get confused by what seems to be an ongoing attach. They start having a tougher time regulating the body’s natural inflammatory response, increasing the risk of autoimmune diseases.

Long-term yoga practice provides a promising, low-cost solution. In 2010, researchers at the Ohio State University assembled a group of 50 middle-aged women, half of whom had been performing yoga regularly for months or years. Over the course of three weeks, participants had stress repeatedly induced (e.g., by solving difficult math problems), then performed yoga, and were tested for a common inflammatory protein called IL-6. The result: Experienced yoga practitioners had 41% less IL-6 than novices, indicating they were better able to relieve their own stress.

“In essence, the experts walked into the study with lower levels of inflammation than the novices, and the experts were also better able to limit their stress responses than were the novices.”

While evidence suggests that long-term yoga practice reduces inflammation, this study wasn’t able to pinpoint why yoga works. Was it the stretching? The breathing? The practice of mindfulness? Thankfully, over the past decade, new research is pointing to a clearer answer.