Yoga, the Secret Treatment for High Blood Pressure

Yoga may seem like a workout only for lithe young gymnasts, but it could be the key to tackling Australia’s rising epidemic of people suffering with high blood pressure.
Almost 5 million Aussies have high blood pressure, with most experts pointing the finger at obesity and poor dietary choices as the main culprits.
Currently, the recommended course of treatment is medication and lifestyle changes, but new research from the European Society of Cardiology says regular yoga sessions can drastically reduce your blood pressure.

In a study performed at Sir Gangaram Hopsital in India, researchers found that doing hatha yoga (a rather gentle, relaxing variety) for an hour day could prevent hypertension.
The reason why? We’re still not sure, but the researchers believe it’s a combination of gentle stretching and mindful breathing that literally wipes stress out of your body.
“The exact mechanism is not clear from our study,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Ashutosh Angrish.
“But it has been postulated that yoga may decrease the sympathetic drive, reset the baroreceptors and cause neurohumoral effects.”
If that’s left you scratching your head, what Dr Angrish is saying is that yoga puts a stop to all of the organs and mechanisms in your body that fire when you’re under stress.
You may not realise it, but ordinary activities like firing off an angry email or getting mad at being stuck in traffic cause our bodies to become stuck in something of a constant stress loop – and it’s yoga that can help you break out.
“Our research suggests that patients with prehypertension should be advised to practice hatha yoga for one hour daily,” says Dr Angrish.
“It may prevent the development of hypertension and in addition give a sense of well-being.”
To test his theory, Dr Angrish and his team invited 60 patients with high blood pressure into the hospital to give them group yoga classes daily, and measured their systolic blood pressure each time.
The patients were also asked to make the lifestyle changes that every high blood pressure sufferer is prescribed: do some aerobic exercise, clean up your diet and stop smoking.
After a month, the researchers re-measured the participants blood pressure, and found that the addition of yoga to their schedule helped reduce their scores by approximately 4.5 mmHg (millimetre of mercury).
For Dr Angrish, that’s a huge step towards a healthier heart.
“Although the reduction in blood pressure was modest, it could be clinically very meaningful because even a 2 mmHg decrease in diastolic BP has the potential to decrease the risk of coronary heart disease by 6 percent,” explains Angrish.
For many people – not just those with high blood pressure – the thing turning them off group classes isn’t the yoga itself, but the fear of looking silly or the cost of membership.
(And no, it makes no difference at all if you’re a man worried about going to a “woman’s” class.)
Luckily, there’s several ways you can practice yoga at home without spending a cent. There’s several websites where you can look up free classes, or you can even learn off YouTube with your own private instructor.
“The hardest thing about yoga is making it onto the mat!” Dustin Brown, founder of Warrior One Yoga, told Coach last month.
“We all have ‘busy’ schedules, however making yoga and your health and wellbeing a focus and priority is number one.”
* This article was originally written and published on http://coach.nine.com.au/2016/12/09/13/26/how-yoga-could-be-the-secret-treatment-for-high-blood-pressure