Yoga is one of the hottest fitness trends sweeping the country. Now many doctors think it can also cure what ails you.
Physicians in the U.S. and abroad are conducting a variety of studies gauging whether yoga offers health benefits beyond general fitness and can relieve symptoms associated with serious medical problems. Early results suggest that a regular yoga regimen -- involving a variety of postures, deep breathing and meditation exercises -- can offer relief for patients suffering from asthma, chronic back pain, arthritis and obsessive compulsive disorder, among other problems.
Yoga therapy hasn't been widely studied in the U.S. Most of the research has taken place in India where yoga originated 5,000 years ago. But today, several reputable American doctors are pursuing randomized yoga studies, and the National Institutes of Health is funding clinical trials of yoga for treating insomnia and multiple sclerosis. For more information, check www.clinicaltrials.gov.
Medical or "therapeutic" yoga is a far cry from the intense technique taught in health clubs. Popular yogas, such as Ashtanga, Bikram and Iynegar are physically demanding, usually causing participants to break a sweat. By contrast, therapeutic yoga focuses on breathing and meditation techniques that calm the mind, increase lung capacity and reduce stress. Health clubs "are much more into power, in-your-face kind of yoga," says Vijay Vad, sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.
* Chronic back pain: Dr. Vad is studying 50 patients with herniated disks who are suffering from lower back pain. Half the patients are taking daily doses of the anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex as well as Vicodin for severe pain.
A second group doesn't take drugs, but instead spends 15 minutes, three days a week on an exercise program that is about 70 percent yoga and 30 percent Pilates, a technique that involves a series of low-impact flexibility and muscle exercises. The program, dubbed "Back Builders," specifically excludes many popular sitting and bending positions that can aggravate back problems.
After three months, the results have been striking: 80 percent of patients in the yoga group reported that their pain was reduced by at least half. In the group taking drugs, only 44 percent improved. Three patients, or 12 percent of the yoga group, re-injured their backs during the period; that compares with 14, or more than half of patients in the medication group.
Dr. Vad, who consults with the men's professional tennis and golf tours, notes that in India, where yoga is widely practiced, lower-back problems are virtually unheard of.
* Mental health: Doctors and researchers
are increasingly intrigued by yoga's potential to treat mental-health problems.
One study, published in CNS Spectrums, a peer-reviewed psychiatric medical
journal, examined 22 adults who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder,
an often-disabling condition that causes odd compulsions, such as excessive
counting. Half the group used standard meditation, while the other half
used "Kundalini yoga," which requires patients to focus both eyes on the
tip of their nose, press their tongues
to the roof of their mouths, open
their jaws and breathe through their noses for at least six minutes. After
three months, the yoga group posted a 40 percent improvement, compared
with 14 percent in the non- yoga group. Later both groups received the
yoga treatment, and after a year posted an average improvement of 70 percent.
One of those patients, a 53-year-old San Diego resident who didn't want to be named, had been taking the anti-anxiety drug Paxil when he entered the study and says he was "totally skeptical" that yoga could help him. Today most of his symptoms have disappeared. "OCD is not a problem I currently deal with," he says.
"The results are rather striking and hard for some people to believe," says David Shannahoff-Khalsa, one of the study's authors and director of the research group for mind-body dynamics at the University of California-San Diego's Institute for Nonlinear Science. He consults with patients via phone and e-mail (Dsk@ucsd.edu) and sells a $64.99 video of the technique.
* Asthma: P.K. Vedanthan, an allergist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver, studied 17 adults with asthma. Half the group practiced a yoga regimen that included breath slowing exercises and meditation. Although lung function tests were about the same for both groups, the yoga group was less likely to need inhalers and scored higher on quality of life questionnaires.
Marianne Wamboldt, associate director of pediatrics at National Jewish Medical Research Center, one of the country's leading allergy and asthma hospitals, is a longtime yoga practitioner who is seeking NIH funding for her own yoga/asthma study. "I don't think yoga can cure asthma, but I think it's a good adjunctive therapy that helps," she says.
But finding an instructor experienced in therapeutic yoga isn't easy. There's no official national yoga standard, but a good place to find a teacher is the Yoga Alliance (www.yogaalliance.org), which offers a 200-hour basic certification as well as a 500-hour advanced certification.
* Cardiovascular disease: Mary Jo
Kreitzer, director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University
of Minnesota Alternative Medicine Center, recently authored an article
on how yoga could be used for cardiovascular patients. Yoga has been shown
to relieve stress, lower blood pressure and heart rate and improve cardiovascular
endurance, she says. "We are on the cusp of a big shift. I think what's
changed is people are demanding it, and they want to look at these alternatives."