CA (Dr.) Ruchi Gupta, Founder and CEO 3Hcare.in

Yoga is great for staying in shape and staying fit, but recent researches suggests that regular practice of it can offer much more than just toned abs. Here’s how hitting the mat can help improve overall health.

1. Yoga helps beat stress

When someone encounters a stressful situation, the brain releases adrenaline into blood stream. This causes the heart to beat faster and your blood pressure increases.  While this response can help protect while facing threat in flight or flight situation, living in a constant state of stress may wreak havoc on your cardiovascular system. People who are prone to stress have a higher risk for heart disease than others.

2. Yoga reduce heart diseases

Yoga has been established as an effective means to improve overall health especially in patients suffering from stress, hypertension, coronary atherosclerosis, heart failure, dyslipidemia, diabetes, anxiety, depression and other similar conditions. Regular practice of yoga, particularly when combined with other lifestyle modifications, can induce biochemical alterations that have a salutary effect of cardiac hemodynamics, blood lipids, fasting blood sugar, body mass, and thought process. However, there are very few randomized controlled studies on the beneficial effects of yoga.

3. Yoga may lower blood pressure

Hypotension or low blood pressure is a condition when the arteries receive abnormally low blood flow. And as the blood pressure reduces, it can create a scarcity of blood reaching to the vital body organs including your brain. This leads to dizziness, light headiness, fainting and in chronic situations it can even lead to organ failures. Yoga has been proven to have high effects in improving this condition.

4. Yoga promotes physical activity

Yoga promotes physical health in multiple different ways. Some of them derive from better stress management. Others come more directly from the physical movements and postures in yoga, which help promote flexibility and reduce joint pain.