I have some great news for regular yoga practitioners!

A study has shown that yoga “may upregulate the antioxidant capacity of cells to combat oxidative stress”.  In simple words this means that yoga seems to help the cells in our body to get rid of nasties like free radicals. This protects our cells from being damaged by these free radicals.

What is a free radical?

In layman’s terms it is a molecule that has an uneven number of electrons which causes it to become unbalanced. The unbalanced molecule then tries to steal electrons from another molecule to make itself more stable. This starts a chain reaction that can harm the cells of the body. Free radicals can enter the body from the outside (mainly air pollution) or they are produced by the body for various reasons. Sometimes there are good reasons - like killing viruses.

How does Yoga help to combat the free radicals?

How much yoga do I need to do?

The participants in this study did regular yoga practice as follows:

1 hour a day in the morning,

5 days a week

for six months

consisting of:

• half an hour of postures (fairly basic ones for the first month)
• yogic breathing (pranayama - different types) for 15 minutes done immediately after the postures
• meditation for 2 minutes (sitting cross legged or with feet touching and legs out to the side)
• chanting the sound “Aum” for 2 minutes

What were the results? 

The results were that Glutathione levels increased significantly and total antioxidant status also increased significantly in the yoga group.

What is Glutathione?

Glutathione is an important substance in our bodies that forms part of the antioxiodant defence. In other words: it makes free radicals harmless. In the process of doing so, it turns into GSSG, meaning oxidised glutathione. So if there is lots of GSSG in a person’s blood, it means there were a lot of free radicals that had to be gotten rid of. In this process the Glutathione was used  and changed to GSSG.

 What exactly happened to the yoga group?

• They had a significant increase in Glutathione levels (this is great news - more free radical quenchers on patrol in the body)
• At the same time they had less GSSG (which means that there must have been less free radicals floating around that had to be gotten rid of).
• Assuming that the environment didn’t change, yoga must have caused the body to produce less internal free radicals.

What did the other group do?

5 days a week, for 6 months the participants:

• jogged for up to 4km for 30 minutes, did flexibility exercises for 10 minutes, pull-ups for five minutes and games for 15 minutes.

What were the results?

• GSSG levels increased significantly. This means that there were more free radicals than before that had to be gotten rid of by the body.
• GSH levels decreased significantly - meaning either that the Glutathione was used up at a greater rate or that the body produced less. 
• None of the above is good news.

So, get moving and practice your yoga! It has a lot of “invisible” benefits apart from feeling great.

For those of you that are scientifically inclined and want to follow up, the reference is:

Sinha S, Singh SN, Monga YP, Ray US. Improvement of glutathione and total antioxidant status with yoga. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2007; 13 (10): 1085-1090

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com