Four Health Problems that Yoga Can Reverse

By Rigel Celeste on March 1st, 2010

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Yoga yoga yoga. It’s all the rage these days, and seemingly for good reason, as it not only helps build a strong core and lean muscle mass, but it can also assist in reducing and reversing any number of serious health conditions. Here are four of the biggest:

Back Pain. According to the back-journal Spine, chronic back pain patients who practiced yoga just twice a week for six weeks—under the guidance and supervision of their doctor, of course—reported not only less pain overall, but less depression too.

Asthma. The American College of Sports Medicine did a study and found that asthma patients reported fewer symptoms after doing two-and-a-half hours of yoga per week for 10 weeks straight.

Pre-Diabetes. Research concludes that patients with metabolic syndrome—also known as pre-diabetes—who practiced yoga for three, consecutive months had lower blood pressure, BMI, LDL cholesterol and insulin levels afterward.

Emotional Eating. Binge eaters reduced episodes by more than half after attending yoga therapy for 10 consecutive weeks, per the University of the Rockies.

I’ve always liked yoga, but have had a hard time keeping a consistent routine, although it really does seem to be a miracle exercise if there ever was one. The nice thing about yoga is that it requires little to no equipment and can be done almost anywhere—at home, at a gym class, anywhere—plus modified workouts, like this 20 minute yoga routine with weights, are now easily available for those of us really looking to save some much-needed time.