Yoga For A Strong Heart: How Daily Yoga Asanas Can Help Lower Cholesterol And Prevent Heart Attack

Yoga for strengthening heart muscles: Read on to know how practicing yoga daily can help lower blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and prevent heart attacks.

For more than five thousand years, yoga has been used for spiritual purposes or attainment of samadhi, a different state of consciousness. The previous century saw the beginning of modern scientific exploration of the effects of yoga on human physiology and psychology. Numerous pilot studies have found yoga and meditation could induce a physiological state characterized by a wakeful yet restful state. This relaxation response, achieved by yoga, meditation, and other mind-body practices drew interest in the application of yoga as a potential to live healthy, improve health, live longer, and improve the perceived quality of life of practitioners. Given these, could it benefit individuals with heart diseases which are threatening mankind with dire consequences?

TheHealthSite.com spoke to Dr Prof. (Dr) D. Prabhakaran, Executive Director, Centre for Chronic Disease Control (MD, DM (Cardiology), MSc, FRCP, FNA, DSc (Honoris Causa), to understand more about cardiovascular health and how it affects overall well-being. According to Dr Prabhakaran, Cardiovascular diseases (heart diseases colloquially) are a significant threat to the economy with their multifaceted problems. Among cardiovascular diseases, ischemic heart diseases contribute to the highest burden of diseases. Ischemic heart disease is a condition characterized by a blockage or narrowing of blood vessels supplying the heart. Ischemic heart disease often has multifactorial causation and major risk factors are high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, diabetes, obesity, tobacco use, and stress. The global burden of disease estimates that 47 lakh people are diagnosed with ischemic heart disease and 15 lakh people die of this cardiovascular disease. The cardioprotective drugs and revascularization procedures improve longevity and quality of life. Cardiac rehabilitation is a multicomponent intervention including exercise training and physical activity promotion, health education, cardiovascular risk management, and psychological support, personalized to the individual needs of patients with heart diseases. These cardiac rehabilitation programs have also been shown to improve longevity, and quality of life while reducing the costs of care. Cardiac rehabilitation is virtually non-existent in India. India has the highest unmet needs for cardiac rehabilitation in the world.

Stress As a Trigger For Poor Heart Health

Stress is recognized as one of the major triggers of CVD. To understand this connection better, we reached out to Ambalam M. Chandrasekaran, Research Consultant, Centre for Chronic Disease Control (BNYS, MPH). Here is what he explained -- When a person is excessively stressed, a hormone called Cortisol is released by the adrenal glands. Over a long period, high cortisol levels can increase triglycerides, blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure, all of which are common risk factors for heart disease. Stress also triggers the release of glucagon, renin, angiotensin, and pro-inflammatory cytokines. It increases the clumping up of platelets and stimulates the clotting cascade to generate a favorable environment for blood clot formation, thereby increasing the chances of developing CVD or a stroke.

Stress also comes in the way of rest and good sleep. What is more, a person who is stressed is less likely to pay attention to her/ his diet, exercise or weight gain and vice-versa. These factors are known to adversely affect the heart.

Yoga As a Cardio-Protective Practice

Acting as a stress-buster, yoga's cardioprotective practices such as slow breathing, stretching the muscles, mindfulness, and meditation activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn increases heart rate variability and improves vascular tone.

Research has shown that practicing yoga can have positive effects on cardiovascular health. Numerous studies have demonstrated that it can lower blood pressure, heart rate, waist circumference, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels. It has also been linked to improvements in glycated hemoglobin concentration, which is important for managing diabetes.

In patients with heart disease, yoga has been associated with a reduction in angina episodes and severity, as well as improvements in lesion severity in coronary and carotid arteries. Moreover, yoga has shown promise in reducing episodes of atrial fibrillation and improving patient-reported outcomes like anxiety, depression, and quality of life.

The strongest evidence for the benefits of yoga in cardiovascular health comes from studies focusing on secondary prevention, especially after a heart attack. For example, the LIFESTYLE Heart Trial found that a comprehensive lifestyle program, which included yoga along with moderate exercise and a vegetarian diet, resulted in greater regression of coronary atherosclerosis and fewer adverse cardiac events in patients with heart disease.

Yoga has also been shown to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress in the body. In addition, studies have found that it can be just as effective, if not better, than exercise in improving various health outcomes. These include heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual health. Our study of nearly 4000 patients with heart attack found, yoga based cardiac rehabilitation improves the quality of life, returns to pre-heart attack activities and if practiced regularly could reduce the risk of further hospital admissions and death.

Overall, these findings highlight the significant positive impact that yoga can have on cardiovascular health and 360-degree well-being, especially for individuals with existing heart conditions. Yoga-based comprehensive lifestyle programs can be a potential cardiac rehabilitation program for preventing cardiovascular complications in a vast country like India. These can be delivered under the guidance of a medical practitioner, by a qualified yoga practitioner, and require fewer resources compared to traditional cardiac rehabilitation programs. While the evidence for the benefits of yoga in cardiovascular health is promising, more large-scale clinical trials are needed to fully understand its effectiveness.

A few interesting facts about Yoga

If you are planning to perform yoga poses daily from now, take a quick look at the amazing things that this one simple habit can do (Apart from taking care of your cardiovascular health):

1. Yoga promotes health, healing and longevity.
2. Practised alongside modern medicine, yoga has the power to enhance good health and prevent ill health.
3. It is reported that approximately 300 million people practice yoga every day, across the world. Statistics from 2019 list yoga as one of the top 10 global fitness trends.
4. In addition to physical poses, breathing exercises and meditation, yoga promulgates physical hygiene, moderation in the intake of foods, and abstinence from smoking and alcohol.
5. Nearly 1000 clinical trials have been conducted to test the benefits of yoga in improving physical, mental and social well-being in healthy individuals and in people with chronic conditions including multiple long-term conditions. These studies were conducted across the globe especially in the top medical schools of the world signifying the potential role of yoga in health.

Done right, yoga has the potential to address the physical, psychological, and health needs of patients with CVD. However, more research is needed to fully explore its benefits and determine its role in rehabilitation across various forms of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure. We are working with ICMR in one such study comprising 3500 patients with heart failure across the country.