The best recipe to prevent heart problemsand health in general, is to maintain a healthy and balanced diet together with exercise several times a week. In this way, the heart will be healthy and will be able to pump blood without problems.
To finish rounding off this formula, it may be interesting to add a quarter of an hour of yoga to this lifestyle. This is demonstrated by a study by the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute, the results of which have been published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.
According to this research, doing a bit of yoga as part of your regular exercise routine may be the ideal solution for reduce hypertension. The best part is that it doesn’t take a lot of time to see results: 15 minutes are enough to reduce blood pressure and reduce cardiovascular problems.
A supplement to combat hypertension
The researchers recruited 60 hypertensive volunteers with similar physical parameters – BMI, heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels -. They were divided into two groups, those who did yoga and those who did stretching proper. For three months they had to do 30 minutes of physical exercise followed by 15 minutes of yoga or stretching five times a week with measurements every 48 hours.
“We tried to apply a rigorous scientific approach to identify the cardiovascular risk factors for which yoga is beneficial in at-risk patients and the ways in which it might be applied in a healthcare setting as a primary prevention program,” said Paul Poirier, Director of the study and researcher at the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute.
The results of the study have shown that there was a decrease in resting systolic and diastolic blood pressure as well as mean arterial pressure and heart rate in both groups. However, with the yoga had better results: Systolic blood pressure fell by 10 mmHg with yoga vs. 4 mmHg with stretching. The yoga approach to hypertension also reduced resting heart rate and 10-year cardiovascular risk as assessed by the Reynold risk score.
According to Canadian researchers, yoga may be a alternative to medication for hypertension as long as there is a healthy lifestyle: “This study provides evidence of an additional non-pharmacological therapeutic option for cardiovascular risk reduction and blood pressure control in hypertensive patients, within the framework of a primary prevention exercise program “.
The difficulty of yoga, to take into account
The experts have wanted to make it clear that both yoga and stretching are beneficial for health, so it must be the hypertensive person who decides what they prefer to do, if they want to do it.
In any case, yoga has the drawback that some preparation is needed: a person without training will not be able to do it well. On the other hand, the degree of difficulty involved in yoga increases according to the postures that are carried out. It is no longer just needing support from a professional, but many people will not have the physical abilities to be able to do them.
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