Yoga as medicine
One hour of yoga instead of antibiotics. Meditative exercises instead of beta blockers for high blood pressure. Breathing for asthma. A great idea: we go to the yoga school instead of the doctor. Yoga exercises - asanas - on prescription: highly effective, but without side effects. Apart from streamlined forms and a better attitude. Because yoga heals. This is shown, for example, by an evaluation of international studies on coronary heart disease conducted at the University of Exeter. Result: Yoga reduces risk factors such as increased blood lipid levels and obesity. Even with vasoconstriction and angina pectoris, yoga programs are an effective therapy. One thing is certain: Blood levels improve, hormone levels rise, muscles relax, joints run smoothly, and the immune system puts viruses and bacteria under fire as soon as yoga is included in the healing plan. Particularly promising, as new research results show, is that yoga, as a medicine, is precisely against those diseases that our civilization society produces in large quantities: musculoskeletal pain, metabolic disorders, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, a weakened immune system and mental suffering. And yoga is becoming increasingly popular in dealing with all those aspects of women's health that need to rebalance the complex interplay of body and soul: menstrual problems, unwanted childlessness, pregnancy, and menopause. Hundreds of studies and bibliographical references can be found in these databases alone in the database of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.
Effect and successes? There is evidence
The Leipzig physicians Dietrich Ebert, who started researching yoga as a therapy in the 1980s and is giving a lecture at the university today, is convinced of the physiological effects: "There are enough scientific bases to support this. " These were demonstrated, for example, in a recent study at the University of Greifswald: After a ten-week Hatha Yoga course, the student participants showed a marked improvement in the so-called baroreflex, an important function for the regulation of the cardiovascular system. And that was not just a consequence of the athletic training: "A comparable group that did aerobics did not show such an effect," explains Dr. med. Ulrich Ott, who researches the effects of yoga and meditation at the Institute of Psychobiology and Behavioral Medicine at the University of Giessen. So yoga is healthy. But does it also cure diseases? Most studies come from India, where today there are clinics that combine traditional medicine therapies and millennia-old yoga traditions. For example, scientists in Bangalore regularly performed yogic breathing exercises (pranayama) on tuberculosis patients as a supplement to antibiotic treatment. After two months, according to a study published in 2004, 80% of the patients no longer showed any pathogens; in the control group, which was treated exclusively with antibiotics, this was the case in only 20 percent. But not only in India are the therapeutic effects of yoga researched today. Doctors in the UK have now found that special yoga breathing exercises alleviate the symptoms of asthma. And in the US, scientists recognized in April how yoga works in the treatment of depression: Participants in a pilot study felt significantly better after a week of yoga and had less anxiety than respondents in a peer group. A pure placebo effect? Hardly likely. Because with the participants of the "yoga group" also a significantly increased morning release of the "stress hormone" cortisol was detectable: It ensures that we also have enough energy in stressful situations. The scientists urgently recommend further studies.
Yoga, medically prescribed
Fortunately, to prescribe yoga as a therapy you do not have to travel to India, the UK or the US. The number of qualified yoga therapists is also growing here. The doctor Dr. med. Imogen Dalmann and her colleague Martin Soder, for example, operate a practice in Berlin in which only yoga is prescribed as a therapy - individually adapted to each individual health problem. With back and joint pain, high blood pressure or stomach ulcers, the patients come to them in the yoga center. In the face of such medical histories, Imogen Dalmann initially had to stop getting used to the findings and X-ray images: "We medical specialists have to rethink things, unlearn things that we are used to, because conventional medicine is geared to diseases, not to those who affected. " The yoga therapy is the other way around: It is based on the whole person. Not diseases or problem areas, but the mobilization of own power reserves and abilities are in the center.Therefore, there is no ready recipe for anyone. The Berlin yoga physicians create each program individually and test it with the individual patient, the individual patient. "Viniyoga" is the name of this method. The movements are movingly easy; It is not the human being who adapts to the exercises, but the exercise - the so-called asana - the human being. The effect is in the foreground, not the perfection of the execution. Nobody needs to be able to get a perfect lotus position. Because acrobatics can harm - even healthy people. "We do not recommend the headstand to anyone," says Dalmann. It is practiced not only in the yoga center, but also at home. The self-responsible training works very well - even to the surprise of the two therapists. "At first we did not think that would work." During the consultation, the patients report on their experiences and develop their individual exercise program together with the doctor. Regularity is crucial in order to create a lasting effect: "After three months, something has to be improved, as it were," says Dalmann. Often, this succeeds much earlier.
Rewrite health
Finding your own way, taking individual experiences seriously - this is important if yoga is to develop its health effects. But that also makes it difficult to produce universal results about its effects. Because yoga does not work like aspirin or antibiotics, like a drug that attacks pathogens or stuns nerve cells. As the psychophysiologist Ulrich Ott explains, he can "set a massive stimulus to restore the body's own systems". One of the most important effects is relaxation - which is manifested among other things "by a slower pace of breathing, a lowering of the heart rate and blood pressure and a lower tonic muscle tension." Mind you: after completing the training. " A recent study from Germany shows how fast such effects can be positively felt: In this case, yoga was used as a relaxation method in occupational health promotion. Within four weeks, the serenity and self-confidence of the participants increased significantly. Only one hour per week was practiced. In a recent American study, such effects were even proven with the help of modern medical technology: After eight weeks of practicing yoga and meditation for an average of half an hour per day for eight weeks, significantly more positive emotions were detected among the participants - as measured by brain waves in the EEG. Also, the immune system, tested with a flu virus, was significantly stronger in the "yoga group" than in a comparison group. As a general preventive health-promoting measure, yoga is supported in this country due to such successes by the health insurance companies. Who needs yoga as a medicine against a disease, but can not count on cash benefits yet. Excessive participation and self-responsibility are therefore in demand for yoga, and not just financially. Because health is not understood as a state, but as a balance that must be constantly balanced - and can be. Still, yoga is not a miracle cure. In some serious illnesses, the effect may be that the sufferer gets along much better with the burden of the disease or conventional medical therapy, physically and psychologically. Because yoga is not only made up of comprehensible physical exercises, but is a multi-level and multi-layered philosophical system that includes breathing exercises, meditation, cleansing rituals and behavioral rules.
Patience is rewarded
Often, this complexity is not only overwhelming yoga beginners, but also doctors and our healthcare system. But just because Yoga brings together different things like concentration, breath and movement, Imogen Dalmann suspects, most of those who start with it, stick to it: "At one of these levels, you seem to reach everyone, everyone will find something that they enjoy . " So yoga not only demands an excess in the healing process, it also promotes it. Nevertheless, patience is an important component, patience and acceptance towards yourself. In addition to a good teacher, this attitude will always have to be sufficient where science can not make any recommendations, not yet or perhaps never. The body, mind and emotions of the people interact in a complex way, writes the American physician Timothy McCall in the "Yoga Journal". Science is just beginning to understand this.
