NEW ORLEANS, April 3, (RTRS): Yoga, already proven to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, can cut in half the risk of a common and potentially dangerous irregular heartbeat, according to a US study released on Saturday.
The small study was the first to examine the benefits of yoga on atrial fibrillation — a problem that is a leading cause of stroke and is most common in the elderly.
In addition to halving the episodes of atrial fibrillation, the study found that yoga also reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression related to the condition.
“These findings are important because many of the current conventional treatment strategies for atrial fibrillation include invasive procedures or medications with undesirable side effects,” said Dr Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, an associate professor with the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, who led the study.
He presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology being held in New Orleans.
The study involved 49 patients with the heart rhythm disorder who had no physical limitations and no prior experience with yoga. Their episodes of irregular heartbeat were measured for a six-month period by researchers at the hospital.
During the first three months, patients were allowed to participate in any physical activity they liked.
For the remaining three months, they underwent a supervised yoga program that involved breathing exercises, yoga postures, meditation and relaxation.
Forty-five minute yoga sessions with a certified professional were held three times each week, and patients were encouraged to practice daily yoga exercises at home.
Heart monitors measured episodes of irregular heartbeat throughout the trial, and patients completed short self-administered surveys to assess their levels of anxiety, depression and overall quality of life.
On average, yoga cut episodes of the irregular heartbeat in half, while also significantly reducing depression and anxiety scores and improving scores in physical functioning, general health, vitality, social functioning and mental health, the researchers found.
“It appears yoga has a significant impact on helping to regulate patients’ heartbeat and improves the overall quality of life,” Lakkireddy said.
Atrial fibrillation causes blood to pool in the upper chambers of the heart, where it can clot and travel to the brain, causing strokes. Millions of patients with the condition take the blood thinner warfarin every day to lower the risk of such clots, and thereby prevent strokes.
Considering its low cost and benefits, Lakkireddy said yoga should be considered in overall treatment of atrial fibrillation and other heart rhythm problems.
But Lakkireddy cautioned that larger studies are needed to bear out the findings of his study, and that patients should continue with standard medical therapy.
“Based on my findings, one should not tell patients that yoga will fix everything and they can stop taking their anticoagulants. Yoga is strictly a supplement for everything else they are doing medically,” he said.
A new wave of promising medicines to prevent such strokes is being developed by several drugmakers, one of which — Xarelto being developed by Bayer and Johnson & Johnson — will be highlighted at the heart meeting.
But the pills come with side effects, and are expected to cost thousands of dollars a year, when they reach the market.
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Heart: Consistent lifelong exercise preserves heart muscle in the elderly to levels that match or even exceed that of healthy young sedentary people, a surprising finding that underscores the value of regular exercise training, according to a new study.
The first study to evaluate the effects of varying levels of lifelong exercise on heart mass was presented on Saturday at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans.
It suggested that physical activity preserves the heart’s youthful elasticity, showing that when people were sedentary, the mass of their hearts shrunk with each passing decade.
By contrast, elderly people with a documented history of exercising six to seven times a week throughout adulthood not only kept their heart mass, but built upon it — having heart masses greater than sedentary healthy adults aged 25 to 34.
“One thing that characterizes the aging process by itself is the loss of muscle mass, particularly skeletal muscle,” said Dr Paul Bhella, a researcher from John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas who presented the study at the conference.
“But we are showing that this process is not unique to skeletal muscle, it also happens in cardiac muscle,” he said. “A heart muscle that atrophies is weaker.”
The study enrolled 121 healthy people with no history of heart disease. Fifty nine were sedentary subjects recruited from the Dallas Heart Study, a large multiethnic sample of Dallas County residents.
Some 62 lifelong exercisers, all over age 65, were recruited mainly from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, which had documented their exercise habits over a period of 25 years.
In the new study, exercise was assessed by the number of aerobic exercise sessions per week, rather than intensity or duration. Subjects were broken down into four groups: non-exercisers; casual exercisers (two to three times a week); committed exercisers (four to five times a week) and master athletes (six to seven times a week).
Heart mass measurements, taken using MRIs, showed that sedentary subjects had diminished heart mass as they aged, while lifelong exercisers had heart mass expansion with increasing frequency of exercise.
“The data suggest that if we can identify people in middle age, in the 45 to 60 year range, and get them to exercise four to five times a week, this may go a very long way in preventing some of the major heart conditions of old age, including heart failure,” said Benjamin Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who headed the study.