The Impact of Yoga Based Interventions in Infertility, Cancer and Alzheimer’s disease: A Brief Review
Keywords:
yoga, infertility, DNA damage, cancer, alzheimer’s disease, quality of lifeAbstract
Yoga is a profound science involving a set of practices consisting of a combination of physical postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayamas), and meditation (dhyana). The therapeutic effects of yoga on some of the complex lifestyle diseases are now well established. Our previous studies have consistently revealed that yoga influences the expression of genes involved in stress response, inflammation, and oxidative damage. Yoga up regulates the expression of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant genes and down regulates pro-inflammatory pathways. Yoga has demonstrated promising benefits for infertile couples. The integrative approach of yoga practice helps an individual to connect body with mind thereby fostering a sense of control and empowerment which is extremely essential in couples undergoing fertility treatment and to deal with the emotional turmoil. Regular practice of yoga maintains and restores sperm DNA integrity and thus can reduce the occurrence of childhood cancers and complex neuropsychiatric disorders in offspring. Yoga also helps to cope up with the medical therapy induced adverse effects in cancer survivors. The addition of yoga with the conventional treatment regime has demonstrated to expand the treatment horizon by better modulation of disease activity and inducing clinical remission in rheumatoid arthritis patients. A better cognitive and immunological effect of yoga has been observed compared to memory training in elderly women at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Most of the chronic lifestyle diseases are associated with decreased quality of life, but the psychosocial impact of the medical condition is less often addressed. Yoga can act as adjunct therapy in conjunction with the standard treatment modalities to alleviate the stress, anxiety and depression in these complex diseases and can promote helath and prevent these diseases if practiced regularly.
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