This ancient activity is rumored to increase your longevity, but is it true? : ScienceAlert

Yoga was associated with numerous health benefits. But is this also the secret to a long life? This is reported by Daisy Taylor, a centenarian woman from Chelmsford, England.

In a recent interview On her 105th birthday, Taylor told the BBC that she attributes her long and healthy life to yoga, as well as optimism and gratitude for the little things. She says that yoga especially helps her stay in shape. She still practices yoga even at her age – although now more often in a chair than on a mat.

As an elderly and primarily mentally healthy yogi, Taylor is not alone. Many of the world’s most famous yoga practitioners have lived long, healthy lives.

Take BKS Iyengarfor example. Probably the most famous yoga teacher of our time, who was given only a few years to live as a child after contracting an infection malariatyphoid and tuberculosis. Then he discovered yoga and began practicing ten hours a day. He not only survived the disease for several years – he lived to be 95 years old.

His brother-in-law and teacher Thirumalai Krishnamacharya, the founder of vinyasa yoga, lived to be 100 years old. And almost as well-known is another disciple of the master Krishnamacharya Krishna Pattabhi Jois, whose Ashtanga yoga laid the foundation for the wave of fitness yoga, lived 93 years.

There are many reasons why yoga is so beneficial even in old age. Studies show that it can have a positive effect on various age-related diseases decrease in blood pressure, blood fat level and adiposity.

Yoga can also provide relief depression, stress and concern. Yoga is also associated with a a generally healthy lifestyle – for example, following a healthy diet.

Evidence also shows that yoga can have many benefits when it comes to aging and staying young.

Yoga and aging

Research shows that yoga can potentially affect aging at the cellular level. in one studyparticipants who practiced yoga showed a 43 percent increase in telomerase activity, while participants who only relaxed showed an increase of just under 4 percent. Enzyme telomerase is a key factor in aging because it slows cell aging.

In addition, some very experienced yogis can reduce their metabolism so significantly that their physiological state similar to hibernating animals: their breathing and heart rate drop significantly, as does their body temperature. Animals show such a phase of rest increase life expectancy. Some argue that the same could to be true in people.

Evidence also suggests that yoga helps us maintain mental fitness as we age.

As we get older, we decline mentally. Learning new things and forming new memories becomes everything is harder. This is reflected in the brain, in particular the hippocampus, which is important for the formation of new memories, loses substance with age.

But a study that looked at the brains of yogis found that they tended to have a larger brain mass compared to non-yogis of the same age. This difference was particularly prominent in the hippocampus. Not only that, the longer someone practiced yoga, the greater the mass of their brain.

Another study also found average brain mass in 40-50-year-old meditators, it corresponded to the average brain mass of 20-30-year-old non-meditators. Meditation is an important part of yoga.

Although many of these studies take into account any variables that may influence a person’s risk of cognitive decline (such as lifestyle habits and genetics), these controls are never perfect, so these associations are only correlations.

But research has actually shown that meditation can indeed causally increase brain mass — and quite quickly. In a study with participants who had no experience with meditation, one group participated in a four-month meditation course while the other group did not.

Four months later, the mass of the brain has increased significantly in a meditation group. Again, this particularly affected the hippocampus. Overall, the evidence suggests that meditation and yoga are associated with younger brain ages.

Research has also looked at so-called “fluid intelligence” – the ability to solve new, unfamiliar problems, learn new things, and recognize patterns and connections. This ability, as a rule, decreases with old age.

But research shows Middle-aged people who have practiced yoga or meditation for many years have better fluid intelligence compared to people of the same age who have not engaged in either of these activities.

Longevity and yoga

But is there direct evidence that yoga prolongs life?

One study was looking at exactly that. The researchers used linked data from the National Death Index and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an ongoing nationally representative survey of the health and nutrition status of the US population.

The 22,598 study participants were asked a series of questions about their lifestyle habits, including whether they practiced yoga.

The results were impressive.

On average, eight and a half years after the survey, the risk of death was nearly two-thirds lower among participants who practiced yoga than among those who did not practice yoga.

There was just one catch: the yogis tended to be much younger than the average participant. When age was taken into account in the analysis, there was no longer any difference in mortality between yogis and non-yogis.

So it seems that yoga does not increase longevity.

In her interview, Daisy Taylor talked about her 103-year-old sister and five other siblings, each of whom lived to be over 90 years old. So, in Taylor’s case, her longevity seems to be greater family trait.

But yoga seems to make us healthier and, above all, mentally healthier in old age. And maybe, as it did for Daisy Taylor, it can take away the fear of old age.

Holger KramerProfessor, Research in Complementary Medicine, Tübingen University

This article is republished from Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read it original article.