What motivates you to practice yoga? There’s usually a range of responses from ‘stress relief’ to ‘flexibility’ or ‘spiritual growth’. What we don’t often consider is ‘a strong skeleton’! But new research shows that yoga is surprisingly protective when it comes to staving off fractures and helping prevent osteoporosis, a bone thinning disease. This is more prevalent in women as the production of oestrogen drops off during menopause but men can also suffer. The great news is that as a yogi you are already protecting your skeleton. When we hold poses or do twists, the opposing forces of the muscles stimulates osteoblasts, bone making cells. These turn into osteocytes which are cells that become embedded within our bones. Yoga may also help reverse or stall the bone weakening effects that come with old age which is relatively new thinking in the medical world. New research shows that yoga can outweigh the hormonal effects of age. Our slow strong winter yoga practices challenges our bones helping to build bone density. Join me this week for a practice with lots of bone building postures!
Comments