Comparative study on the effect of yogic relaxing asanas and pranayamas on cardiovascular response in healthy young volunteers

Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular morbidity is increasing recently in India. Stress and autonomic dysfunction are associated with cardiovascular morbidity. Yoga is the best lifestyle ever designed. Based on limited scientific research, yoga (meditation, asanas, and pranayamas including relaxation) therapy is known to improve cardiovascular autonomic functions. Aims and Objective: To study and compare the effect of 6 months of training in relaxing asanas and pranayamas on blood pressure (BP), pulse pressure (PP), heart rate (HR), and rate-pressure product (RPP) in young healthy volunteers. Materials and Methods: A total of 109 healthy volunteers aged 20-25 years were divided into 3 groups consisting of asan (n = 38), pranayam (n = 38), and control group (n = 33). The Yoga training was given 25 min/day for 6 days/week for 6 months. Pranayam group received relaxing pranayam (pranav, savitri, nadi shuddhi and chandra nadi), asan group received relaxing asan (pawanmuktasana, balasan, dharnicasan, and shavasan) and waiting list were kept as a control group. The results were statistically compared between groups by analysis of variance and intra-group pre-post comparisons by paired t-test. Results: Post training analysis showed significant decreases in systolic BP and diastolic BP as well as PP, mean arterial pressure and RPP in both asan and pranayam group as compared with control. There was, however, no significant difference between asan and pranayam group. Conclusion: Practising either relaxing asan or pranayam enhances parasympathetic activity and decreases sympathetic activity.

Mind–Body Physical Activity Interventions and Stress-Related Physiological Markers in Educational Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Comprised study characteristics are delineated in Table 1. Twenty-six intervention studies examining the effects of MBPA on stress-related physiological markers, specifically, heart rate, glucose, cortisol, and blood pressure in educational settings were included in this review [15,18,19,[26][27][28][29][30][31]34,37,38,42,44,[90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. From the 26 studies, researchers conducted 17 in higher education (65%), 4 in secondary school, 5 in primary school settings, and 9 in India, 8 in the USA, 4 in China, two in South Korea, one in Africa, in Taiwan, and Japan.…”

“…A total of 1625 students participated in 21 yoga (80.77%), three qigong, one tai chi, and one walking meditation, trained instructor-led interventions with group sample sizes ranging from 8 to 104 783 participants served as the control/comparison group. Of the total number of students, 822 were females; however, three interventions with 340 participants did not report gender [18,34,92]. From the 26 included studies, researchers rated 14 as 'fair', 10 as 'good', and two as 'poor'.…”

“…Another intervention used meditation and walking as part of a mental and physical training program [91]. Intervention duration lasted from one 10 min single bout session to six months [18,90]. Generally, participants practiced MBPA sessions from one day to six days weekly, from 15 to 60 min, led by trained instructors for 1 to 24 weeks.…”

“…Seven interventions used inactive control groups, such as seated rest, book reading, seated breathing, and watching a movie [19,30,44,90,91,99,100]. In 12 studies, the control group participants followed their regular daily routine and did not have any MBPA practice during the intervention [18,[26][27][28][29]31,34,93,94,96,98].…”

“…Of the 26 studies that reported relevant outcome measures of stress-related physiological markers, the most common values were autonomic arousal, such as heart rate (HR), and both systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure (BP) parameters. Seventeen interventions reported values of HR [18,[26][27][28]30,31,37,42,44,[90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98]. Researchers measured resting HR in 47% of the included MBPA interventions.…”