Your immune cells are like the silent fighters who do so much behind the scenes and deserve the credit for their job. You need your immune system to be firing on all cylinders to feel good and perform clearly. A weakened immune system can lead to chronic diseases, viral infections or even autoimmune disorders.
As the seasons change, the chances of falling sick rise sharply. It’s hard for our body to keep the pathogens at bay once the immunity levels are down and people around us are sneezing and coughing. Though we can’t shun from being in contact with individuals that are ill, we can surely work our way to strengthen our immune mechanisms.
Antibiotics and other medicines do help the body recover from the disease but they do not help improve the body’s immunity. Luckily you can boost your immunity with the practice of Yoga.
Yoga, possibly, is among the very best and time-tested all-natural immunity boosters which we can embrace for a healthy life. It is an ancient art that strengthens the body and also relaxes the mind.
More and more, it seems that science backs this up monitoring. According to Michael Mitchell, N.D., a California-based professional who teaches advanced naturopathic therapeutics in Davis University, “studies show that lots of viruses and bacteria gently reside within us until something within the body’s internal environment becomes unbalanced.”
Yoga helps lower stress hormones that compromise the immune system, while also conditioning the lungs and respiratory tract, stimulating the lymphatic system to oust toxins from your system, and bringing oxygenated blood to the various organs to make sure their optimum function.
We all know that different Asanas (poses) in Yoga helps us to stay healthy, calm and composed in every situation. While the asanas make up the cornerstone of disease prevention, yoga’s benefits don’t stop there. Since both influenza and colds attack the bronchial passages, then it seems sensible that cleansing the lungs and optimizing one’s breathing capability throughout pranayama would build immunity to preying organisms. Kraftsow, in his recent book Yoga for Wellness, explains that cold and flu infections, asthma, allergies, and other chronic respiratory conditions are “directly connected to a weakened immune response” due to”disrupted, irregular habits of breathing.” Sectional breathing and rapid abdominal breathing (Kapalabhati) raise the immunity of your respiratory tract, they urge, while the nasal wash and alternate-nostril breathing “increase the immunity of your sinuses.
Recent findings by a Penn State University study involving 294 college students support this. Those who drank daily with saline experienced a significant decrease in colds.
A new study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine indicates that yoga can be a helpful way to increase your immune system and decrease inflammation in the human body.
Researchers jointly reviewed 15 randomized controlled trials that examined whether the normal practice of yoga postures might strengthen the immune system and decrease chronic inflammation. The majority of research used Hatha yoga, a general term that indicates a style that contains bearings.
Scientists in those yoga trials examined the immune system response by measuring blood or saliva levels of naturally-occurring markers such as cytokines, a protein known as C-reactive protein (CRP), in addition to immune cell counts, antibodies, and markers of gene expression in immune cells.
Researchers found a general pattern that yoga reduces pro-inflammatory markers, together with the most powerful evidence for the decrease of a cytokine known as IL-1beta. 1 study found that yoga raised levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-10. Another study found that yoga could mediate inflammation in the genomic level, changing levels of proteins that control the DNA transcription of proinflammatory cytokine genes.
