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Yoga for improving bone mineral density

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eMediNexus Editorial    21 February 2020

Osteoporosis and osteopenia are known to affect millions of people globally. The numbers tend to increase with the aging population. A safe, effective, and low-cost intervention is the need of the hour to manage these conditions.

Yoga can serve as a low-cost and safer alternative to medications. A study evaluated the effectiveness of selected yoga postures in increasing the bone mineral density (BMD) in 741 participants. This was a 10-year study with 227 compliant participants (more than every-other-day yoga). Nearly 83% of the compliant individuals had osteoporosis or osteopenia. Investigators compared preyoga and postyoga BMD changes.

BMD was found to improve in spine, hips, and femur of the compliant patients. Monthly increase in BMD was significant in spine and femur. There were no yoga-related serious injuries. Bone quality showed qualitative improvement in the study participants.

Yoga was thus found to be a safe and effective intervention to reverse bone loss in the spine and femur. Yoga has also been shown to reduce back pain and arthritis, and improves gait, thus providing some protection against falls that can lead to fractures.

Therefore, yoga can be used as a potential treatment option for osteopenia and osteoporosis.

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