The Development of Modern Yoga: A Survey of the Field

Yoga and Lifestyle Changes: A Path to Improved Fertility - A Narrative Review

Infertility, a widespread medical condition affecting numerous couples globally, persists as a challenge despite advances in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), often burdened by financial, physical, and emotional strains. Complementary and alternative approaches, notably yoga, have garnered attention for potentially enhancing fertility outcomes. Studies reveal yoga's influence on factors contributing to infertility, including reduced oxidative stress (OS) and oxidative DNA damage (ODD). OS, linked to mutagenic base formation, higher malondialdehyde levels, abnormal methylation, and altered gene expression, can impair sperm genome integrity. Yoga's efficacy is evident in lowering OS, positively affecting signal transmission, gene expression, and physiological systems. Furthermore, yoga has a positive impact on addressing the dysregulation of apoptosis, resulting in improved processes such as spermatogenesis, sperm maturation, and motility, while also reducing DNA fragmentation. OS correlates with genome-wide hypomethylation, telomere shortening, and mitochondrial dysfunction, contributing to genome instability. Yoga and meditation significantly reduce OS and ODD, ensuring proper reactive oxygen levels and preserving physiological systems. The review explores potential mechanisms underlying yoga's positive impact on infertility, including enhanced blood flow, reduced inflammation, relaxation response, and modulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of the literature reveals substantial evidence supporting the positive effects of yoga on infertility factors. These include oxidative stress (OS), oxidative DNA damage (ODD), epigenetic changes, hormonal balance, ovarian function, menstrual irregularities, and stress reduction. In summary, yoga emerges as a promising adjunctive therapy for infertility, demonstrating the potential to mitigate key factors influencing reproductive success. Although preliminary evidence indicates the positive effects of yoga on infertility, further clinical research is imperative to define specific benefits, molecular mechanisms associated, optimal protocols, and long-term effects in infertility treatment plans.

Yoga Meets Intelligent Internet of Things: Recent Challenges and Future Directions

The physical and mental health of people can be enhanced through yoga, an excellent form of exercise. As part of the breathing procedure, yoga involves stretching the body organs. The guidance and monitoring of yoga are crucial to ripe the full benefits of it, as wrong postures possess multiple antagonistic effects, including physical hazards and stroke. The detection and monitoring of the yoga postures are possible with the Intelligent Internet of Things (IIoT), which is the integration of intelligent approaches (machine learning) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Considering the increment in yoga practitioners in recent years, the integration of IIoT and yoga has led to the successful implementation of IIoT-based yoga training systems. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on integrating yoga with IIoT. The paper also discusses the multiple types of yoga and the procedure for the detection of yoga using IIoT. Additionally, this paper highlights various applications of yoga, safety measures, various challenges, and future directions. This survey provides the latest developments and findings on yoga and its integration with IIoT.

Medical Pluralism, Mainstream Marginality or Subaltern Therapeutics? Globalisation and the Integration of ‘Asian’ Medicines and Biomedicine in the UK

Medical Pluralism refers to the coexistence of differing medical traditions and practices grounded in divergent epistemological positions and based on distinctive worldviews. From the 1970s, a globalised health market, underpinned by new consumer and practitioner interest, spawned the importation of ‘non-Western’ therapeutics to the UK. Since then, these various modalities have coexisted alongside, and sometimes within, biomedical clinics. Sociologists have charted the emergence of this ‘new’ medical pluralism in the UK, to establish how complementary and alternative medicines have fared in both the private and public health sectors and to consider explanations for the attraction of these modalities. The current positioning of complementary and alternative medicines can be described as one of ‘mainstream marginality’ ( Cant 2009 , The New Sociology of the Health Service, London: Routledge): popular with users, but garnering little statutory support. Much sociological analysis has explained this marginal positioning of non-orthodox medicine by recourse to theories of professionalisation and has shown how biomedicine has been able, with the support of the state, to subordinate, co-opt and limit its competitors. Whilst insightful, this work has largely neglected to situate medical pluralism in its historical, global and colonial contexts. By drawing on post-colonial thinking, the paper suggests how we might differently theorise and research the appropriation, alteration and reimagining of ‘Asian’ therapeutic knowledges in the UK.

Heart rate and thermal responses to power yoga

BACKGROUND

and Purpose: Yoga has grown in popularity and may offer a viable alternative form of physical activity. The purpose of this study was to examine heart rate, hydration, and thermal responses to a power yoga sequence.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Twenty-seven men and women (n = 4/23; Mean ± SD age = 23.3 ± 3.3 years; BMI = 23 ± 3 kg m^-2) underwent ∼45 min of power yoga. Heart rate and skin temperature were recorded. Mass was measured before and after exercise to estimate fluid loss. Time spent in light, moderate, and vigorous heart rate zones was calculated.

RESULTS

Heart rate and skin temperature increased (p < 0.0001). Participants spent more time in moderate and vigorous heart rate zones than in light intensity (p < 0.0001). There was a reduction in body mass (-0.28 ± 0.13 kg, p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

Power yoga may be considered moderate-vigorous intensity exercise, based on heart-rate.

Randomized controlled trial of yoga for chronic poststroke hemiparesis: motor function, mental health, and quality of life outcomes

PURPOSE

To assess the efficacy of yoga for motor function, mental health, and quality of life outcomes in persons with chronic poststroke hemiparesis.

METHOD

Twenty-two individuals participated in a randomized controlled trial involving assessment of task-orientated function, balance, mobility, depression, anxiety, and quality of life domains before and after either a 10-week yoga intervention (n = 11) or no treatment (n = 11).

RESULTS

The yoga intervention did not result in any significant improvements in objective motor function measures, however there was a significant improvement in quality of life associated with perceived motor function (P = .0001) and improvements in perceived recovery approached significance (P = .072). Memory-related quality of life scores significantly improved after yoga intervention (P = .022), and those participating in the intervention exhibited clinically relevant decreases in state and trait anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Preliminary results offer promise for yoga as an intervention to address mental health and quality of life in persons with stroke-related activity limitations. There is a need to more rigorously evaluate these yoga benefits with a larger randomized controlled trial, which, based on this preliminary trial, is feasible.