Common Minor Health Problems that Yoga Can Help With

by Baxter

The Sick Doctor by Jehan Georges Vibert

One strong motivator these days for starting a yoga practice is all the publicity about the benefits of yoga for your health. Seems a week doesn’t go by without some new study being published on the benefits of yoga for this health issue or that serious illness. In a few upcoming posts, I plan to address some of the more serious problems that yoga seems to be able to help with, but today I thought I’d start with a genera post about some of the more common minor problems yoga can help with. As Nina reported on a while back in Medical Conditions Benefitted by Yoga, our past blog contributor Dr. Timothy McCall keeps an ongoing list of the conditions that yoga has been shown to help with via scientific studies (see www.drmccall.com).

A quick perusal of Timothy’s list reveals a lot of fairly serious conditions! Since I am interested today in common minor problems, let me state that in compiling my list, I am assuming that the conditions I list are often inconvenient, uncomfortable and potentially disruptive to daily life, and may carry a degree of seriousness for those affected by them. But in their milder forms they are not usually life-threatening or seriously debilitating. There are always exceptions, of course.

My list includes some that you will find on Timothy’s list and a few of my own, which I’ve gleaned from my years of experience working with a wide variety of students. 

Common Minor Problems Yoga Can Help With

1. General body stiffness and body aches, non-specific
2. Mild arthritis
3. Mild muscle weakness from inactivity or general aging
4. Poor balance, not associated with other serious illness
5. Poor agility
6. Morning stiffness associated with mild osteoarthritis
7. Posture-related problems and kyphosis
8. Mild back and neck pain
9. Elbow pain
10. Mild scoliosis
11. Bunions, flat feet and overly high arches
12. Pelvic floor health (including incontinence)
13. Leg cramps
14. Edema and varicose veins
15. Restless Leg Syndrome
16. Shingles
17. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
18. Frozen shoulder
19. Tinnitus
20. Vertigo
21. Costochondritis
22. Hernia
23. Minor injury recovery, for example, common ankle sprains
24. Minor digestive issues, for example, mild Irritable Bowel Syndrome
25. Menopause symptoms, such as, fatigue, hot flashes, joint problems, headaches, and frozen shoulder
26. Common tension headaches
27. Mild, infrequent migraine headaches
28. Insomnia
29. Mild anxiety
30. Mild mood disturbances, for example, mild forms of Seasonal Affective Disorder
31. Poor impulse control, for examples, around food or emotions such as anger
32. Poor concentration, for example, in school age children
33. Sinusitis
34. Stress management
35. Healthy pregnancy
36. Post-operative orthopedic recovery, for example, meniscal knee repair
37. Hemorrhoids

Now, I am certain that I have left a few things off that our esteemed readership could chime in on! However, you get the drift that yoga can be very helpful for a wide variety of common problems that we, our family and friends, and our students (for the teachers out there) encounter each day.

For some of these conditions, the “why” is a bit harder to state exactly, as even in those conditions studied by scientific means, the underlying reasons why yoga is helpful is often merely hypothesis or theory yet to be proven. And that is not the purpose of this post. But for those interested in knowing more about the "why," Potential self-regulatory mechanisms of yoga for psychological healthis one example of researchers attempts to explain how yoga works for psychological issues. It’s pretty heady stuff, but you will get the clear sense that we still have a long way to go to understand “why” yoga works. However, we all have had the distinct personal experience that yoga really does help with these common minor conditions. I will update the list over time as I think of more common minor problems yoga helps with come to me, and will add your suggestions as well!

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