How Yoga Helps Your Immune System

by Nina

Bather Wiping a Wound by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One of the effective ways you can foster healthy aging is to use yoga to support your immune system. An immune system that is functioning well prevents illness and promotes healing, by fighting off common infections, healing wounds, and scavenging early cancer molecules. You can also use yoga to complement western medical treatments for a wide range of illnesses, including:

• flu and other common infections
• rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis
• conditions that can affect your immune system indirectly, such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer recovery, and many other

For those with immune system disorders, such as HIV/AIDS and adrenal insufficiency, you can boost immune system functioning while also fostering your physical and emotional wellbeing.

Exercise

Using your active asana practice for exercise promotes your overall health, keeping your body strong and flexible, and by helping your cardiovascular system, digestive system, and respiratory systems to function optimally. By improving your balance and agility, your asana practice prevents injuries that result from falling, and which weaken your immune system.

You can also improve your immune system’s lymphatic circulation with your asana practice. Practicing dynamic poses and flow sequences, where you move in and out of poses with your breath, naturally pumps your muscles, improving the flow of the lymphatic fluids through your body. Although not as effective as moving dynamically, you can even use your static poses to improve lymphatic circulation by rhythmically contracting and relaxing as many muscle groups as possible.

Over exercising can increase inflammation, but gradually introducing appropriate amounts of exercise can be very beneficial, reducing the inflammation and improving overall immune system function. So if you’re suffering from an inflammatory condition, such as rheumatoid arthritis, be carefully to ease gradually into the active asana practice, starting with the most gentle practices.

Stress Management

Because chronic stress weakens your immune system, using yoga’s stress management techniques to keep stress levels in check helps keep your immune system strong. And because your immune system works most efficiently when you’re in Rest and Digest state, spending as much time as possible in state will bolster your immune system, whether you are healthy or ill.

Recent research also indicates yoga’s stress management tools lower stress hormones and other pro-inflammatory molecules in our bodies, so yoga also helps with chronic inflammation, which can be caused by aging. Even newer studies suggest that yoga may turn on beneficial genes in some of our white blood cells, which may ultimately improve our overall immune function. 

Yoga’s stress management tools can also help reduce stress eating and other unhealthy stress-related behaviors that negatively impact the immune system. While we can’t say that any of the stress management techniques are better than others, you may find that one or two work best for you. So, if possible, practice all of them periodically to be familiar with all of them. You can practice any of these stress management techniques as a part of your regular asana practice or alone, at a different time of day.

Better Sleep

To help you stay healthy and keep your immune system functioning optimally, you need a good night’s sleep. Yoga can be really helpful for improving sleep, and we have a whole post on it at 5 Tips for Better Sleep.

Healthy Habits

A healthy diet that provides good nutrition is necessary for a strong immune system, so if you’re struggling with unhealthy eating habits, using yoga to support healthy eating habits will help your immune system function optimally. See Yoga for Healthy Eating for tips about how to use yoga to support healthy eating.

Addiction to unhealthy substances such as cigarettes, drugs, or too much alcohol can weaken your immune system by damaging cells, suppressing immune function and causing inflammation. You can use yoga’s mindfulness techniques to assist in changing harmful habits. It’s beyond the scope of this blog to provide complete information on this, but Yoga Meditation Techniques provides information on how to meditate, which can help improve awareness of thought patterns and strengthen will power.

See Techniques for Supporting Your Immune System for more recommendations on using yoga to support your immune system.

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Your Immune System and Aging (and Yoga)

by Nina

Red Rocks by Melina Meza

Even though I had a flu shot this year, I still managed to come down with bronchitis about two weeks ago (I’ve tended to get that since I was young). The fever and reduced ability to breathe was really debilitating. And here I am, almost two full weeks later, almost but not quite feeling back to normal. At least I’m back to going for walks and practicing gentle yoga again! 

Yes, as we age, our immune systems are slower to respond in general, which increases our risk of getting sick (whether from a common cold or a more serious infection) and slows healing from illnesses and from injuries. In general, you can bolster your immune system by practicing active yoga poses to foster physical and stress hardiness, and by practicing restorative poses, meditation, breath work, and conscious relaxation to spend more time in the Rest and Digest state (which turns on your immune system). 

Immune Cells. Because damaged or aging immune cells are not replaced as you age, you have fewer immune cells as you get older. This slows healing from both illness and injuries You can use yoga to support the healing process by practicing gentle asanas to improve circulation to healing areas and by practicing your favorite types of conscious relaxation to spend more time in the Rest and Digest state.   

Autoimmune Disorders. Although autoimmune disorders occur in younger people, the frequency of autoimmune disorders (diseases in which the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissues) increases with age. Examples include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. If your condition allows it, you may be able to use gentle and restorative asana practices along with quieting pranayama and meditation to support your immune system. 

Cancer. As you age, your immune system's ability to detect and correct cell defects is reduced, resulting in an increase in frequency of cancer. Although yoga can’t treat cancer, you can use yoga for palliative care during treatment and recovery, and to bolster your immune system during the entire process. 

Chronic Inflammation. As we age our bodies are less able to disarm the inflammatory process, which can lead to chronic inflammation. A healthy immune system uses inflammation your advantage during acute illness or injury, but chronic inflammation is linked to many serious illnesses, such autoimmune diseases and heart disease. To reduce inflammation or prevent chronic inflammation from recurring, use your yoga practice to manage your stress levels and foster overall good health. See Chronic Inflammation and Yoga: Combating the Fiery Killer.

Chronic Stress and Immune System. While your immune system is initially stronger during periods of acute stress, it starts functioning less well if the stress is ongoing. This increases your risk of contracting serious infections and, as some evidence suggests, autoimmune diseases. Furthermore, chronic stress alone can cause life-threatening conditions from heart disease to high blood pressure. See Stress Management Techniques for When You're Stressed for information about using yoga to reduce chronic stress in general, which can prevent stress-related diseases.

For tips about how to support your immune system, see Techniques for Supporting Your Immune System. Take good care of yourself, everyone!

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Techniques for Supporting Your Immune System with Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

Jean Marie, Age 58, by Melina Meza

Now that we've convinced you to care about your immune system (see Friday Practical Pointers: You Should Care About Your Immune System), we're ready to share our recommended techniques for supporting it with your yoga practice. Use these techniques to help prevent illnesses during cold and flu season or to build up a depleted immune system following recovery from an illness or a long period of stress. You can also use these techniques while undergoing treatments for more serious illnesses that negatively impact your immune system, such as cancer treatments. 

Before practicing, consider your current condition. If you are presently in good health, we recommend that you practice a well-balanced yoga sequence that includes active poses, (both dynamic and static), restorative poses, gentle supported inverted poses, meditation, breath work, and guide relaxation. The active poses will foster both physical and stress hardiness while the restorative poses, meditation, and breath work will allow you to spend more time in Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system.

If your immune system is compromised, you are out of shape physically, or you are generally unhealthy, we recommend that you start with much more gentle practices, emphasizing the restorative and quieting practices of yoga. These practices will allow you to spend more time in Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system. As you start to feel more rested, you can gradually add in more physical challenges in a step-wise fashion. Start with dynamic standing poses, as they are less demanding than static standing poses and eventually add in static poses when you’re ready.

How Often to Practice. If you are healthy, we recommend that you practice 5-6 times a week. If your immune system is compromised, depending on your stamina, start with 3-4 times a week, and work to up 5-6 practices a week as dictated by your body’s response. For both groups, practice your active sequences every other day and practice restorative or gentle sequences on alternate days.

Balance Your Practice. We recommend that your practices include a mix of active and restorative poses, as well as relaxation practices, breath work, and meditation. If you are healthy, include poses from all the basic categories (back bends, forward bends, side bends, twists, standing poses, balance poses, seated poses, and reclined stretches), practiced both dynamically and statically, as well restorative poses and Savasana.

If your immune system is compromised, include gentle reclined and seated poses, and chair variations of standing poses, gentle inversions, focused relaxation, calming breath practices, and Savasana. Because a compromised immune system can lead to slower healing of fractures, we recommend you add in balance poses to prevent falls. Start with the supported versions of these poses, such as Tree or Warrior 3 poses at the wall, and gradually work your way up to the full poses.

Dynamic Poses & Flow Sequences. Moving between poses with your breath naturally pumps your muscles, which assists the immune system’s lymphatic system in working efficiently. If you are healthy, we recommend you include dynamic poses and/or flow sequences in your active practices. Suggestions for dynamic poses include dynamic versions of Warrior 2 pose, Cobra pose, and Cat/Cow pose. If your immune system is compromised, start with gentler dynamic poses, such Cat/Cow pose and dynamic Arms Overhead pose. When practicing dynamic poses, start with one set of 6 repetitions, and when you’re ready, try two sets. 

Static Poses. Although a lower priority, you should also include static poses in your practice to round out your sequences. While holding a static pose, try rhythmically contract and relax as many muscle groups as you can to create a pumping action on the those muscles. This will improve lymphatic circulation, although not as strongly as dynamic poses. If you are healthy, start using this technique for holds of 30-60 seconds and gradually work up to 2 minutes. If your immune system is compromised, start with shorter holds of 10-15 seconds and gradually work up to longer holds, with an eventual goal of reaching 2 minutes. 

Restorative Poses & Focused Relaxation. Practicing restorative poses with a mental focus or using focused relaxation techniques, such as body scans, for 7 to 10 minutes will shift your nervous system to Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system. So we recommend that you integrate 1-2 restorative poses into your active practices, either at the very start or finish the practice, and add focused relaxation practices at or near the end of your practice. 

We also recommend that you practice a full restorative sequence periodically to rest yourself completely and spend more time with your immune system functioning fully. Try this once a week to start with. If you enjoy it, do it more often.

For restorative poses, if you are newer to yoga, hold the poses for 1-2 minutes and gradually lengthen your time in the poses, working up to 7 to 10 minute holds or that amount of time in two poses. For experienced practitioners, use your present practice times as a starting point and, if it works for you, gradually increase your time in the poses, aiming for holds of at least 10 minutes or that amount of time in two poses.

You may need to experiment a bit to refine your timing for these poses. For some restorative poses, such as Supported Child’s pose (Balasana) or a supported twist, you’ll find that 4-5 minutes is long enough and that you become uncomfortable after that. However, for Savasana and Reclined Cobbler’s pose, which are typically very comfortable for longer holds, we recommend that work toward 10-minute holds to trigger the Relaxation Response. And if you are still completely comfortable, feel free to stay in poses even longer. For example, some experienced yoga practitioners will stay in Reclined Cobbler’s pose (Supta Baddha Konasana) for 45 minutes (Baxter does!).

For focused relaxation, start by listening to a recorded version of the body scan, preferably one 10 or more minutes long. Eventually, you can guide yourself by memorizing the relaxation sequence.

Gentle Inverted Poses. We recommend that you regularly practice these poses because of their beneficial effects on your lymphatic system (which is part of the immune system). When your leg or legs are higher than your heart, this encourages the return of lymphatic fluids from your lower body to the heart via gravity. Poses we recommend include Legs Up the Wall pose, Supported Bridge pose, Easy Inverted Pose, and Reclined Leg Stretch pose, version 1. Hold them from 2-10 minutes, and include at least one of them in every practice. 

Stress Management. One of the most effective ways to influence your immune system over time is to practice stress management techniques, including meditation, pranayama, restorative yoga, and focused relaxation, as often as you can manage, every day, if possible. Reducing stress levels improves the functioning of your immune system. It also helps reduce stress eating and other unhealthy stress-related behaviors that negatively impact the immune system. While we can’t say that any of the stress management techniques are better than others, you may find that one or two work best for you. So, if possible, practice all of them periodically to be familiar with all of them. You can practice any of these stress management techniques as a part of your regular asana practice or alone, at a different time of day.

Meditation. While meditation is an effective way to spend time in the Rest and Digest mode and therefore support your immune system, a regular meditation practice can also improve immune function is by strengthening your will power to change unhealthy habits, including unhealthy eating habits, smoking, and drinking too much alcohol. 

You can use any of our recommended meditation techniques (see Yoga Meditation Techniques). If you are newer to meditation, start with a 5-minute practice and gradually work your way up to 10-20 minutes. If you already have an established practice of at least 10 minutes or more, just keep it going. And if your immune system is compromised, you can meditate in reclined position and gradually work your way to sitting. 

Better Sleep. Because getting good sleep is so important for your immune system, if you’re having trouble sleeping, use our recommended techniques for improving sleep. See 5 Tips for Better Sleep.

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Friday Practical Pointers: You Should Care About Your Immune System

by Baxter

The Wounded Man by Gustav Courbet

It’s that time of year again, when it seems like everyone is getting sick with a cold or flu. Maybe you yourself have been laid up for the last few weeks with a lingering cough and fatigue. On top of that, maybe you or a close friend or family member has just been diagnosed with cancer or an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Turns out your immune system is involved in all these situations. 

You see, your immune maintains your good health on several levels. It identifies and tries to eliminate foreign invaders in your body, including viruses, bacteria, and parasites that make it past the skin, lungs, and gut lining of our bodies, as well as foreign bodies, such as dirt or slivers, that get under our skin. It also scans our body fluids for early cancer cells and eliminates many of them. In doing this, it attempts to distinguish between the cells that make up our “self” from those that don’t. And when it doesn’t do that well, the immune system sometimes turns on our own tissues, as in auto-immune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and Grave’s disease (a thyroid condition). 

The immune system consists of:

1. Bone marrow. This produces a variety of cells, some of which the immune system uses to protect us. 
2. Specialized white blood cells. These develop in the bone marrow and in the thymus gland and become the various specialized white blood cells, such as T cells. 
3. Circulatory system. This moves the white blood cells around the body to where they are be needed. 
4. Lymphatic circulation and vessels. These reclaim body fluids that have escaped from our capillaries, as well as any unwanted molecules or organisms that might be in that fluid. 
5. Lymph nodes. These filter the lymphatic fluid flowing through our lymph vessels and trigger the immune response when infectious organisms, dirt molecules, or cancer cells are detected 
6. Specialized immune tissue or outposts along the digestive track, such as the tonsils in the throat and Peyer’s patches in the small intestines. These act like lymph nodes outside of the normal lymphatic circulatory vessels. 

The immune system works in concert with many other important systems of the body, including the circulatory system, nervous system and endocrine system. Of particular interest to us yoga practitioners is how our immune system interacts with our nervous system. When you are stressed out and your nervous system triggers the Fight or Flight response, your immune system is put on temporary hold, as your body has bigger, immediate threats to deal with. Once the danger has passed, and your nervous system switches to the Rest and Digest response, your immune system is turned back on and can once again provide its protective services. 

Although it may be obvious from what I have already laid out for you, we should care about the immune system because it is our primary defense against infection, invasion, and even cancer. And because it is interconnected with so many other systems of the body, when it is functioning optimally, it positively impacts the whole body. Conversely, when it is not functioning well, we get sick more easily, cancer cells may not be cleared effectively, and the immune system may sometimes even attack healthy parts of our bodies. So there are three big reasons to pay attention to keeping it healthy as we age! 

Next week, I will share with you specific techniques that Nina and I recommend for doing just that, which will go into more detail than what I have recommended in the past (see Yoga and the Immune System). 

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Got Salt? Yoga, the immune system, and the problem with some scientific studies

by Nina

Currents in Salty Water by Brad Gibson

So I’ve been seeing these articles about a particular scientific study circulating in the blogosphere that claimed the study was proof that yoga improved your immune system system. One example is from Can Yoga Boost Your Immune System? at salon.com, which claimed:

“This latest study confirms those findings, links them to the body’s immune system, and suggests this effect may be instantaneous.”

Naturally, as a dedicated yoga blogger, I decided I needed to check these articles out because I need to share the good news with our readers, too, right? But my initial readings left me scratching my head a bit (for example, “a comprehensive yoga program rapidly produces internal changes on a genetic level”), so I decided to consult with my handy scientist co-bloggers to find out more, specifically what the relationship is between changes in gene expression and the immune system.

Dr. Ram Rao put it this way:

“The article describes effects of Yoga on genes that influence the immune system. There are so many factors that affect gene expression (environment, diet, pollutants, stress etc) and so the authors looked to see if Yoga did the same.”

That makes sense, right? So far, so good. But Dr. Brad Gibson said it this way:

OK, what they were measuring was gene expression profile changes in PBMC.

"Right before and after each regimen, 20 ml blood was drawn, PBMCs were immediately isolated, total RNA was recovered and used in gene expression profiling experiments interrogating >47,000 independent transcripts in two hybridization runs"

First, PBMCS (according to Wikepedia) are "peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) is any blood cell having a round nucleus. For example: a lymphocyte, a monocyte or a macrophage. These blood cells are a critical component in the immune system to fight infection and adapt to intruders."

So, what they are suggesting is that the observed changes in the gene expression profiles in blood immune cells (PBMCs) in Yoga practioners is correlated with an improved immune function. However the second bit is pure speculation.  They see a change, but it's anybody's guess if this represents a better or healthy immune system.  They provide some guesses, but….

Okay, I admit it, that phrase “the second bit is pure speculation” was a bit disappointing. I’d just wasted my time (and theirs) on an idea for a blog post that I couldn’t really use because, after all, on this blog anyway, we try to back up our claims with good science. But a few days later I realized I actually had more of a contribution to make on the topic than some of the other blogs because while everyone else was simply parroting some kind of good news about yoga they didn’t really understand, I had an actual real-life scientist weighing in on the significance of the study and he said to take it with a giant BUCKET OF SALT.

However, before writing the post, I decided to do a bit more research by looking an the original scientific journal article that everyone was quoting from Rapid Gene Expression Changes in Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes upon Practice of a Comprehensive Yoga Program—you know, just in case. And here is the abstract from the study:

One of the most common integrative medicine (IM) modalities is yoga and related practices. Previous work has shown that yoga may improve wellness in healthy people and have benefits for patients. However, the mechanisms of how yoga may positively affect the mind-body system are largely unknown. Here we have assessed possible rapid changes in global gene expression profiles in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in healthy people that practiced either a comprehensive yoga program or a control regimen. The experimental sessions included gentle yoga postures, breathing exercises, and meditation (Sudarshan Kriya and Related Practices – SK&P) compared with a control regimen of a nature walk and listening to relaxing music. We show that the SK&P program has a rapid and significantly greater effect on gene expression in PBMCs compared with the control regimen. These data suggest that yoga and related practices result in rapid gene expression alterations which may be the basis for their longer term cell biological and higher level health effects.

Whoa, I’m thought, somehow we went straight from “wellness” and “benefits” to specific claims about the immune system. Then there were all those vague words like “suggest” and “may.” But, of course, I’m not scientist, so again, I consulted with Brad. Here is what he said: 

Look at their last sentence:
"These data suggest that yoga and related practices result in rapid gene expression alterations which may be the basis for their longer term cell biological and higher level health effects."

That is, they don't know whether the change in gene expression patterns they observed has anything to do with the yoga practice, let alone a more healthy immune system.  This is a general problem of small correlative studies of this type.  At best I would say this is an intriguing pilot study (low N, not really statistically significant enough to establish even correlation), which will need considerably more work to establish:
(1)  'causation' (i.e., yoga practice causes these genetic expression changes as opposed to some random or other variable that wasn't accounted for)
(2) 'benefit' (the expression changes that are observed are actually beneficial and lead to an improved immune system)
(3) 'mechanism' (why these gene changes lead to a more healthy or robust immune system).

My translation? The number studied was so low that correlation couldn’t be established. Causation definitely was not established. And then there was a bunch of speculation. So, yes, get out the salt everyone, and sprinkle liberally! (For you non-American readers out there, we have an expression “take it with a grain of salt” that means you should be skeptical about something. So I like to joke about buckets of salt, when I think a lot of skepticism is warranted. And, as much as we love yoga, this is not the first time we’ve looked at scientific studies of yoga that indeed warrant quite a bit of skepticism.)

Note: I’m pretty sure that yoga is good for the immune system, however. Stress compromises the immune system—this is known medical fact—and yoga reduces stress. Spending more time in Rest and Digest mode (where your body restores itself) rather than Fight or Flight mode (where your body depletes itself) is therefore good for your immune system.

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Chronic Stress: An Introduction

by Nina

Wounded Bird by Brad Gibson

An ongoing theme that we’ll be exploring in depth on this blog is the negative effects of chronic stress on long-term health and the need for stress management as an important aspect of healthy aging. So perhaps it’s a good time for me to define exactly what we mean by “chronic stress” and to let you know a little about why it is such a serious problem.

I learned about dangers of chronic stress the hard way. Back in the early nineties, I had a job as the documentation manager and lead technical writer at a software start-up company, while at the same time I was raising two children. As you might imagine, the pressure was intense as our small company struggled to meet our first deadline, the first test of the product by real customers (who needed my manuals to teach them how to use the product!). As the deadline approached and I started working overtime, I began having difficulty sleeping. I also started losing weight because the stress made me so feel nauseated that I lost my appetite. Eventually I was so anxious, exhausted and nauseated that even though I met my deadline (and the company went on to success), I couldn’t bounce back to normal health. It took a year and half of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes to recover completely.

Feeling stressed is not always a bad thing, however. It’s your body’s normal response to perceived danger or extreme physical activity (often called the “fight or flight response”), which is vital in keeping you safe and active. When you encounter a stressful situation, whether it is a grizzly bear or a stack of tax forms, your body releases hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) to provide you with the energy and alertness needed to cope with the situation. And anyone who has almost been run over an SUV knows the feeling: heart racing, rapid breathing, gut clenching. This is because in stress mode, your nervous system stimulates your organs and mobilizes energy by: 

• raising your blood pressure 
• increasing your heart rate and the blood supply to your skeletal muscles (and away from your gut) 
• dilating your pupils and bronchioles, providing improved vision and oxygenation 
• generating needed energy by breaking down sugar and fat stores for immediate use 

Between stressful situations, your body needs to rest, recover, and acquire new energy, so your nervous system responds by:

• lowering your blood pressure 
• reducing your heart rate, diverting blood back to the skin and gastrointestinal tract 
• contracting your pupils and your bronchioles for reduced oxygenation 
• stimulating your salivary gland secretion, accelerating digestion, and promoting normal movement of food through the gut 

But what if the stress is long term? When you almost get hit by a car, escape from a bear or finish your taxes, the incident is over quickly and you bounce back to normal soon after. But if the stress is ongoing or “chronic,” maybe because of continuing job pressures (like mine at the software company), marriage problems, health problems, and so on, your nervous system is continuously on the alert and this can overtax your body potentially causing:

• heart disease 
• hypertension (high blood pressure) 
• insomnia and/or fatigue 
• digestive disorders 
• headaches 
• chronic anxiety or depression 
• weakened immune system 

(Hmm, I just counted, and it seems I developed almost half of those symptoms, rather impressive in a weird sort of way.)

Of course, these symptoms are not only unpleasant but will seriously compromise your long-term health if you can’t manage to bring them under control. In addition, several age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Diabetes are exacerbated by stress, and some theories of aging itself (such as the telomere theory I discussed last week) propose stress as a factor in the aging process itself.

I hope you’re not getting too stressed out by reading all of this! I credit yoga with helping me stay well since that breakdown. And in the coming weeks, we’ll be offering many different alternatives for managing your stress even as you take on the many challenges that life has to offer.

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