Can Yoga Extend Your Lifespan? (22 Reasons)
Yoga offers many positive effects that promote healthy living for people of all ages.
It is beneficial for your mental and physical health.
One of the best benefits that yoga has is that it increases your lifespan. From stress relief to improved blood flow and stronger bones, regular yoga practice impacts your overall well-being positively. The practice promotes healthy living, which aids in longevity and improves life expectancy.
For example, the movements and postures involved in yoga facilitate the proper functioning of the organs in your body.
Read on for more detailed insights into how yoga can increase your life expectancy.
22 Reasons yoga helps improve your life expectancy
Whether you are a beginner or an old-timer in yoga practice, you must have experienced some positive effects. This ancient practice can influence longevity and life expectancy.
Here’s a list of yoga benefits that promote a healthy life and longevity.
1. Prevents cartilage and joint breakdown
When you practice yoga, your joints go through a full range of motion. This allows the joint cartilage to receive fresh nutrients.
Yoga helps to prevent wear and tear of joint cartilage and protect underlying bones. Healthy bones mean healthy life and more longevity.
Yoga is an excellent way to prevent degenerative arthritis and mitigate a disability. It keeps your joints loose and healthy.
2. Increases bone density and health
Yoga practices, especially the ones that require weight-bearing, have benefits for your bones. Not only does it strengthen your bones, but it also helps to prevent osteoporosis.
According to numerous research studies, yoga increases overall bone density which helps strengthen arm bones that are susceptible to osteoporotic fractures.
Your bones deteriorate as you get old. Yoga can make them stronger when incorporated into your daily
3. Increases blood flow
Yoga practice is great for blood flow. For instance, relaxation improves blood circulation, twisting enables fresh oxygenated blood to get to your organs, makes your cells function better by bringing in more oxygen, and inversions reverse the flow of blood from your lower body to the heart and brain.
Yoga can also help prevent heart attacks, blood clots, and strokes by increasing hemoglobin levels in red blood cells.
4. Yoga lowers your risk of heart disease
The relaxing effect offered by yoga practice can prevent heart disease. All those yoga poses have many benefits for your body, including lower cholesterol levels and lower blood pressure.
When your cholesterol levels and blood pressure is on the low side, it mitigates the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
5. Cleanses lymph and boosts immunity
Yoga practice helps to rid the body of toxic waste. It does this by draining lymph so that your system can fight infection and destroy diseased cells more effectively.
Meditation has many benefits for the functioning of your immune system. It helps to boost your immune system when necessary by raising antibody levels in response to vaccination.
Yoga can also lower your immune system when required. For example, when an autoimmune disease like psoriasis is causing an inappropriately aggressive immune function.
6. Ups your heart rate
You can boost your heart rate into the aerobic range through classes like power yoga.
According to research, yoga can help improve your aerobic functioning. It lowers resting heart rate, improves maximum uptake of oxygen, and increases endurance during exercise.
Breath control practice (pranayama) can help you perform more exercise with less oxygen. When you regularly move your heart rate into the aerobic range, it relieves depression and lowers your risk of a heart attack.
7. Regulates your adrenal glands
Yoga is an excellent way to lower your cortisol levels. High cortisol levels have adverse effects on your immune system and can cause permanent brain issues.
It is also linked with other problems such as high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, and insulin resistance.
8. Yoga helps you lose weight
You may wonder how this is possible since yoga is not an extreme form of exercise. But it is true. Yoga can help you lose weight.
When you maintain a healthy weight, it increases your lifespan. Although yoga is calm, it is a surefire way to achieve your goal of staying fit.
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9. Lowers blood sugar
Yoga practice is an excellent way to boost HDL (good) cholesterol and lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and blood sugar. It is beneficial to people with diabetes, as it lowers cortisol and adrenaline levels, which reduces their blood sugar.
Yoga can make a diabetic patient more sensitive to the effects of insulin.
You will have a lower risk of diabetic complications like kidney failure, heart attack, and blindness due to lower blood sugar levels.
10. Improves your balance
Regular yoga practice promotes proprioception – your awareness of what your body is doing and its position in space. Yoga also improves balance.
Improving your balance is essential, especially for older people, as it means fewer falls. It makes you more independent.
You won’t have to move into a nursing home too early. Some people never get admitted at all, thanks to yoga.
11. It calms your nervous system
The hustle and bustle of our modern society often take a toll on our nervous system. By practicing meditation and yoga, you can turn the senses inward and remove stimuli.
This way, you will have more than enough downtime for your nervous system and better sleep. As a result, you will be less stressed and less likely to encounter accidents.
12. It gives your lungs room to breathe
Regular yoga practice teaches you to breathe more efficiently – fewer breaths of greater volume. It is calming and has helped many people with lung issues.
Yogic breathing can improve lung function, such as the efficiency of exhalation and maximum volume of breath.
Yoga teaches you to breathe through your nose, which warms, filters and humidifies inhaled air. It’s an excellent way to prevent asthma attacks and block dirt, pollen, and other unwanted things from getting into your lungs.
13. Yoga improves mental health
Yoga can give you peace of mind. When you practice yoga meditation in a quiet place with soothing music playing, it can put your mind at ease.
There are many breathing techniques used in yoga. All those techniques offer many benefits.
Generally, they will make your body handle stress better and improve your mood. Yoga also has benefits for depression and anxiety.
14. It improves digestion
You can also improve the way your body digests food by practicing yoga.
Some postures require you to move your body in a way that speeds up the transportation of food and waste products in your body. They promote the healthy digestion of food by facilitating faster waste removal through the bowels.
Improved digestion means a lower risk of developing diseases of the digestive tract and colon cancer.
15. Encourages self-care and a healthy lifestyle
One sure way to boost your life span is through self-care. Yoga inspires and improves self-care and healthy living. Yogis are deeply involved in their health and care and aware that the power to change their lives positively is in their hands.
They tend to adopt healthy habits more than almost everyone else. What better way to boost your life expectancy than through healthy living?
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16. Protects your spine
Your spinal disks receive nutrients when you move them. Yoga is an excellent way to make that happen. A good asana practice involves twists, backbends, and forward bends, which will keep your disks supple.
Yoga is suitable for your spinal health as it offers long-term flexibility.
17. Yoga connects you with a supportive community
You can ease loneliness by joining a yoga class. It provides you with a perfect environment for group healing and support.
Participating in a personalized yoga plan, even in one-on-one sessions, is a great way to reduce loneliness.
18. Builds muscle strength
Not only do strong muscles help you look good, but they also protect you from conditions like back pain and arthritis.
Muscles built through yoga are also balanced with flexibility. This is not the case when you lift weights at the gym to build muscle strength.
19. Keeps allergies and viruses away
Yoga consists of different elements, including cleansing practices or Kriyas. These practices involve elaborate internal cleansing of the intestines, rapid breathing exercises, etc.
Another practice called Jala neti aims to keep mucus from building up in your nose, drains the sinuses, and removes pollen and viruses. It involves a gentle lavage of your nasal passages with salt water.
20. Releases tension in your limbs
Sometimes you may experience muscle fatigue, chronic tension, and soreness in your wrist, neck, arms, shoulders, or face. It could be a result of unconscious habits that cause stress and bad moods. Yoga practice enables you to learn where you hold tension.
By tuning in to those areas, you will be able to release some tension. It takes a lot of practice to relax bigger muscles like the trapezius, quadriceps, and buttocks.
21. Increases your self-esteem
Yoga can help with chronic low self-esteem.
When handled negatively, for example, by working too hard, overeating, taking drugs, etc., low self-esteem can affect physical, mental, and spiritual health. Yoga offers a positive approach to help tackle this issue.
Yogic philosophy teaches that you’re a manifestation of the Divine. Regular yoga practice can help you self-examine and better yourself by accessing a different side of yourself.
It gives you a sense that you are part of something bigger and makes you experience empathy, gratitude, and forgiveness.
22. Yoga helps you sleep deeper
Too much simulation often takes a toll on the nervous system. Yoga can help you with relief from your daily hassle. It enables you to sleep better, meaning that you will be less tired and stressed.
Conclusion
Self-care and healthy living are a must if you’re looking to live long. One of the best ways to improve the quality of your life is through yoga.
Research has proven that yoga can extend your lifespan. With consistent practice, you will begin to see positive results in no time.
The many benefits of yoga mentioned above should be enough motivation for you to practice regularly. So, ensure you step onto your mat every day.
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