Study on yoga practices and biochemical, physical and physiological alterations: A perspective on yoga as preventive strategy against COVID 19

Abstract

Background: During the COVID pandemic period, our home-restricted life led to many undesirable physical, physiological, and mental alterations. Yoga a traditional system of medicines by virtue of its holistic approach toward health and disease and also due to reasonable cost, the technique has an edge in dealing with health problems and with primary prevention of disease. Aim: The current study has been designed to assess the effect of short-term (for 3 months for 5 days in a week or 40 days) yoga practice on lipid profile, and blood glucose level, C-reactive protein (CRP), and other physical and physiological parameters among healthy controls. Materials and Methods: Students went for yoga practice for 3 months (90 days) for 5 days in a week under the supervision of trained yoga instructor. Yoga activity was conducted via Google Meet app through broadband connectivity. The procedure began with Surya Namaskar (Sun Saluation) with a session of 12 asanas (fixed postures) for 20 min, followed by 15 min Pranayam (breathing exercise including anulome-vilome, surya bandana, sheetali, and bhramari). The session ended with 10 min meditation. Yoga program was started on September 27, 2020, and ended on December 27, 2020, after the completion of 3 months. Biochemical investigation (lipid profile, fasting blood glucose, CRP) and physiological parameters (blood pressure [BP], pulse), and other anthropometric parameters including weight, height body mass index reports were collected before September 27 and after December 27 in 5 days after the completion of 3 months tenure. Results: Results of the study clearly indicate fasting sugar, systolic BP, and low-density lipoprotein were significantly decreased (with value <0.02, 0.007, and 0.001, respectively) in the postyoga phase as compared to preyoga baseline investigation. Conclusion: The The present study substantiates some good results of the yoga training. Although all the tested parameters could not show desired changes and they were statistically insignificant.