obesity

Control Weight in Diabetes with Yoga

psyjdc 2 Comments

 

“The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.” – David Suzuki

Type 2 diabetes is a common and increasingly prevalent illness that is largely preventable. Although this has been known as adult-onset diabetes it is increasingly being diagnosed in children. It is estimated that 30 million people in the United States have diabetes and the numbers are growing. One of the reasons for the increasing incidence of Type 2 Diabetes is its association with overweight and obesity which is becoming epidemic in the industrialized world.

Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States. In addition, diabetes is heavily associated with other diseases such as cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke, blindness, kidney disease, and circulatory problems leading to amputations. As a result, diabetes doubles the risk of death of any cause compared to individuals of the same age without diabetes.

A leading cause of Type II Diabetes is overweight and obesity and a sedentary life style. Hence, treatment and prevention of Type II Diabetes focuses on diet, exercise, and weight control. Yoga would appear to be an excellent potential treatment for Type II Diabetes as it is both an exercise and a help in weight control (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/heart-healthy-yoga/).

In today’s Research News article “Yoga: Managing overweight in mid-life T2DM”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1075845609106031/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4481745/

Tikhe and colleagues tested the effects of a 7-day integrated approach of yoga therapy (IAYT) on patients with Type II Diabetes. They found that the program resulted in a significant loss in weight and body mass index (BMI), resting metabolism, and body fat.

Yoga appears to be a potential safe and effective treatment for Type II Diebetes. In addition yoga is known to strengthen the immune system (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/healthy-balance-through-yoga/) making the individual less susceptible to infection, helping to ward of potential secondary consequences of diabetes. These are exciting results that need to be confirmed in a large controlled trial. Many treatments for disease are not well tolerated by the patient and compliance becomes a huge issue. But, yoga is generally enjoyed and compliance rates, when administered properly, can be very high. So, yoga would appear to have advantages over other treatments.

So, practice yoga and control weight.

“Diabetes is a great example whereby, giving the patient the tools, you can manage yourself very well.” – Clayton Christensen

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Stop Emotional Eating with Yoga

psyjdc 5 Comments

 

Eating can occur because of a physiological need, signaling hunger. That is healthy eating. But eating can also happen for emotional reasons which can produce mindless unhealthy eating or an eating disorder, such as binge eating disorder.

Many people respond to stress, anxiety, or fear with coping strategies, one of which is eating. This is emotional eating. It results from distress and the individual’s attempts to deal with it. The eating behavior is used to reduce the distress. But, this is an unhealthy strategy. It’s not only directly detrimental to health by producing overeating but the emotional eating itself can become a source of stress and anxiety creating a vicious cycle. There is thus a need to find ways to teach the individual to respond to the distress with more adaptive strategies or to increase the individuals’ tolerance for the stress so they do not employ coping strategies like eating.

In today’s Research News article “The Effects of a Hatha Yoga Intervention on Facets of Distress Tolerance”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1060065660684026/?type=1&theater

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/276064952_The_Effects_of_a_Hatha_Yoga_Intervention_on_Facets_of_Distress_Tolerance

Medina and colleagues investigated whether Hatha Yoga could be successfully employed to reduce emotional eating. They found that and 8-week, twice weekly, yoga practice reduced emotional eating at a clinically significant level.

Medina and colleagues went further looking at the individuals’ tolerance for distress and found that the yoga practice also markedly improved the levels of distress tolerance. In addition, they found that the yoga practice appeared to have its effect on emotional eating by increasing distress tolerance. With the individual better able to deal effectively with the distress the need for the coping strategy, eating, was removed. Hence, yoga practice appeared to attack the root of the problem.

Looking more carefully, it was discovered that it was the cognitive components of distress tolerance that were improved by yoga. These included a facilitation of the thought processes needed to deal with distress and a decrease in the interference with attentional processes produced by the distress. Interestingly, the yoga did not affect the emotional and behavioral components in dealing with distress. So, it appears that yoga produces clearer thinking and thereby better, healthier, responses to the distress.

This makes sense as yoga practice trains the individual to pay attention in the present moment to exactly what they’re doing and how their feeling. It puts their behavior under conscious thoughtful control. The improved attentional and behavioral control produced by yoga could be responsible for clearer thinking about the distress and more appropriate responses to it.

This is an exciting and potentially important finding. There are other coping strategies other than emotional eating that other individuals display in response to distress. It would be important to look at these other strategies in future research to see if they too are improved with yoga.

So, practice yoga and get control of emotional eating

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies