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Less fatigue due to more hours of yoga
If you would like to be tired a little less often, then yoga might be an option. If at least you are prepared not only to take yoga classes, but also to do yoga almost every day at home. This is evident from a study that American researchers from the University of Maryland published in 2012 in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Study
The researchers questioned more than thousand practitioners of Iyengar yoga about their lifestyle and their health. They determined the extent to which the subjects were suffering from fatigue with 4 questions. The study participants could score a maximum of 5 for each question. The higher the score, the greater the fatigue.
Results
The participant who were in their thirties and forties reported the greatest fatigue as an age group, followed by the participants in their fifties. The participants in their sixties and sixties were the least plagued by fatigue.
In all age groups yoga decreased fatigue. The more often participants did yoga at home, the less discomfort they had with fatigue.
The researchers found no clear effect of the number of years the study participants had already done yoga, or the number of lessons they took weekly.
It turned out that the study participants ate more vegetables and fruit, were slimmer and they felt better and more mindful the more they practiced yoga at home. They were also vegetarian more often. [Table] Of course, those lifestyle factors also play a role in the fatigue-exerting effect of yoga.
Conclusion
"In conclusion, yoga may be a useful intervention for improving health behaviors or life-style-related health conditions", write the researchers.
"Frequency of home practice appears to be very important - more important than how long an individual has been practicing or how many classes one takes. This emphasizes a simple fact: it is not enough simply to learn how to do healthy behaviors. Rather, healthy behaviors must be incorporated into one's daily life."
"While these findings suggest that individuals will only glean benefits from yoga practice that are proportional to the energy they are willing to invest in making it a part of their lives, the findings also suggest that they do not have to practice for years in order to reap the rewards."
Source:
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012;2012:983258.
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