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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