How Yoga Helps Medical Conditions: Symptom Improvement

by Baxter (with Nina)

Painted Composition Design for Medicine
by Gustav Klimt

Last week in my post How Yoga Helps with Medical Conditions: Prevention, I discussed how to use yoga for prevention. Today I�m going to focus on how you can use yoga to improve symptoms. To put it simply, this means you are using yoga to:  

1. Relieve symptoms caused by a medical condition without curing it. In this case, although you�re not curing the medical condition, you�re using yoga to achieve either temporary or long-term improvement of symptoms. For example, someone with chronic low back pain from a ruptured disc can use yoga very effectively to reduce or relieve pain. But because yoga cannot repair the ruptured disc, the underlying condition isn�t cured and may occasionally still produce pain.  

2. Relieve symptoms and cure a medical condition with yoga alone. This means that you are using yoga to resolve the symptoms caused by your underlying condition but you are also using it to resolve the underlying disorder itself, so it is unlikely to return. For example, someone with stress-related headaches could use yoga�s pain management techniques to reduce headache pain and yoga�s stress management techniques to eliminate the headaches themselves.

Now let�s take a closer look at these two different ways you can use yoga for improving symptoms.  

Yoga for Symptom Improvement Alone

Yoga is extremely effective for providing symptom improvement for a large number of medical conditions, even if it does not lead to a cure. Typically you use a combination of tools for symptom improvement, including asana (active, gentle, restorative and supported inversions), stress management tools, and equanimity tools. Since yoga has the potential to improve the symptoms of just about any medical condition, here are just a few examples:

1. Respiratory conditions, such as emphysema and chronic cough. See How Yoga Fosters Respiratory System Health for information on using yoga for respiratory system health.
2. Chronic pain, such as chronic low back pain and fibromyalgia, and post recovery from surgery. See How Yoga Helps with Pain for using yoga for pain management.
3. Immune-related conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and HIV/Aids. See How Yoga Helps Your Immune System for using yoga to support the immune system and How Yoga Helps with Pain for pain relief.
4. Digestive conditions that are aggravated by stress, such as irritable bowel syndrome and peptic ulcer disease. See How Yoga Helps Your Digestive System for information on using yoga to support your digestive system.
5. Cardiovascular conditions, such as coronary artery disease and irregular heart rhythms. (Of course, while avoiding practices that could aggravate the condition, such as vigorous styles of asana practice, long-held standing poses, and full inversions.)
6. Emotional illness, such as anxiety and depression.
7. Brain conditions that lead to worsening cognitive function, such as early stage dementia and mini strokes as a complication of diabetes.
8. Palliative care (including pain management and stress reduction) for those who do not want to use western medical options, such as for end of life care.

Yoga for Symptom Improvement with Curing 

Although there are actually very few conditions that yoga can cure by itself (most complete healing with yoga occurs when yoga is used as an adjunct to other forms of care), there are five categories of medical conditions that yoga alone can potentially cure:

1. Musculoskeletal Conditions. These include acute minor injuries such as common sprains and strains, and a certain subset of more significant acute injuries, including back and neck pain. Using asanas for physical benefits combined with mindfulness techniques and stress management techniques can promote tissue healing.
2. Stress-Related Headaches. For some people, yoga�s stress management tools can resolve stress headaches.
3. Unhealthy Breathing Patterns. Yoga�s tools for cultivating the health of your respiratory system can reverse some abnormal breathing patterns.
4. Stress-Related Digestive Problems. Stress management techniques can resolve some minor digestive problems that are caused by stress.
5. Emotional Conditions. For certain people with mild forms of chronic stress, anxiety, and depression, a combination of practicing asanas for emotional wellbeing with yoga�s stress management and equanimity tools can resolve emotional problems. 

For now, our evidence on the ability of yoga to �cure� many of these conditions is anecdotal (reported by individuals not proved in a scientific study). However, we have seen so many people benefit from using yoga to help with these conditions that until we do have studies to back us up, we recommend giving yoga a try. 

In general, however, before you attempt to address a particular medical condition with yoga, I recommend that you get guidance from both an experienced yoga teacher or yoga therapist and your doctor. And keep in mind that unlike when you have been prescribed an antibiotic to cure a specific infection, you can�t use yoga for two weeks to cure these conditions and then just discard it. So for many of these conditions, part of a �yoga cure� involves ongoing maintenance.

For example, if you successfully used your yoga tools to heal an acute bout of lower back pain, your use of yoga to maintain your improvement would not stop there, as returning to your old habits that may have contributed to the back pain in the first place could bring it back on. So from that point on, you would use your yoga practice to maintain the healing you have achieved and reduce the chances of re-injury. 

Finally, before pronouncing yourself �cured,� we recommend that you monitor your condition for a reasonable amount of time, say 1-2 years, especially if you are dealing with a more complex issue, such a severe low back pain or depression.

In fact, for many of these conditions, yoga alone may not be enough to bring about a cure. So you may need to combine yoga with strategies that your doctor recommends, such as specific physical therapy exercises for that ankle or appropriate anti-depressant medications for that depression. This is especially true for many emotional conditions. For emotional conditions that are more severe or that just do not seem to responding quickly to your practice, I strongly recommend that you combine yoga with other forms of treatment, such as therapy or medication. 

In these situations, yoga is acting as an adjunct to your western medical treatment, which I will get into in more detail next week. But as I mentioned in How Yoga Helps with Medical Conditions: Prevention, yoga is a great complement to western medicine. The ultimate goal is your ongoing wellness! 

The Bottom Line 

Keep in keep in mind that there are no guarantees for using yoga either for improving symptoms or curing a medical condition. However, the mounting evidence that yoga at the very least improves symptoms for many conditions should encourage you to give it a try!

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Using Stress Management Techniques for Medical Conditions

by Baxter and Nina

Dandelion by Melina Meza

If you're suffering from a stress-related disease, such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and digestive disorders, reducing chronic stress can be very beneficial. Stress management can also help with emotional disorders�including anxiety and depression�that are caused by or worsened by stress.

Because stress management helps reduce inflammation, reducing chronic stress can also help with inflammation-related problems, including most forms of arthritis, as well as certain gastrointestinal conditions, such as celiac disease and leaky gut syndrome. 

In general, yoga stress management techniques can be preventive medicine, as lowering overall stress levels may reduce your chances of even developing stress-related illnesses. They could also be curative because spending significant amounts of time in Rest and Digest keeps your immune system and repair systems functioning optimally. Finally, you can use stress management as a palliative technique to help you cope with the stress of living with a chronic illness, improving the quality of your life.

This provides some basic tips for practicing stress management when you have a medical condition. We'll address physical disorders first and then discuss emotional disorders. See The Relaxation Response and Yoga for general information about using stress management when you're healthy. 

Cautions: Generally stress management techniques are very safe. However, meditation is generally not recommended for depression or anxiety, because sitting alone with your thoughts can cause you to spiral downward. So avoid meditation unless you have a teacher experienced at working with your condition who can guide you. People who have uncontrolled high blood pressure should not practice full or partial inverted poses. 

For Physical Disorders

For digestive disorders, for periods without active symptoms, practice a well-rounded stress reducing sequence, combining active poses, both dynamic and static, and restorative poses, as well as meditation and breath work. For periods with active symptoms, stay with gentle poses, including easy dynamic poses and restorative poses, that do not create pressure on your abdomen (for example, no Cobra or Locust pose), and avoid twists. But you can practice any stress management techniques that work well for you, including focused relaxation, quieting breath practices, and meditation. For most digestive issues, you can include supported inversions. However, for hiatal hernias and gastro-esophageal reflux (GERD), symptoms will often worsen with inverted poses, so you should avoid them. 

For inflammation-related conditions, for the non-asana part of your practice, you can practice whatever stress management techniques work best for you. For arthritis of the lower back on down to the feet, supported inverted poses can be particularly helpful. 

For cardiovascular disorders, all of the stress management tools can be helpful, particularly meditation, calming breath practices, restorative poses, and focused relaxation. Just be aware that for certain conditions, such as congestive heart failure, lying flat in Savasana may bring on symptoms. In such cases, elevating your head and chest may relieve the symptoms. the head and chest may permit you to do Savasana safely. 

For cardiovascular diseases for which your doctor has warned you about situations that may increase your blood pressure, such as coronary artery disease and risk of stroke, practice supported inversion only if they do not cause an increase in your blood pressure. (Check your blood pressure with a home monitor immediately before trying a short hold of supported inversion and check again immediately afterwards to see if your numbers go high. Discuss with your doctor if you are uncertain how to proceed.)

One of the significant issues for people with just about any chronic is that the illness itself if a significant daily stressor. Examples are cardiovascular disease, diabetes and related conditions (metabolic syndrome), autoimmune diseases such as and rheumatoid arthritis, to name just a few. For all these conditions, you can use whichever stress management techniques make you feel better and do not aggravate your symptoms. Obviously, if you are seriously ill, practices that are physically undemanding, such as meditation, breath work, and focused relaxation (which you can do lying down as well as sitting) will be more accessible to you.

For Emotional Disorders

Because emotional disorders, including depression and anxiety, are either caused by or worsened by stress, practicing stress management for these medical conditions is extremely beneficial and may make you feel better, either immediately or with consistent practice over time. 

However, many stress management practices, such as restorative yoga, focused relaxation, and mediation are typically practiced with closed eyes. If this causes you to become more depressed or anxious, try practicing with your eyes open instead, keeping them softly focused. If trying to concentrate on your breath or physical sensations causes your symptoms to worsen, try using a mantra, a formal meditation practice, or a recorded relaxation practice that employs vivid imagery.

Anxiety. Because people with anxiety often have a hard time staying still, we recommend that you begin with a strong asana sequence to tire yourself out a bit before trying stress management techniques. Supported Inverted poses are particularly beneficial for anxiety, as the physical orientation of the poses triggers the Relaxation Response and concentration isn�t as essential. But if you find other techniques effective, use whichever ones you prefer. 

Lying on your back with your front body exposed can increase anxiety in some people, so for you prone restorative poses, such as Child�s pose, may be better than supine poses, such as Reclined Cobbler�s pose. If Savasana on your back creates anxiety, try lying on your belly or on your side instead, or skip the pose entirely and do Legs Up the Wall pose instead. 

Depression. For clinical depression, which has symptoms of lethargy and despair, if lying or sitting still causes symptoms to worsen, try a mindful asana practice with either short holds in static poses or slow dynamic poses. For restorative poses, choose backbend shapes, such as Reclined Cobbler�s pose, which can be uplifting, rather than forward bend shapes. In Savasana, try a supported version, with your torso lifted and your chest open, rather than lying flat.

For agitated depression, follow our suggestions for anxiety, adding in restorative backbends if those work for you.

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Friday Practice Pointers: Get a Diagnosis!

by Baxter

Self Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill by Frida Kahlo*

As I was reviewing all the information that we have shared with you over the years on our blog regarding yoga for medical conditions, I was struck by the fact that I had not clearly and unequivocally stated the most obvious caution of all. It was easy to forget this most important caution when there is so much positive information coming out each week on studies showing yoga�s benefit for a wide range of medical conditions, from osteoporosis to Parkinson�s Disease and post-cancer treatment. I�ve even shared with you fairly clear ways to think about the use of yoga tools for medical conditions- as preventative, curative, maintenance, supportive or palliative, and rehabilitative (see 5 Ways Yoga Can Affect Your Health). And we have written about applying yoga tools for conditions here ranging from bunions to low back pain and diabetes. 

But there is one caution that is crucial for all of this: 

If you feel that you are developing some medical condition or illness, you should be evaluated by the appropriate health care provider�be it an orthopedic surgeon for your shoulder pain or a psychologist for your feelings of depression�and get an accurate diagnosis! 

This might seem like common sense. And yet, over and over again, I meet people who are using yoga to address a health issue who have never even been to their family doctor, let alone a specialist, to find out if their suspicions about what is going on are correct. There is an old saying �The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.� You are doubly or triply foolish if you are not a doctor and doing the same thing! Also, despite their best intentions and offers of help, your yoga teacher is not trained nor licensed to diagnose what ails you, even common things like low back pain that might seem their bread and butter. Even those who are certified in the new field of yoga therapy are not permitted to diagnosis your injury, illness or disorder (see Drawing a Line in the Sand: Where Yoga Teachers Should Not Go).

I certainly understand the reluctance of many to go see a doctor when you may not have health insurance, or have a plan that covers very little of the cost that might be involved in finding out what is going on. But a delay in finding out what is going on or making an incorrect self-diagnosis could leave you worse off in the long run and cost you even more. So, here is what I recommend:

1. If you think you are becoming ill (obvious exceptions are common colds and such), see a board-certified medical doctor doctor as soon as you can and get an accurate diagnosis. 
2. If you are injured and are not improving in 4-6 weeks, do the same.
3. Once you have a diagnosis, ask your doctor or health care expert if yoga is safe to add to any treatment they recommend (see Talking to Your Doctor).
4. Once you have a diagnosis, discuss what you know about your condition with your yoga teacher or yoga therapist, and ask them to help you craft a plan using yoga to assist in supporting better health and healing. 
5. If you don�t already have a teacher or yoga therapist, look for one in your community with experience, preferably working your specific diagnosis. 
6. Once you have a diagnosis and clearance from your health team, consider using the recommendations we make here on this blog for your specific issues. But even if you choose to try out some of our suggestions, I still strongly recommend you work with a teacher or yoga therapist when you first start our applying yoga tools, especially if you are newer to yoga.
7. If you are in the midst of a diagnostic work-up and your doctor is okay with you trying or continuing restorative or gentle yoga, then certainly, with appropriate common sense caution, do that. The stress reducing benefits of such practices are typically supportive for just about any condition you might be diagnosed with. 

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