Chinese researchers conclude yoga benefits diabetes patients

Researchers at China’s Binzhou Medical University, Xuzhou Central Hospital and Donghua University have concluded that yoga benefits adult patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), said to be one of most frequently encountered metabolic syndromes worldwide.

An abstract of the article “Effects of Yoga in Adult Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis” published online at Journal of Diabetes Investigation stated: “A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the efficacy of yoga in adult patients with T2DM”.

Researchers (Jie Cui, Jun-Hong Yan, Li-Ming Yan, Lei Pan, Jia-Jin Le, Yong-Zhong Guo) summed up in this article accepted on June 29: Based on the evidence, yoga significantly reduces fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels and alters other significant clinical outcomes in patients with T2DM. These results support the idea that yoga-based training is a possible alternative exercise for T2DM management.

In this study, researchers performed a meta-analysis of 12 randomized controlled trials involving 864 patients in United Kingdom, India, Cuba and Iran to determine the effectiveness of yoga in patients with T2DM. The available evidence suggested that yoga can significantly decrease patient FBG, postprandial blood glucose, hemoglobin A1c, total cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and increase their high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

Meanwhile, distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called the Chinese institutions looking into the efficacy of multi-faceted yoga among diabetic patients “a step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all major world universities to explore various benefits yoga offered.

Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a recently released “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.