In the chapters between, he tries to parse fact from fiction, true health benefits from hype: Can yoga cure depression? Cause weight loss? Improve sex? Help arthritis? Diabetes? Rotator cuff injuries? Can it bolster creativity? Cause strokes?

It's about time that such an analysis was done, says Broad, himself a longtime yoga aficionado, given the flourishing, unregulated yoga industry, with growing legions of toddlers doing downward-facing dog and moms sweating in steamy Bikram yoga studios.

The two halves of my own brain approached this book with contradictory feelings. I've practiced yoga for nearly three decades, after discovering early on that it reduced my writer's shoulder aches by making me mindful that I was scrunching up my muscles. I love my weekly class with one of the deans of yoga in this region, Hari Zandler, who has studied with great gurus in India. I credit the strength of my back, my good balance, and my flexibility to his teachings.

I didn't want to read a book that undermined my convictions. And I worried it would take some of the rosy afterglow out of the experience.

On the other hand, as former medical editor of The Inquirer, I should be open-minded to what science has found, another part of my brain argued.

Dutifully, I read on. As feared, there's some bad news.

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Yoga: Separating fact from fiction