Yoga can help people with irregular heart rhythms

(Reuters) / 31 January 2013

The health benefits of yoga are said to be legion, everything from stress busting to lowering fat and stimulating the immune system. Now it may also help people with a common heart rhythm problem - at least, according to a US study.

The American Heart Association says that about 2.7 million people in the United states have atrial fibrillation (AF), in which the hearts upper chambers quiver chaotically instead of contracting normally. It increases the risk of stroke.

Though people with AF are often prescribed drugs such as beta blockers to help control their heart rate and rhythm, the medicines dont work for everybody, said researchers whose findings appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Thats where yoga could come in, said researchers led by Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, from the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

In patients with ... AF, yoga improves symptoms, arrhythmia burden, heart rate, blood pressure, anxiety and depression scores, and several domains of quality of life, they wrote.

The study included 49 people whod had AF for an average of five years. For three months, the researchers tracked their heart symptoms, blood pressure and heart rate, as well as their anxiety, depression and general quality of life.

For the second phase of the study, the same participants went to group yoga classes at least twice a week for an additional three months, again reporting on their symptoms and quality of life. All of the patients were on stable medications throughout the study.

Nonetheless, the number of times they reported heart quivering - confirmed by a heart monitor - dropped from almost four times during the first three months to twice during the yoga intervention phase. Their average heart rate also fell from 67 beats per minute at the start to between 61 and 62 beats per minute post-yoga.

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Yoga can help people with irregular heart rhythms