Heart Health
Yoga-based cardiac rehabilitation: A promising practice?
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A yoga-based rehabilitation program may be a safe alternative to conventional cardiac rehab, a new study suggests. A customized program of exercise and education, conventional rehab helps people recover from heart-related problems.
The study included nearly 4,000 heart attack survivors in India, where cardiac rehab programs are uncommon. Half took part in a program featuring 13 weekly sessions of gentle yoga exercises. The other half received standard care, which included three sessions of advice and handouts.
The yoga-based program improved the participant's quality of life, and they had slightly fewer heart-related problems than the standard care group, though this difference was not statistically significant.
In the United States, participation in cardiac rehab is especially low among women and older people. For them, a yoga-based rehab may be more appealing than conventional rehab done with exercise machines, say the authors, whose study appeared April 7, 2020, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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