It’s Sunday afternoon and Maribel and I are looking at the week ahead and the classes we are teaching. All of them have something in common: All are meant to provide benefit to those who take them.
The benefit of exercising and/or taking up a practice such as yoga is often felt immediately. We often feel good after moving the body and sweating. But these benefits are more profound than many realize. This week we want to draw your attention to cortisol, a hormone in your body that impacts the way your body deals with stress, including your blood sugar, blood pressure, and fat metabolism.
Take a look a the a recent CNN article “Long Term Stress Might Make You Fat” to learn about new findings on the role of cortisol and obesity.
“We found levels of cortisol in the hair to be positively and significantly correlated to larger waist circumference and higher body mass index or BMI,” said lead author Sarah Jackson, a research associate at the Institute of Epidemiology and Health at University College London.”These results provide consistent evidence that chronic stress is associated with higher levels of obesity.”
We probably did not need a study to know that stress and weight gain go hand and in hand, but did you know that one hour of yoga has been shown to decrease cortisol levels significantly?
A study in Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia finds that practicing yoga can help stabilize cortisol levels, bringing them down for those that have levels that are too high and bringing them up for those that may have levels that are too low. Learn more about the findings of this study in Yoga Journal’s “Destress with Yoga.”
“When I did the first study, I was very surprised that a single set of yoga poses could make a significant change in cortisol,” Brainard says. “Now that we have repeated it, we have seen enough promise to consider studying it in challenging situations like chronically ill patients who have abnormally high levels of cortisol, such as those who suffer from depression, type 2 diabetes, Cushing’s disease, and high blood pressure.”
The findings suggest that practicing yoga—even for the very first time—can normalize cortisol levels that are either too high or too low, says Vijayendra Pratap, Ph.D., president of the Yoga Research Society in Philadelphia. “My hypothesis,” he adds, “is that yoga brings the body to balance.”
Join us this week for any of our programs. We offer private classes and group sessions. We encourage you to make a strong commitment to yourself this week to do all in your power to bring your stress levels under control by finding time for yourself and taking good care of your body-mind-heart.
You are worth it!
[tribe_events_list]