How to manage auto-immune disorders with yoga

What happens when your immune system doesn’t quite work as it should? Instead of protecting the body from foreign antibodies, it starts attacking itself.

Conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus are attributed to auto-immune disorders.

While most such disorders are chronic, they are not fatal. But, living with an auto-immune disorder can be very challenging. One has to usually take medications to help manage symptoms like fatigue, pain and weakness. In most cases, one must also look out for factors that can worsen their condition. Most auto-immune diseases cannot be cured. But they can be managed through medications, such as anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce pain.

However, a better solution lies in yoga or rather its ability to manage the symptoms of auto-immune disorder. Anecdotal evidence suggests that yoga can not only help with symptoms like inflammation, it can also lower the tendency of the immune system to misfire and trigger these very symptoms. Additionally, yoga does not have the side-effects often associated with regular medications. In fact, it can improve our overall fitness, including mental health and physical flexibility.

On the 10th International Conference on Yoga and Mental Health: Scope, Evidence, and Evolution, let’s take a closer look on how yoga can help manage auto-immune disorders.

A holistic approach

One of the key elements of yoga is its holistic approach towards health. Yoga takes our overall state as a result of your physical, mental, and emotional health. By doing so, it takes a fundamentally different approach than conventional medicine which merely focuses on treating the physical symptoms. Yoga emphasizes on healing the body from within by following an overall healthy lifestyle.

A yogic approach towards life prompts one to look inwards and be more mindful of our overall health. Auto-immune conditions take a toll on our physical and mental health that can be stressful on its own. Studies have proven that yoga can be extremely effective in managing stress, anxiety, and depression. It stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing stress and helping one to deal with the depression and stress that often accompanies auto-immune conditions.

But the stress-busting properties of yoga are not just good for dealing with diseases. It may actually lower the likelihood of developing such a condition as studies show that people with stress-related disorders can develop multiple auto-immune diseases. In addition, the chances of such disorders are higher among younger patients. In other words, yoga can help manage stress, lowering the chances of stress-related disorders from occurring or worsening into auto-immune diseases.

Managing auto-immune disorders

Apart from reducing stress, yoga can help in many other ways when managing an auto-immune disorder, especially in reducing pain from inflammation. One research proved its effectiveness in dealing with the most commonly occurring inflammatory autoimmune condition, rheumatoid arthritis. It found that yoga can significantly reduce psycho-somatic symptoms of the diseases, including pain perception, joint flexibility, and disability quotient, thereby improving range of motion, posture, coordination, and muscle strength.

Auto-immune disorders are among the leading cause of chronic illness, especially in women1. While it can reduce their productivity, it also has a damaging impact on the quality of their life. Yoga can not only help us manage these conditions, reducing their severity, it may also help in its prevention. It is these safe management and preventive properties of yoga that put it ahead of conventional medicine in disease management. However, as the 10th International Conference on Yoga and Mental Health explores, it must be practised under the supervision of qualified yoga teachers.