Yoga enhances heart health, lowers blood pressure, study shows

• Adopting the right positions coupled with meditation not only soothes the spirit, increases a sense of self-control and makes the body more flexible, but might relax the blood vessels as well.
• Researchers, who tried to fathom exactly how conquering chronic stress significantly reduces the risk of disease to the cardiovascular system, now indicate that yoga is good for the cells in the endothelium, the inner lining of the arteries.
• The lining is usually quite flexible, going with the flow as it were, but among those with cardiovascular disease, it becomes more rigid, less stretchy and more susceptible to damage.
• The participants, mostly men and with a average age of 55, were measured for blood pressure, body mass, heart rates, cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
• Hiking downhill appeared to specifically lower blood glucose levels, in turn reducing the risks or effects of diabetes, according the researchers' study carried out in the Austrian Alps.
• "Walking downhill may be a starting mode for sedentary people to begin with exercise," said Dr Heinz Drexel, of the Voralberg Institute in Feldirch, Austria.
• For two months, three to five days a week, half of the people hiked uphill and took a cable car back down, while the other half hiked only downhill.
• A day and a half after a hike the researchers measured cholesterol, including LDL and triglycerides, as well as blood sugar.
• Very obese people are as unhealthy, and probably as likely to die, as patients with heart failure, US researchers reported.
• A second study presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans found that overweight men spend more on drugs than those of healthy weight.
• A novel fabric mesh sleeve that works like a girdle to reshape enlarged hearts showed promise in treating patients with heart failure and will be submitted for United States regulatory approval this year, according to researchers and the company that makes the device.