Lung capacity and Yoga

When we were discussing lungs in class, a question was asked pertaining to yoga. Researchers have been conducting research on trying to pinpoint the benefits of yoga. One of the many benefits of yoga, is that the lung capacity increases. According to research from Khon Kaen University, young and healthy Thais who participated in 18 short yoga sessions showed significant improvements in their lung function.
"This research suggests that short-term yoga exercise improves respiratory breathing capacity by increasing chest wall expansion and forced expiratory lung volumes," said lead researcher Raoyrin Chanavirut. "These findings may benefit people suffering from illnesses that affect breathing, including asthma."
This study was done using Hatha Yoga, one of the many different types of yoga. Their experiment, which took 58 people, around 20 years of age, to participate in a 6-week study. Half the volunteers performed 5 positions of Hatha Yoga, during 20 - minutes session, for only 3 times a week. The rest of the people went about their lives as usual.
The results were as such:

• strengthened inspiratory muscle

• better chest expansion

• stronger expiratory muscle

• less airway obstructions

The Article


I am going to take a walk on a thin limb here and criticize modern medicine. Even though today's medicine has worked wonders, I believe that the pharmaceutical companies are not out there to make us all better. I believe that there are natural remedies to a lot of the diseases, and a lot of the health problems that we see today. One does not need to go on diet pills to lose weight, just exercise regularly and eat healthily. I know today's society makes it soo much easier to buy into the big pharmaceutical gimmicks. They want you to be hooked on their stuff, because if their medicines cured you quickly, then they might run out of business... Well the point being, there are a lot of natural remedies that we, Americans, either don't know about, or care not to look into, simply because of convenience factor. As seen above, yoga can help with asthma. 20 minutes 3 times a week, can better lung function by 7 folds, then why are we still hooked on inhalers???
Just my 1 % of my 2-cent on today's world.... Hope you enjoyed my ranting. Have a nice summer.

- Sumedh Mankar

P.S. in my previous post, I did not mean to say, hiccups cause cancer. What I meant to say is that, excessive hiccup can be a symptom of cancer.