Flexibility and Aging

by Baxter and Nina

Four Ages in Life by Edvard Munch

As with a lot of the changes of aging, you may not think about loss of flexibility until maybe the first day in early spring that you start to work in your garden and you realize it’s a bit harder than it used it be and maybe even a bit painful. Yes, as we age, our flexibility naturally decreases. Although some of this is due to age-related changes, a sedentary lifestyle can accelerate the process. Since several factors influence your flexibility, let’s take a closer look at how aging affects each of those factors and which ones you can influence with your yoga practice. 

Muscles. As muscles age, they shrink and lose mass. The number and size of muscle fibers also decrease. In addition to age-related changes, muscles can shrink and tighten over time due to environmental factors, such as inactivity or habitual ways of standing and sitting. This overall shrinking of your muscles means that they literally cannot stretch as far as they did when you were younger. 

In addition, as you age, your muscles take longer to respond to stretching exercises than they did when you were young. So you may have to work more patiently to achieve improvements. However, practicing a wide variety of stretching poses can help you maintain the both flexibility and health of your muscles. 

Fascia. The connective tissue that surrounds every muscle in your body tends to dry up and become more inflexible with age. In addition to natural age-related changes, your fascia, like your muscles, can shrink and tighten due environmental factors such as inactivity or habitual ways of standing and sitting. Practicing a wide variety of stretching poses will help you maintain the flexibility and health of your fascia as well as your muscles. 

Tendons and Ligaments. As you age, the water content of both tendons (the tissues that attach muscles to bones) and ligaments (the tissues that attach bones to bones) decreases, making the tissues stiffer. This, in turn, restricts the range of motion in your joints, leading to overall decreases in flexibility. While you should not actively stretch your tendons or ligaments (this could damage them!), regularly stretching your muscles and fascia will indirectly benefit your tendons and ligaments by bringing nourishment to them and the joints they are connected to. 

Joints. The cushioning cartilage within a joint can break down from a lifetime of use, causing the joint to become inflamed (this is called arthritis). This presence of inflammation reduces range of motion in the joint because fluid build-up makes movement more painful and restricted. For arthritic joints, you can reduce joint pain and swelling, and increase movement by practicing non-weight bearing movements in appropriate yoga poses. Depending on where you are starting from, with continued practice, you may even be able to return to normal movement. For healthy joints, continuing to practice a wide variety of stretching poses and moving your joints through their entire range of motion (something yoga excels at!) will help keep your joints healthy as you age, nourishing the cartilage within the joints as well as the tissues that support them. 

For information about how to improve flexibility with yoga, see Techniques for Cultivating Flexibility.

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Aging Telomeres and Yoga New Study by Elizabeth Blackburn and Dean Ornish

by Baxter

Telomere Caps

A while back, we reported on an interesting potential marker in the body for aging of the cells connected to the genes called a telomere (see Stressed Mind, Stressed Cells and Science, Aging and Yoga). A telomere is like a tail on the end of DNA strands found in our cells, and an enzyme called telomerase influences the length and activity of the telomere. Studies done a few years ago by a Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn at UCSF in San Francisco began to show a connection between telomeres and cell longevity—the longer the telomere, the longer the cell life. Her work garnered her a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Now Dr. Blackburn has teamed up with Dr. Dean Ornish to see what effect his life-style changes approach to prostate cancer has on telomeres and telomerase activity. Dr. Ornish has already shown that a combination of dietary changes (vegan diet with less than 10% fat per day), exercise in the form of walking for 30 minutes most days, and stress management tools that include regular yoga asana and breath work, mindfulness meditation and once a week group stress reduction sessions can reverse heart disease and diabetes, and can stabilize prostate cancer and stop its progression.

In their most recent study, published in Lancet Oncology (see Effect of comprehensive lifestyle changes on telomerase activity and telomere length in men with biopsy-proven low-risk prostate cancer: 5-year follow-up of a descriptive pilot study), the two researchers looked at how the lifestyle program impacted the cellular genetic level in regards to telomere length and enzyme activity. What they found was that the 10 men studied had longer telomeres in the short (as quickly as three months!) and long run, if they stuck to the program, and the 25 men who were controls had shorter telomeres. And they also looked at gene activity in their ten study subjects, and found that 500 genes were turned on, and all were beneficial, according to Ornish. 

Even though telomeres may be an indicator of longer cell life, and by extension, longer overall lifespan, this has not been definitively concluded, so more studies will need to be done, looking at much larger numbers of people. But the early evidence is promising, and even if the telomere/aging cell theory does not pan out, it seems evident that yoga, diet, exercise and stress management do have significantly positive impacts on health, disease progress or remission, and are therefore worth the effort. And as Dr. Ornish noted, his study participants found the lifestyle plan easy to follow, with 85-90% compliance, much better than most pharmaceutical based treatment plans. Why, you might ask? Well, has he says, it’s because it’s pleasant and comprehensive and “most people feel so much better they change their lifestyle.”

To read more, you can check out articles at ucsf.edu and today.com—among others—which reported these new findings.

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Short But Sweet 10 Minute Meditations for Healthy Aging

by Baxter

Even though I'm away leading a retreat this week, I'm thinking of all our readers at YFHA (kinda' wishing you were here!), as I'm focusing a good portion of our practice time here on developing a home yoga meditation practice. Since we have two yoga practice sessions a day here, we begin and end each if them with a 10-minute seated meditation practice. Monday was our first full day of practice together and the overriding focus was on the feet, anatomically, and the idea of "starting”—whether that meant starting something new, starting again, starting over—about taking the first steps on that new path. For me, the feet represent the base of our overall strength, as well as stability. So I suggested that the group might use the phrase "strong and stable" as their mantra (a repeated word or phrase for mental focus), during the final seated meditation of each class.

As you might have calculated, by doing four 10-minute meditations in class, my group is getting 40 minutes of time to practice this powerful method in manageable amounts of time. (I happen to have them doing two more 10-minute sessions on their own for a total of 60 minutes a day). This is a sweet amount of time, but at home, you can easily practice just one or two sessions in a day and still reap benefits. Try the "strong and stable" mantra for your sit today! I'll try to share other ideas this week as well.

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Cancer Aging and Yoga

by Ram

Desert Flower by Marie Lossky (@Marie.Lossky on Instagram)

Is there a link between cancer and aging? Well, there is now irrefutable evidence that age is the single greatest risk factor for cancer. Nearly 70% of people who have cancer are 65 years or older and nearly 60% of cancer survivors are in their sixties. Interestingly, a subset of the biological mechanisms that regulate the aging process is also involved in the development of cancer. Since the population of adults reaching older ages is increasing rapidly, the total number of new cancer cases will also increase if current incidence rates remain unchanged. By 2030, an estimated 70% of all cancers will occur among adults aged 65 years or older. 

Being older can also affect cancer treatment and management. The issue becomes more complicated if the aged individual has another existing disease or disability (co-morbidity). Studies show that doctors restrict older adults from receiving every treatment that is available due to fears of side effects because of the age factor. Thus, older adults have fewer treatment options for cancer than younger people. And while older individuals deal with the mental and emotional challenges of cancer better than younger people, they have other concerns about how cancer treatment could affect their ability to live alone without support, how radiation therapy can compromise other organ function, or how chemotherapy could affect their memory. 

Although aging itself cannot be reversed, the age-associated factors that contribute to cancer risk can definitely be prevented, reversed, or delayed (see Aging: Terms and Theories). For example, it has been shown that when some of the environmental factors that influence the aging process are controlled, this can also delay or completely block the onset of cancer. Similarly, suitable dietary intervention or drugs that possess anti-aging activity are able to delay or prevent cancer. 

Current research suggests that for most adults who maintain a healthy lifestyle, cancer is not an inevitable consequence of growing older (see Yoga for Cancer: An Interview with a Nurse and Cancer Survivor). In contrast, the prevention or at least the delay of cancer can be viewed as an effective strategy for achieving a healthy, long life. Interestingly, several of the research studies point to midlife as the most crucial period in determining an individual’s longevity and chances of getting cancer (see Yoga for Cancer: An Interview with Cheryl Fenner Brown). Midlife is also the time when some well-recognized risk factors for cancer begin to have an impact on an individual’s lifespan. The occurrence of chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes tends to increase during midlife, and have been associated with increased cancer risk and reduced lifespan. Thus, the promotion of good lifestyle practices during midlife is a promising strategy to prevent or delay cancer incidence and to achieve a productive health span (Aging: Terms and Theories). Strategies include but are not limited to diet intervention, supplements, nutraceuticals, stress management, and exercise. 

One noteworthy intervention that is attracting a lot of attention among researchers and health practitioners alike is yoga! We have written several articles on how yoga limits age-associated degenerative changes (See a subset of articles on this topic by Baxter, Nina, Brad, Beth, Ram and Shari). Several studies now show that a yoga regimen for adults at midlife or individuals undergoing cancer treatment not only improves psychological outcome and physical symptoms as well, but also in that process extends the life span of those individuals (see Review of yoga therapy during cancer treatment). Yoga has been shown to improve diverse outcomes among cancer survivors by reducing adverse symptoms and mood disorders, and by enhancing function. Researchers are amazed at yoga’s potential to simultaneously address multiple areas, including social, physical, and psycho-emotional, and simultaneously enhance strength, coordination, balance, posture, and flexibility in cancer victims (see Evidence-Based Yoga Interventions for Patients With Cancer). 

Studies have shown that a structured yoga practice during cancer treatment can reduce stress and anxiety, and can radically improve symptoms such as pain and fatigue by reducing heart rate and blood pressure and easing the lung’s respiratory function. Additionally, yoga asana—no matter how gentle the movements—along with meditation allows the body to release endorphins that alleviates depression, anxiety, and insomnia to help patients become emotionally strong during the cancer treatment. 

All these research studies are revealing what cancer centers and yogic practitioners have long known: cancer survivors can benefit from yoga! So, if you have a loved one with cancer, encourage that individual to have a yoga practice that can serve as a way to help deal with the physical, mental, and emotional stresses. The calming effects of yoga and meditation provide a physically and emotionally beneficial activity which can be life affirming to a cancer patient, survivor, or even a caregiver to someone who is fighting the battle with cancer. Plus, it could add years to their life.

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Depression Accelerates Unhealthy Aging

by Ram

by Melina Meza

In the Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the eight rungs/limbs/steps of yoga, whose practice helps us develop attention as a tool for discriminating between ignorance and awareness and truth from illusion as the means for liberation or enlightenment. The second limb/step contains five niyamas or observances/practices of self-training and deals with how we relate to ourselves inwardly. One of the five niyamas is santosha, which means “contentment” or “true happiness.” To be contented and happy even while experiencing life’s difficulties is a process of growth through all kinds of circumstances. We need to accept that there is a purpose for everything and cultivate contentment even if the final outcome of the purpose is unforeseen and unfavorable. It also means being happy with what we have rather than being unhappy about what we don't have. Humans in general are never contented with what they possess and are always desirous of some materialistic pleasure, and if these pleasures do not get fulfilled, it triggers depression, discontentment, unhappiness, frustration, anger and loss of mental peace leading to a disharmonious life. If we are truly contented with our needs and justly happy with our lifestyle and what we currently have, it will help us in the journey to absolute truth and the highest realization.

In one of my earlier posts Anger Management: Philosophy, Science, and Yoga, I discussed research studies from health professionals, behavioral scientists, psychologists and others indicating that rage and anger are definitely hazardous to health. Yet another emotional state that triggers unhealthy aging is depression. Past studies have already associated depression with diabetes, cancer, obesity and heart disease. Depression is an extremely complex disease and depressed individuals feel overwhelmed with sadness and loneliness for unknown reasons. Depression prevents an individual from enjoying life. Additionally, its effects go far beyond mood alone as it also impacts energy, sleep, appetite, and physical health. Factors that trigger depression include but are not limited to abuse, certain medications, personal/professional/social conflicts, death or a loss of a loved one, chronic illness, genetics, substance abuse, some traumatic experience, social isolation, and so on.

Now a recent study Major depressive disorder and accelerated cellular aging: results from a large psychiatric cohort study suggests that severe depression may trigger rapid and unhealthy aging. According to this new study, severe depression doesn't just affect the mind, but it also attacks the body on a cellular level and speeds up the aging process. In this study performed jointly by researchers from Netherlands and UC San Francisco, depressed individuals were shown to have accelerated cellular aging by nearly six years, suggesting that these people age significantly faster compared with people without the disorder. The study involved 1,095 patients suffering from severe depression alongside 802 people who had recovered from depression and 510 healthy individuals who had no history of the disorder. Researchers measured the length of cell structures called telomeres, which are "caps" at the end of chromosomes that protect the DNA during cell division. For more on telomeres and longevity, see Baxter’s very informative post Aging, Telomeres, and Yoga.

Normally, telomeres shorten with each cell division and this shortening serves as an index of a cell's aging. Thus, telomeres may be an indicator of longer cell life, and by extension, longer overall lifespan. In the above-mentioned study, depressed individuals had significantly shorter telomeres compared with people in the control group suggesting that cellular aging in people with depression is accelerated by several years. The severity of a person's depression as well as a longer duration of symptoms resulted in an even shorter telomere length. Notably, the results held after controlling for other lifestyle variables—including weight, drinking and smoking—that are also known to contribute to aging. While other research has suggested that lifestyle interventions may have significant benefits for the aging process, it remains to be seen as to whether fruitful interventions for depressed individuals would have an impact on depression and reverse the aging process.

People are looking for ways to bring peace and santosha in their lives and santosha seems to be the most sought after principle in the world today (see Santosha: Happiness and Longevity). The good news is that depression is not an inevitable part of aging, and there are many steps and lifestyle changes that a depressed individual can also take to overcome the symptoms and the challenges they face to bring santosha into their lives. One recommendation is to practice yoga asana, meditation and pranayama, all of which have been shown to reduce the impact of exaggerated stress responses and be helpful for people with severe depression (for suggested practices, see Tamasic and Rajasic Depression and other posts on depression by Nina). Research from several groups has already demonstrated the therapeutic effects of yoga, meditation and pranayama in reducing the parameters of stress, including cortisol, thereby bringing about relief from depression.

Researchers and practitioners alike agree that a combination of yoga, meditation and pranayama is a relatively low-risk, high-yield approach not only to reverse depression and aging but also to improve overall health. The above, together with other findings suggest that depression can be turned into happiness to causally influence health and healthy aging. Albert Ellis, the noted American psychologist once remarked, “You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.” So how about using yoga to deconstruct depression and bring santosha in our own lives!

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Yoga for Healthy Aging is Not Science Fiction A Real Life Mission Statement

by Nina 

Field of Mars by Marc Chagall*

“As more people are living longer and fewer are dying young from diseases caused by infections or insufficient food, exponentially more middle-aged and elderly people are suffering from chronic noninfectious diseases that used to be rare or unknown.” —Daniel Liberman

I’m just finishing up the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, a science fiction epic that takes place in the near future about the very first human settlers on Mars. The series spans a period of about 200 years, and several characters you meet at the beginning of the series are still alive at the end. When these characters are in their seventies and eighties, a longevity treatment is developed by Mars scientists that allows the original Mars settlers to continue to live active, healthy lives for an unknown amount of time. Although these characters do develop certain long-term memory problems (mostly about their middle lives), they continue to do productive scientific work, are energetic, physically fit and disease free, and even have active romantic and sex lives. Near the end of the series, a few of them die quite suddenly, not of any long, lingering diseases but very quickly of heart failure. And that seems to be the end that most, if not all, of them, will be facing.

Oh, if only old age was really like that, right? But this science fictional scenario actually exemplifies the very issues I wanted to talk about today. For when we talk about “healthy aging” on our blog, Sax, Nadia, Ann, Coyote, Michel, Maya and others in the Mars trilogy are ideal role models, not because of how long they live but for how healthy, physically active, and intellectually engaged they remain until the ends of their lives.

Lifespan. I guess this is rather obvious, but our “lifespan” is the period of time during which we are alive. But that lifespan could include any number of years spent in poor health. Sax, Nadia, Ann, et al in the Mars trilogy don’t have problems with ill health because in their science fictional world modern medicine can fix almost everything (although one man does die of leukemia). But here in the real world there are many medical conditions that just can’t be cured yet.

Morbidity. Right now, although our lifespans in first world countries have increased significantly due to better nutrition and modern medicine, as Daniel Liberman said in the quote above, middle-aged and elderly people in first world countries can suffer many years of ill health before they die. Lack of exercise, poor eating habits, and stressful lifestyles cause heart disease, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, and other chronic problems. This period of ill health during your lifespan is referred to as morbidity.

Now let’s do a little bit of very simple math:

Lifespan – morbidity = health span

Health Span. To put it in words, your “health span” is equal to your lifespan minus the amount of time you spend in ill health. This is the period in your life during which you are generally healthy and free from serious or chronic illness. For the people in the Mars trilogy, since they are very healthy until they suddenly die of heart failure, their health spans are very close to the length of their lifespans. But I’m sure in real life we all know people who live for years in a very debilitated state, perhaps in a nursing home, and I think we can all agree is not a future we would want for ourselves, if we can help it. (See Longevity vs. Morbidity for information about the epidemic of morbidity in the first world.)

So, to be clear, when we talk about yoga for “healthy aging,” we’re not talking about yoga for increasing your lifespan or your longevity. We’re talking instead about doing what you can to keep your health span as long as possible. And while you are makiing your health span as long as possible, we hope you'll also be making the period of time you spend in ill health near the end of your life as short as possible (this is called "compressed morbidity").

And, yes, we believe that yoga can help with this. Our mission here at YFHA is to explore all the ways that yoga can help foster your physical, mental, and emotional health during your lifespan (see Opening Your Yoga Toolbox). And because we’re not living in a science fictional universe, we must acknowledge that there will be times when ill health is unavoidable. But yoga has sometime valuable to offer you during those times as well, including both spiritual wisdom to guide you and tools for cultivating equanimity that will help see you through hard times.

This is all pretty basic stuff, but it’s worth saying because we want to set realistic expectations. We’ve certainly seen prominent new age health gurus out there claiming that you can “reverse aging,” choose your “biological age,” or “change your relationship with time” with yogic practices. But that really is science fiction. And here in the real world you deserve more than that.

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Satya The Truth About Lies and Healthy Aging

by Ram

Sun Through the Clouds by Brad Gibson

In the Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the yamas that serve as moral, ethical and societal guidelines for a harmonious living. The five positive guidelines help us to behave and relate to our surroundings and environment and to achieve oneness with it. Patanjali considered the yamas as universal vows and preached that they be practiced on all levels: by way of thoughts, actions, and words. Thus, the yamas serve as prized guides to lead a conscious, honest and ethical life. Satya, meaning truth, is one of the five yamas in the yoga sutras. Verse 2.36 defines satya as:

satya pratisthayam kriya phala ashrayatvam

Being well grounded/established (pratisthayam) in truthfulness (satya), the fruits (phala) of actions (kriya) naturally result (ashrayatvam) according to the will of the Yogi. —translation by Swami Jnaneshvara

Satya is also defined in Sanskrit as “sate hitam satyam,” which translates to “The path to truth is ultimate truth itself.” Thus, one who is always truthful in actions, speech, and thoughts, his or her will is naturally fulfilled since such behavior allows a natural flow of goodness or positive feelings. Truth is considered divine and should be spoken to maintain righteousness (dharma in Sanskrit). Truth connotes purity and is superior to silence. If we start living in truth, we may not have to tell lies at all at any point of time. Truth keeps us free from all kinds of emotional turmoil.

Telling the truth significantly improves a person’s mental and physical health, and has a positive impact on health and longevity, according to a “Science of Honesty” study presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention. Anita Kelly and LiJuan Wang of Notre Dame recruited a group of 110 people from 18 to 71 years old, and told them that once a week for ten weeks they’d have to come in and, in a lie detector machine, report how many times in the previous week they had lied. Approximately half the participants were instructed to stop telling both major and minor lies for the duration of the 10-week study. The other half served as a control group that received no special instructions about lying. Both groups came to the laboratory weekly to complete health and relationship measures and to take a polygraph test assessing the number of major and white lies they had told during that week.

The results were astounding. Participants across both groups who lied less in a given week reported their physical health and mental health to be significantly better that week. Participants in the no-lie group reported improvements in their relationships, less trouble sleeping, less tension, fewer headaches, and fewer sore throats. Telling three fewer minor lies a week translated to four fewer mental health complaints, and three fewer physical complaints. According to the authors of the study when you are honest, you feel good about it and life gets better. Associated with this, there is less stress and fewer physical and mental problems.

Research on how lying affects health is scant, but lying is thought to trigger the release of stress hormones, increasing heart rate and blood pressure. Stress reduces the number of your body’s infection-fighting white blood cells, and over the years, could contribute to lower-back pain, tension headaches, a rapid heartbeat, menstrual problems, and even infertility. Moreover, research has linked telling lies to an increased risk of cancer, increased risk of obesity, anxiety, depression, addiction, gambling, poor work satisfaction, and poor relationships (see The Prevalence of Lying in America: Three Studies of Self-Reported Lies. According to these studies, lying and its negative effects are a two-sided problem: liars create physical and emotional problems for themselves and people with these underlying problems are more likely to lie. Lies not only imprison an individual, but the more we lie, the harder we have to work to protect those lies from being discovered. As a result, all the physical, mental and emotional energies are diverted into protecting those lies, and we live in constant fear that can lead to chronic stress, health problems and unhealthy aging

One method that has been suggested for cutting back on lies and telling the truth is to surround yourself with like-minded, honest folks who will encourage you to be a truthful person. There’s an adage “Truth hurts for a little while, but lies hurt forever.” So tell the truth and protect yourself from the insidious damage of chronic stress, as it will help you live healthier and even longer lives.

Satyameva Jayate
(Truth Alone Triumphs)

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