health

by Nina   by Melina Meza "Research shows that most Americans do not die well, which is to say they do not die the way they say they want to � at home, surrounded by the people who love them. According to data from Medicare, only a third of patients die this way. More than 50 percent spend their final days in hospitals, often in intensive care units, tethered to machines and feeding tubes, or in nursing homes.� �Dan Gorenstein from �How Doctors Die� Yesterday I heard a very moving piece  How Doctors Die on NPR that made me think again about an issue close to my heart: being able to face death with courage. My mother died of breast cancer at age 85, and she was able to die with hospice care at home without any invasive procedures, any time in a nursing home or being �tethered� to any machines. Because I was talking to her doctors for her and coordinating her care, I can testify that this was only possible because my mother was clear-eyed about her condition and was willin...

by Nina Dahlia by Melina Meza It has only struck me recently that while we�ve written about what aging is and the many ways yoga can help foster healthy aging, we�ve never really addressed what �healthy aging� is. So I thought I�d take a moment to give an overview of the thoughts that Baxter and I currently have on this topic. At this point�we�re still just discussing these ideas�we consider healthy aging to have three important aspects: Compressed Morbidity Independence Equanimity And the reason why we�re such proponents of yoga for healthy aging is that we believe yoga can help with all three of these aspects of healthy aging. For now, I�ll just give you a brief overview of how. Compressed Morbidity. Last week I wrote a post Longevity vs. Morbidity comparing the difference between longevity and morbidity. The medical term �morbidity� refers to the period of time you spend in ill health before you die. Obviously we all would like�both for ourselves and for our loved ones�to keep thi...

by Nina Kale by Melina Meza The other day Baxter and I were talking with an editor about a possible book on Yoga for Healthy Aging�isn�t that exciting?�when he said something about healthy aging that really struck me. We were going through the possible definitions of "healthy aging" (look for a post on that topic from me soon) when he mentioned that for a lot of his students, healthy aging meant being able to continue to do the activities they loved. Some examples he gave included a woman who wanted to be able to take her grandchildren on hiking adventures and another who wanted to be able to continue with her intensive gardening work. What's so great about yoga is that a regular yoga asana practice can help with these goals for healthy aging. You can use your yoga practice both to fortify yourself and balance your body to keep yourself in shape to continue doing what you love. Let�s take the example of gardening because that�s something I do a lot myself. Gardening can a...

by Nina   Ice by Philip Amdal �Stated succinctly, lower mortality is being replaced by higher morbidity (ill health).� �Daniel Lieberman, from The Story of the Human Body For some time now I�ve been meaning to write about the difference between longevity (the number of years you live) and morbidity (the number of years you spend in ill health). I think it�s an important topic because morbidity, not longevity, is the issue we�re trying to address here on this blog. I�ve definitely had people challenge me about the longevity issue, saying for example, that if overweight people live just as long as thinner people, what�s the problem? Well, the answer is that the number of years you live is not the whole story. It�s also important to consider what your quality of life might be during your lifetime, especially your later years. �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 p...

by Nina Just the other day, I got this interesting request for information on using props. Another local yoga instructor and I live in a remote/rural area, and attending high quality trainings is difficult at best. We've been looking for a training that focuses on the use of props, but we've had no luck. We are wondering if you could address in your blog, or recommend a good book, about the use of props for seniors. We are looking to create a more supportive class for seniors without taking them straight to a chair. Well, dear reader, you�re in luck. Because it just so happens that I was trained in the Iyengar style of yoga, and, in fact, the use of props is a modern invention generally credited to B.K.S. Iyengar himself! As the story goes, at the age of 18 (1937), Iyengar was sent by his guru, Krishnamacharya, to Pune to spread the teaching of yoga to �householders .� Observing that his new students�typically older and stiffer than the boys Iyengar had been training with at th...

by Nina Reclining Nude, back by Henri Matisse A recent New Times article Scoliosis Can Hit Well Past Adolescence by Jane Brody confirmed something I have been observing in the yoga community: late-onset scoliosis is quite common in older people. I developed the problem myself in my fifties, so I�m quite aware of the condition, and I�ve noticed a large number of other older yoga practitioners with the same problem. Here�s what Jane Brody said about this: "Although scoliosis is generally thought of as a problem of adolescents, who often require bracing or surgery to correct the curvature, the condition is actually far more prevalent in older adults. In a study by orthopedists at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn of 75 healthy volunteers older than age 60, fully 68 percent had spinal deformities that met the definition of scoliosis: a curvature deviating from the vertical by more than 10 degrees. " Even a mild version of scoliosis can result in chronic pain of different typ...

by Nina Sun Behind Clouds by Melina Meza One of the worst fears I think we all share about getting older is of developing dementia. Just recently I had a long phone conversation with a woman who is trying to deal with a mother in the early stages of Alzheimer�s Disease, and it was just so sad. I had some advice for her, but no solutions, of course. Then I heard a news piece on NPR �Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep�   that gave me  glimmer of hope. For a very long time, scientists have been trying to figure out the purpose of sleep. Now, a recent study � Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain �  by University of Rochester researchers that was published in Science Magazine proposed a fascinating new theory about sleep. The researchers discovered that while you are asleep, your brain clears out harmful toxins! During sleep there is a dramatic increase in  flow of cerebrospinal fluid in your brain, and this washes away the toxic waste ...

by Nina Just a quick announcement today about some research findings I think you�ll all enjoy learning about. Baxter and I read about a recent study , designed by Maria G. Araneta, PhD, MPH, of the University of California, San Diego, to determine whether obese women lose fat from less intense exercise instead of aerobic activity. Although not a huge study, the groups were larger than most of those we see in recent studies, with the yoga group of 88 having a mean age of 55 years with an average BMI of 36 kg/m2 and the stretch group of 83 having a mean age of 54 years with an average BMI of 32.5 kg/m2. Along with her co-authors Matthew A. Allison, MD, MPH, Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD, and Alka M. Kanaya, MD, Dr. Araneta presented the results at the 73rd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in Chicago (June 21-25). And the results showed that the practitioners of restorative yoga lost significantly more subcutaneous fat over the initial six months of the study. They ...

by Nina Trees in the Ocean by Brad Gibson Today in my weekly yoga class, my teacher asked me to demonstrate a pose�Marichyasana 2�that I used to be able to do. But because the arthritis in my right hip prevents me from taking Half Lotus position (which I used to do with ease), I had to turn him down. It got me thinking. Naturally, not being able to get into Half Lotus on one side also means that Full Lotus is also unavailable to me. Even if one day I get a hip replacement (I�m hoping that won�t be necessary because so far I�m not getting any worse, thanks in part to yoga), I still won�t be able to do Lotus. So, well, that�s it for me, folks!  As some of you may know by now, I�ve been working on non-holding (see Non-Holdiing (Aparigrapha) ) by getting rid of objects that I have no use for but to which I have an emotional attachment. So I decided today that I should just let go of Lotus pose (and all its variations, such as, Arda Padma Paschimottansana) in the same spirit. And I said...

by Nina It�s no secret that I�m a huge fan of supported inverted yoga poses. I starting raving about them in the early days of Yoga for Healthy Aging in my post Just In Time for the Holidays: Inverted Poses , going on and on about how these poses are so beneficial for stress management (and also for circulation). Later on, I wrote in detail about why�from a scientific perspective�these posts are so effective at reducing stress in my post Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors . But if you�re newer to yoga or can�t do the classic inverted poses, Headstand and Shoulderstand (or just can�t get comfortable in them), you might be wondering: how does all this apply to you? Well, I�m here today to assure you that with certain exceptions due to medical conditions (see Cautions for Inversions ), everyone can do at least some of the supported inverted yoga poses. That�s because in yoga an inverted pose is any pose where your heart is higher than your head. So in addition to �full� inversions suc...