Ancient Yoga is new mantra for weight loss
IANS, Navhind Times
March 24, 2008

Move over crash diets, tummy tucker belts and fat-loss pills. The latest craze in the battle against the bulge is Yoga.

Those who are practicing Yoga are aware that they are not only getting rid of obesity but prevent­ing major diseases like diabetes and coronary heart disease. Yet others are practicing this ancient discipline to lose fat and to gain a figure that would cause envy' to others. "Last year, about 4,300 people took training and therapy at the institute. Fifty per cent of them were there due to obesity," informed Ishwar Basavaraddi, the director of the Morarji De­sai National Institute of Yoga, an autonomous body under the de­partment of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy). AY­USH comes under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Basavaraddi said people are in­creasingly feeling that Yoga is the best preventive method to deal with flab. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 1.6 billion adults (above 15) were overweight globally in 2005 and at least 400 mil­lion were obese. It predicts that by 2015, approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. WHO recently said that the economic consequences of obe­sity are as bad as those due to malnu­trition.

List­ing he­redity, faulty lifestyle, stress and hor­monal imbal­ances as the main reasons for obesity, Basavaraddi said Yoga could easily tackle any lifestyle disease. "One just needs to do a few asa­nas like forward and backward bending, lateral bending, twist­ing and topsy-turvy. If people do these asanas for just 15 every day, they will feel the differ­ence themselves," he said. If obe­sity is due to psychological fac­tors, then meditation is the best way, he added.

"Yoga means freedom from all kinds of suffering. It is the ulti­mate method. It not only treats the individual but the disease, too. It is an important application to cure the body, mind and soul." Such is the demand for Yoga that Basavaraddi said his institute had to request some of its old students to take classes. "We are bombard­ed with requests for Yoga classes both by government and private institutes. And most people at­tend these classes because they are obese." "I have seen that women in the age group of25 to 40 are more concerned about their weight," said Satwinder Kaur, 27, a trainer who passed out from the institute, two years ago. She said people are aware of obesity-related problems and are keen to be disease-free. "They know that obesity could lead to other diseases and believe that Yoga would be able to help them out."

This could be the reason why Rekha Kapur took to Yoga. Both her mother and grandmother are diabetic and she was scared that she would become its vic­tim. "I am very conscious of my health and don't want to take any chances. My friends are tak­ing classes to stay slim and fit. As I am overweight and bordering on obesity, I know I have chances of getting diabetes. So I joined Yoga," she said.

Anup Misra, director and head of the Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases at Fortis Flight Lieutenant Rajan Dhall Hospital, said Yoga could be a good option to reduce obesity. But, he said, it needs to be scien­tifically proved that Yoga could deal with obesity. "Yoga has been tested to help diabetes and hy­pertension patients. But there has been no clear-cut study to prove it could tackle excess weight and obesity," said Misra.

He said a study 'is needed as the urbill1 prevalence of obesity has increased alarmingly. Almost· 50 per cent of adult Indians in Delhi fulfill criteria for either obe­sity or abdominal obesity. "The' prevalence of obesity in children has increased from 16 per cent in 2003-2004 to 29 per cent in 2006," said Misra. It leads to 30 different conditions, including cardiovas­cular diseases, mainly heart dis­eases and stroke, diabetes, cancers of breast and' colon, he added.

But for Satwinder Kaur and her hundreds of students, the belief in Yoga is very strong. "Yoga is the perfect answer for a person look­ing for a cost-effective method, which not only cures them but keeps them fit and thus healthy," she said.