Yoga has many fans around the world, because it relaxes, gives strength, helps to collect thoughts. A team of Norwegian scientists led by Professor Fahri Saatcioglu from the University of Oslo has proven that yoga affects gene expression and improves immune function.
“In the course of our research, it turned out that yoga improves the functioning of the body at the molecular level. The effects are immediate after training and are long-term,”the researchers report in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
In order to understand why, from the point of view of biology, performing asanas and meditations has such a beneficial effect on the human body, scientists conducted an experiment with the participation of 10 people. Each volunteer did yoga for the first two days between 6:30 am and 8:30 am.
And in the next two days, the participants walked in nature, listening to music (jazz or classical), for the same two hours. At the beginning and at the end of each training session, blood was drawn from them for analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells.
Scientists found that the changes in gene expression in both cases are far from the same: after yoga, the number of working genes in immune cells was three times more than on walking - 111 and 38, respectively.
Sotzioglu and his colleagues previously knew that relaxation exercises could affect gene expression, but they didn't think the effect would be instantaneous. A similar study was conducted in 2008 by a team from Massachusetts Hospital.
Then doctors proved that exercises like yoga and Pilates stimulate the transformation of hereditary information from a gene into RNA or protein, which is the expression of genes.
The Norwegian team confirmed this study and proved the immediate effect of this process on the body's immune system.
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