Don’t want to end your days in a nursing home’s wheelchair? Averse to pain? Have little relish for osteonecrosis of the jaw brought on by years of ingesting stomach-upsetting medicines? May we suggest another way? Yoga. Paradoxical as it may seem, yoga—which appears to the uninitiated to be the cessation of outward movement, with its ultimately introspective focus—has in its repertoire the remedy for osteoporosis. We are about to prove this in fine detail.
It would be hard to find a more direct medical application of yoga than to osteoporosis. Bones are strengthened by good diet and sunlight, of course, but that is true of tree trunks too. Force applied to bones stimulates them to grow stronger. The greater the forces applied to a bone, the greater the boney build-up at the point of stress. Wollf’s law, which we will come to again in chapters 5 and 6, states that the architectonic of bone, its structure, follows the lines of force to which that bone is exposed. Since Wollf’s time a persuasive number of studies have shown that, within a bone, levels of different enzymes and biochemical markers of bone synthesis increase abruptly within 10 seconds of adding stress to it. Yoga is a simple, silent, inexpensive, and impact-free way of applying that force exactly as one intends.
Although much research during the past 100 years supports the application of Wollf’s law in yoga, this book contains a summary of the first pilot study that actually demonstrates yoga’s bone-strengthening benefits. The study also describes an additional advantage for the older person with osteoporosis (as well as osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis).1 The usual prescription for osteoporosis is “weight-bearing and impact exercises.” However, most people over 55 have osteoarthritis, and impact exercise is exactly what the rheumatologist did not order.
Yoga safely stresses bones without impact, a solution to this dilemma. With many poses that avoid moving joints altogether, yoga has been shown to strengthen bones without any evidence that it weakens joints. On the contrary, several studies find that yoga ameliorates osteoarthritis. Many poses do stretch joint capsules, ligaments, and sinews, moving selected joints through wider ranges of motion. Yoga actually exerts a positive influence on arthritic joints, internally irrigating and moving cartilage-making tissue both within the fluids of the joint and inside the cartilage itself. (For more detail, please see Yoga for Arthritis.)
But yoga’s advantages do not end there. Almost everyone who practices yoga—including the thousands we have encountered, taught, and treated—reflect a calm sense of well-being, a willingness to accept the differences of others, and an orientation toward peace that makes for a stronger, more flexible, and healthier world.