shock! Study: Yoga may cause more injuries than thought

As a way to help the body stretch and relax and the mind settle, yoga is a fitness exercise that many people like to do. However, no matter what kind of exercise, if the warm-up is not sufficient or it is performed improperly, it may cause sports injuries. The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies recently published a new study from Mercy College in the United States. The research team found that although yoga traditionally gives people the impression of being slow and gentle, the risk of injury may be higher than expected.

In the study, the authors recruited 354 subjects from two yoga studios and used questionnaires to investigate their age, experience, number of hours per week doing yoga, intensity of yoga, and whether they experienced any form of pain or injury. One year later, the subjects were asked to fill out the same questionnaire again for a follow-up survey.

The experimental results showed that 10% of the subjects experienced musculoskeletal pain. When they first started yoga, most of the pain was concentrated in the upper limbs, such as shoulders and arms. In 21% of the subjects, existing injuries became more severe. In more than a third of the subjects, pain persisted for more than three months and may have led them to decide to give up yoga classes altogether.

The study was published on the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies

This article is from ELSEVIER Global Pharmaceutical News