Have you been staying home more often than usual due to the coronavirus outbreak? How about taking up some yoga exercises while you’re at it?
Regular exercises have been proven to build a strong immune system, which is especially important in a time like this because that means your body will be able to produce antibodies when it comes face to face with the infection.
Staying home to reduce the chances of being exposed to COVID-19 is great but that also means that your body becomes less active, which is not good for your health.
So how can we maintain a good fitness level without coming into contact with a large group of people at the gym or in the park?
Yoga exercises can be done in the comfort of your own disinfected home and away from other sweaty yogis. Depending on the level of endurance you can tolerate, there are many various types of yoga poses to choose from that may suit you. They include the downward-facing dog pose or Adho Mukha Svanasana, the camel pose or Ustrasana, and the reclined spinal twist or Jathara Parivartanasana.
According to American doctor Jeffrey A. Woods, who was recently interviewed by the Journal of Sport and Health Science, regular exercises help the body activate immune cells that prepare it for infections and injuries resulting from physical harm.
Woods even noted that Chinese meditative exercises like Tai Chi and Qigong can result in a bigger “magnitude” and duration of antibody response when done regularly for at least five months.
Other than lowering stress, yoga has also been proven to reduce the amount of virus in our bodies. A study published in the US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, found a significant decrease in viral load among children suffering from HIV after doing yoga for four months.
According to the book titled Harvard Medical School Guide to Yoga, an hour of yoga postures each week can lower stress hormones in the body.
Since there is still very little that we know about the virus and there’s no vaccine for it,
it appears that building a strong immune system is our best bet.
And if you really need to go out of your homes, be sure to put on a mask to protect your health and everyone else’s – whether you’re ill or not.