Fitness News

Yoga for Business

Professionals Turn to Yoga - for health and business

Jacksonville Business Journal - by Kimberly Morrison

Ken Jacobs wasn’t looking for a ticket to nirvana when he embarked on a journey into the ancient spiritual tradition of yoga.

As a partner at Gray Robinson PA, long hours and high stress had begun to take a toll on his body. He took to running for relief from tension in his neck, shoulders and back, but instead ended up with knee pain and shin splints.

Like a good attorney, he switched strategies and headed for a yoga class at his gym. Three years later, he and a dozen other attorneys at his firm were practicing yoga together on a hotel lawn to get focused before an intense year-end law firm meeting.

Among the 16 million Americans practicing yoga, they represent a new class of yogis. They are neither the obnoxious yoga yuppie breed sporting $98 Lululemon yogawear, nor the incense-burning, Maharishi-loving hippie in search of enlightenment. These overworked corporate types are finding a practical application for yoga in their work life: balance.

“It’s absolutely the opposite of what I do all day long,” said Daniel Miller, agency owner of Brightway Insurance, who has been practicing yoga for almost three years. “But it’s what keeps me sane.”

Miller, a former wrestler, never thought he’d be a “yoga person.” But after a shoulder injury left him unable to lift weights, a friend recommended power yoga, an athletic form practiced in a heated room. He tried it and became instantly hooked.

The incarnation of yoga in the past decade from warm and fuzzy to extreme styles like power yoga, a generic name for Bikram, Baptiste and otherwise “hot yoga” styles, has attracted a legion of new converts. These days, it’s all about stress relief.

In the do-more-with-less, multitasking, never-ending-inbox, work-yourself-into-an-early-grave culture of corporate America, achieving work-life balance can be akin to discovering the Holy Grail. But working stiffs are finding that the monotask of yoga serves as their corporate antidote, gently forcing them to be still, quiet and clear their mental chatter while at the same time getting a serious workout.

“We like to call ourselves professional worriers,” Jacobs said. “With all that expectation and stress, you need something to avoid burnout, get your mind focused and centered. Yoga teaches that your mind is always occupied by worries about the future or regrets about the past, and if you can witness that, you can focus on now.”

Jacobs is fresh off a week at Kripalu, a 160,000-square-foot yoga retreat center in Stockbridge, Mass., founded by a yoga master in the 1960s. The center immerses yogis in an organic-only, cell phone-less, silent-breakfast, no-locks-on-the-doors experience meant to embody the yoga life. For Jacobs, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

“I’m a managing partner, but also have a full caseload, kids’ activities, I coach my son’s baseball team and have a daughter in theater, so I’m busy,” Jacobs said. “You have to make it a priority to make time for yourself.”

It can be an awkward first step for some, but often leaps from a practice to a lifestyle.

Miller has recently added a period of silence to his daily routine as a sort of premeditation prep. Josh DeRienzis, vice president of legal affairs for Jacksonville-based PSS World Medical Inc. and a longtime yogi, is a fan of DJ yoga parties where a usually serious and silent practice gets a nightlife makeover. And Jacobs has attended multiple retreats to get deeper into his practice.

“Yoga is no longer simply a singular pursuit but a lifestyle choice and an established part of our health and cultural landscape,” said Bill Harper, publisher of Yoga Journal. The publication’s 2008 market study found that consumption of yoga classes and products, clothing, vacations and media to achieve a yoga life were the driving force behind a $5.7 billion industry, up 87 percent from the magazine’s 2004 study.

Mark White is a yoga teacher, life coach and owner of MBody Yoga. But five years ago, he was a consume-at-all-costs, workaholic information technology architect going through a divorce. Yoga transformed his life.

“I was working 80-plus hours a week, and the way I was dealing with that was running and lifting weights,” White said. “But when it came to dealing with a major life event, those tools weren’t working. I went away for a week of yoga boot camp and I was amazed at how much it helped people transform their lives.”

A year later, he was a certified yoga teacher and was about to open his own studio. Now with two yoga studios, MBody Yoga draws in about 2,000 people a month, more than double the attendance rate a year ago.

Yoga practitioners tend to talk about yoga almost like a miracle drug: “Yoga cured my back!” But those claims are starting to gain scientific support. Most recently, the Boston University School of Medicine found that yoga boosted levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in the brain, which causes a person to feel relaxed without drowsiness while boosting mental alertness.

“I always feel a lot more invigorated when I’m done than when I came in,” said DeRienzis, also a triathlete and an 8-year yoga practitioner. “You come in from a hard day at work and you are fatigued with a million things on your mind, and surprisingly when I come out of there, I always feel energized and refreshed.”

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Sleep Problems and Acid Indigestion

Heartburn and Insomnia - Not a good combination

Sept. 25, 2009 (Health.com) — If you have heartburn, you may want to think twice before taking a sleeping pill for insomnia. A prescription sedative at bedtime may lull you into dreamland, but it may also increase your nighttime exposure to stomach acid, possibly damaging the cells lining the esophagus.

In a new study, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, in Philadelphia, found that people taking the popular sleep aid zolpidem (Ambien) snoozed through nighttime reflux instead of arousing from slumber for the second or two it takes to swallow. Swallowing is the body’s natural defense against the backwash of stomach acids that can bathe the esophagus at night.

“[Swallowing] protects your esophagus because you neutralize the acid with saliva, which is rich in bicarbonate,” explains lead author Anthony J. DiMarino Jr., MD, the William Rorer Professor of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College and the chief of the hospital’s Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

That’s true for people diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition characterized by persistent acid reflux, as well as people who experience only occasional bouts of heartburn.

The study, which was funded in part by AstraZeneca (which makes heartburn drugs), appears in the September issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. One of the coauthors of the study, Karl Doghramji, MD, the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, serves as a consultant to Sanofi-Aventis, the maker of Ambien.

Over time, acid can damage the esophagus Donald O. Castell, MD, a professor of medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, says the study is “extremely important” for GERD patients. “It sends a definite warning that serious levels of acid reflux can occur without detection after a sleeping aid, and that the prolonged acid exposure has the potential to produce injury to the esophageal lining that might not otherwise occur,” he says.

If left untreated, long-term acid reflux can damage the cells lining the esophagus, leading to a precancerous condition known as Barrett’s esophagus, which, in turn, increases the risk of esophageal cancer. Although the study showed that sleeping pills might increase nighttime exposure to stomach acid, it’s not clear if they increase the risk of Barrett’s esophagus or other conditions. (Ambien is only recommended for short-term use.) The study was also relatively small, the researchers note, and it only looked at acid reflux for two nights.

However, it may be the first study to systematically examine the effect of taking a sleep aid on nocturnal acid exposure, says Dr. Castell, who was not involved in the study. “In this sense, a good night’s sleep may be dangerous.”

More than 40% of Americans have GERD, which occurs when the muscle between the esophagus and stomach is weak or relaxes inappropriately. This allows the acid contents in the stomach to back up, or “reflux,” into the esophagus, typically causing heartburn and other symptoms. About one-third of Americans have insomnia, and 15% have used prescription or over-the-counter medications to help them sleep.

Womens Exercise Varies with Age

Women's Exercise Priorities Vary With Life Stages

Self-care often loses out to family obligations, analysis finds. 

The amount of exercise women get changes as they go through different life phases, according to Australian researchers. In an analysis of data from more than 40,000 women, lower levels of physical activity were associated with marriage and childbirth in young women and declining health in older women. But, the researchers found, activity levels often increased in women who were retired or widowed.

"By recognizing the life events that are associated with decreases in activity, women could be alerted to the risk," lead author Wendy Brown, a professor at the University of Queensland, said in a news release from the Center for Advancing Health. "For example, if you are an older woman with heart disease or diabetes, it is vitally important to stay active, as physical activity can help to manage those conditions."

Brown suggested that widowed women may use increased physical activity as a way to cope with the loss of their spouse. The study also found that young women who suffer harassment at work tend to boost their activity levels, and this may be their way of coping with the stress of the situation.

The study appears in a recent online edition of the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
"Situations like marriage and children change the amount of expendable time during the day," Amy Eyler, a professor of community health at St. Louis University, said in the news release. "It may vary culturally, but having children almost always decreases the feeling of self-priority for women."

Eyler added: "Figuring out ways to maintain regular physical activity throughout the life cycle is important. Even a walk around the block with a good friend can do wonders for both mental and physical health."

The U.S. National Women's Health Information Center has more about physical activity.
(SOURCE: Center for Advancing Health, news release, Aug. 13, 2009)

More Exercise less pain

Some estimates are that up to 80 per cent of people suffer from chronic lower back pain some time or another - and you can reduce the pain by exercising more. And aging will increase the pain and discomfort of all back problems that are left without therapy. But there are anti aging or youthing solutions to common back issues - exercise!

Researchers have found that the more back pain sufferers exercise, the greater they experience pain relief, and their quality of life improves. Those who go to the gym four days a week report greater pain relief than those who go just twice or three times a week. One point is that any exercise is better that NO exercise.

Researchers from the University of Alberta made the discovery when they studied the lifestyles of 240 men and women with chronic back pain. Regular gym goers reported 28 per cent less pain and 36 per cent improved mobility compared with those who go only two or three times a week. Everyone in the group was exercising with weights.

(Source: American College of Sports Medicines annual conference, Seattle, Washington; May 30, 2009).