Effects of Yogasanas on osteoporosis in postmenopausal women

BACKGROUND: Osteoporosis is commonly encountered by postmenopausal women. There is an increased need for a low cost and efficient treatment alternative to address this population. AIMS: To study the effects of integrated yoga on bone mineral density (BMD) in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. SETTINGS AND DESIGNS: Experimental pre-post study conducted in a community setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 30 females in the age group of 45–62 years suffering from postmenopausal osteoporosis with a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) score of ≤−2.5 underwent a 6 months fully supervised yoga session. All the participants completed the study. Pretraining and posttraining BMD was calculated. Outcome measure: DEXA score at the lumbar spine. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The study was statistically analyzed using paired t-test to see the significance of pretraining and posttraining effects of a yoga session. RESULTS: Improvement in T-score of DEXA scan of −2.55 ± 0.25 at posttraining as compared to a pretraining score of −2.69 ± 0.17. CONCLUSIONS: Integrated yoga is a safe mode of physical activity which includes weight bearing as well as not weight bearing asanas, Pranayama, and suryanamaskar, all of which helps induce improvement in BMD in postmenopausal osteoporotic females.