Keep diabetes under control
Diabetes is caused when your blood cells do not respond to insulin produced in the body. When you practice a regular yoga asanas and pranayama, your body starts responding to insulin, helping to reduce your blood glucose. Yoga also helps improve blood circulation in your body, particularly in the arms and legs, where diabetic patients most commonly encounter problems. It is an excellent way to fight stress, both at the body and mind level, which in turn helps keep one’s glucose levels down.
Diabetes is a condition where the amount of glucose in your blood is too high because the body cannot use it properly.
This is because your pancreas doesn’t produce any insulin, or not enough insulin, to help glucose enter your body’s cells – or the insulin that is produced does not work properly (known as insulin resistance).
There are tow main types of diabetes; type 1, type 2 . All types are complex and serious.
Diabetes can be managed well but the potential complications are the same for type 1 and type 2 diabetes including heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, limb amputation, depression, anxiety and blindness.
Know diabetes
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Is the leading cause of blindness in working age adults
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Is a leading cause of kidney failure and dialysis
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Increases the risk of heart attacks and stroke by up to 4 times
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Is a major cause of limb amputations
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Affects mental health as well as physical health. Depression, anxiety and distress occur in more than 30% of all people with diabetes
Symptoms
In type 1 diabetes, symptoms are often sudden and can be life-threatening; therefore it is usually diagnosed quite quickly. In type 2 diabetes, many people have no symptoms at all, while other signs can go unnoticed being seen as part of ‘getting older’.
Therefore, by the time symptoms are noticed, complications of diabetes may already be present.
Common symptoms include:
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Being more thirsty than usual
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Passing more urine
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Feeling tired and lethargic
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Always feeling hungry
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Having cuts that heal slowly
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Itching, skin infections
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Blurred vision
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Unexplained weight loss (type 1)
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Gradually putting on weight (type 2)
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Mood swings
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Headaches
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Feeling dizzy
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Leg cramps
Note: This information is of a general nature only and should not be substituted for medical advice or used to alter medical therapy. It does not replace consultations with qualified healthcare professionals to meet your individual medical needs.
Yoga helps to fight diabetes
Regular yoga practice can help reduce the level of sugar in the blood, along with lowering blood pressure, keeping your weight in check, reducing the severity of the symptoms and slowing the rate of progression of the disease. It also lessens the possibility of further complications.
Stress is one of the major reasons for diabetes. It increases the secretion of glucagon (a hormone responsible for increasing blood glucose levels) in the body.
The consistent practice of yog asanas, pranayam and a few minutes of meditation can help reduce stress in the mind and protect the body from its adverse effects. This, in turn, reducing the amount of glucagon and improve the action of insulin.
The practice of yoga is also a proven to lose weight and slow the process of fat accumulation.
Surya Namaskar and Kapalbhati Pranayam are some of the most effective yoga poses that aid weight loss. Since obesity is a major contributing factor for diabetes, doing yoga to keep your weight in check is the key.
Keep regular practice of these most effective yoga poses that help to keep diabetes under control -
Child Pose (Balasan), Frog Pose ( Mandukasan), Half spinal twist pose (Ardh Matsyendasan), Twisted Pose (Vakrasan), The Psychic Pose (Yog Mudrasan).