Study of effects of Sudarshan Kriya on Postmenopausal symptoms among central India women population : A preliminary study

Abstract

Background: Menopausal health concerns mainly include the vasomotor symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms, osteoporosis, cancer, sexual problems and urogenital atrophy. Our life style today leads to a lot of stress, depression and anxiety. Prolonged stress can make one experience the symptoms like menopause (though not actually inducing it).Yoga exercise meditation and life style modification have relieved stress and enhanced the quality of life. Sudarshan Kriya (SK) is a rhythmic breathing technique with 4 breath components. It has varied effects on body especially acting by relief of stress. Aims and Objective: Assess the effects of SK on the commonly perceived symptoms experienced by the postmenopausal women in central India. Materials and Methods: A random sample of 156 women was interviewed by administering a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. Questionnaire included 14 frequently occurring symptoms. Stress was scored on Likerts scale to assess the severity. (Score total =lowest 0 and highest 42). Those women doing regular SK for at least more than 1 year before the final menstrual period (n= 79) formed the Study group and women doing SK for less than 1year, women following other health practices, or not following any health practice at all (n=77) belonged to the Control group. Results: Women doing SK were found to be happier and content as compared to controls. SK with vegetarian diet was found effective in lowering the scores. Combining SK with exercises and yoga together can reduce the score to the lowest level. Minimum two years of regular practice was found enough to yield low scores and best quality of menopausal transformation. Conclusion: Initiating SK into the lives of postmenopausal women at the right time can assure a less morbid, more comfortable and a better quality of postmenopausal life. Rather, it has become more and more challenging to find a treatment which is more rewarding and less or non harmful at the same time. Stress depression and anxiety have become highly prevalent in the general population nowadays. Today's life style includes all those things which make us diverge too far from our natural homeostasis, thus leading to lot of stress. 2 Stress actually means feeling under pressure both physically and emotionally. The way our body reacts to a particular situation also varies from person to person. For some it remains reasonably comfortable, while for others it can be a very stressful one. Study backgroundTo cope up with stress our body produces cortisol. Infact, estrogen regulates this cortisol levels. But, during menopause as estrogen decreases, the regulation of cortisol gets affected and stress is experienced more readily. Study conducted elsewhere indicates, that continuous high level of prolonged stress can make one experience symptoms resembling menopause, though not actually inducing it. Yoga, exercise, meditation, life style modification have been found to relieve stress and ease out the menopausal transition thereby enhancing the quality of life. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] S...

Impact of yoga intervention on menopausal symptoms‐specific quality of life and changes in hormonal level among menopausal women

“…25 Hence, it is suggested that yoga breathing-related intervention like SKY can improve the menopause symptoms-related quality of life equivalent to other proven yoga interventions. 26,27 The menopausal women in the present study who practiced for 1-year brisk walking demonstrated no significant decreased in the perception of climacteric symptoms. Whereas regular aerobic exercise or equivalent physical activity of different types has been found to be beneficial in climacteric women experiencing vasomotor symptoms.…”

To Observe the Effect of Yoga on Mental Health and Flexibility in Premenopausal Females

“…Postmenopausal symptoms among women from central India and concluded that Initiating Sudarshan Kriyas into the lives of postmenopausal women at the right time can assure a less morbid, more comfortable and a better quality of postmenopausal life [10] which is also in favour of our study. Vinayak P. Doijad et al (2013) did a study on Effect of Yogic exercises on aerobic capacity (VO2 max) and concluded that yoga practice can be used to perk up cardiorespiratory fitness [11] , which support our result.…”