You may have heard the old expression that her heart was aflutter meaning that she was excited about something positive. In this context, it was usually applied to women.
Well, there’s another context and meaning that is dangerous for both women and men and that’s when you have an irregular heart rhythm which is called atrial fibrillation. This version of heart aflutter can lead to negative consequences, such as, irregular pulse, shortness of breath, tiredness, chest pains and dizziness.
Atrial fibrillation is actually responsible for up to 30% of strokes while it doubles the risk for premature death.
Doctors will usually treat this condition with powerful drugs or a pacemaker.
There’s another and surprising option drugless option you can use to control AFib and that’s doing yoga and breathing exercises. A study validating the power of yoga and breathing was reported at the European Society of Cardiology Congress last August.
In the study there were 538 participants with heart problems. One group practiced yoga for 30 minutes every other day for four months. They were also encouraged to practice yoga at home.
During the weeks the group was doing yoga, they had around eight heart rhythm episodes while the non-yoga group averaged 15 episodes.
While doing yoga and breathing was as effective as the drugs normally used to treat this condition, the yoga group reported other benefits that the drug group didn’t have: their blood pressure fell, they reported having higher energy levels, better moods and less anxiety and depression.
Not bad for 30 minutes of yoga and doing breathing exercise every other day. So…yoga mat anyone?
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