Do­ing yo­ga may be a good way to pro­tect against heart dis­ease, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you can­not do more vig­or­ous ex­er­cise, re­search sug­gests.

A re­view in the Nether­lands of 37 stud­ies in­volv­ing near­ly 3,000 peo­ple found yo­ga was in­de­pen­dent­ly linked to a low­er­ing of heart risk fac­tors such as high blood pres­sure and cho­les­terol.

Yo­ga does not count to­wards the rec­om­mend­ed phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that we should all do each week.

Ex­perts say it may still be ben­e­fi­cial.

Yo­ga is an an­cient form of ex­er­cise that fo­cus­es on strength, flex­i­bil­i­ty and breath­ing to boost phys­i­cal and men­tal well­be­ing.

There are lots of dif­fer­ent types of yo­ga–tantric, Hatha and Ash­tan­ga to name a few–but most are not stren­u­ous enough to count to­wards the 150 min­utes of mod­er­ate-in­ten­si­ty aer­o­bic ac­tiv­i­ty the UK gov­ern­ment says peo­ple should get each week to give our heart and lungs a work­out.

Yo­ga does count as a mus­cle strength­en­ing ex­er­cise–some­thing the same guide­lines say we should do on two or more days a week, every week.

Prof Myr­i­am Hunink, from Eras­mus Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter in Rot­ter­dam, set out to in­ves­ti­gate what ef­fect, if any, yo­ga might have on heart health.

Com­pared with no ex­er­cise, yo­ga had sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits–it was linked to a low­er risk of obe­si­ty, high blood pres­sure and raised cho­les­terol, the Eu­ro­pean Jour­nal of Pre­ven­tive Car­di­ol­o­gy re­ports.

When pitched against oth­er types of ex­er­cise, such as brisk walk­ing or jog­ging, yo­ga was no bet­ter or worse based on the same mea­sures of heart risk.

Prof Hunink said: "These re­sults in­di­cate that yo­ga is po­ten­tial­ly very use­ful and in my view worth pur­su­ing as a risk im­prove­ment prac­tice."

It is not clear why yo­ga might be ben­e­fi­cial, but ex­perts say it could be down to its calm­ing ef­fect. Stress has been linked to heart dis­ease and high blood pres­sure.

Mau­reen Tal­bot, se­nior car­diac nurse at the British Heart Foun­da­tion, said: "The ben­e­fits could be due to work­ing the mus­cles and breath­ing, which can bring more oxy­gen in­to the body, lead­ing to low­er blood pres­sure.

"A larg­er study is rec­om­mend­ed though to as­sess the ef­fects of yo­ga more ful­ly."

She said the ben­e­fits of yo­ga on emo­tion­al health were well-es­tab­lished.

(BBC)