Effects of Yoga on Metabolic Syndrome
Condition: Metabolic Syndrome
MeSH terms: Metabolic Syndrome; Syndrome
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a clustering of cardiovascular risk factors characterizing
      central obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and high blood pressure. The concept of
      MetS represents the pre-cardiovascular and pre-diabetic pathologic conditions, which has been
      a useful tool in prognosing the development of cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus.
      Importantly, interventions applied at the pre-pathologic stage with MetS would be of great
      clinical and health significance in achieving better preventive and therapeutic outcomes.
      Yoga, a mind-body exercise, has been suggested to have beneficial effects on dyslipidemia,
      hypertension and diabetes. A pilot study has demonstrated the trends in the improvement of
      metabolic parameters in middle-aged adults with MetS but the findings are inconclusive
      because of the small sample size and brief yoga follow-up period (i.e., 2-month). In addition
      to the needs of a better designed randomized controlled trial in studying the beneficial
      effect of yoga in controlling MetS in middle-aged individuals, the investigation on yoga and
      MetS in elderly population has been lacking. This is important as the potential use of yoga
      as lifestyle modification in elderly individuals with MetS will result in significant
      reduction of the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Thus, this study aims to
      examine the efficacy of yoga exercise in improving metabolic abnormalities in middle-aged and
      older adults with MetS. In addition to elderly, middle-aged adults are included in the
      present investigation because of the idea that cardiovascular diseases and diabetes with
      aging can be mostly prevented by intervention at the middle-age. A randomized controlled
      trial with repeated measure design will be conducted to examine the effect of 1-year regular
      yoga training on the MetS parameters in middle-aged and older individuals who are 30-60 and
      60-80 years of age, respectively. Primary outcome measures include waist circumference,
      systolic/diastolic blood pressure, blood glucose, triglyceride, and lipid cholesterol profile
      whereas secondary outcome measures include self-reported stress and depression levels. This
      study is anticipated to provide valuable information in exploring the therapeutic role of
      yoga in managing MetS. As yoga exercise is an economical regimen which can be easily and
      readily applied to large scale of target population, it is of hope to be practically useful
      to relieve the burden on cardiovascular disease and diabetes by introducing yoga lifestyle to
      the management of MetS.
    


Intervention name(s): Yoga Training
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): one-year experimental training (three times per week and one hour per session)
Other intervention name(s): Hatha Yoga Training
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Factorial Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Metabolic Syndrome; Waist circumference; blood pressure; triglyceride; HDL