{"id":108413,"date":"2018-01-06T21:14:51","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T15:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org\/?p=108413"},"modified":"2018-01-06T21:14:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T15:44:51","slug":"yoga-helps-young-adults-feel-better-bodies-university-minnesota-study-finds-minnpost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=108413","title":{"rendered":"Yoga helps young adults feel better about their bodies, University of Minnesota study finds | MinnPost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Young adults who regularly practice yoga tend to be more comfortable with their bodies than their non-yoga-practicing peers \u2014 no matter what their level of comfort was before they learned how to do\u00a0various yoga poses, according to\u00a0a new study<\/a>\u00a0from the University of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

In fact, the study found that the association between yoga and improved body satisfaction was particularly strong among individuals with a history of feeling unhappy about their bodies.<\/p>\n

These findings suggest that yoga may be a useful strategy for countering body dissatisfaction, a growing health issue in the United States,\u00a0particularly among adolescents and young adults<\/a>. Body dissatisfaction can lead to many negative psychological and physical problems, including low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders and excessive weight gain.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cBody image is a huge problem in our society, both for the general population and for people with eating disorders,\u201d said\u00a0Dianne Neumark-Sztainer<\/a>, the study\u2019s lead author and head of the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the U of M, in an interview with MinnPost. \u201cWe need interventions that are highly accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade in the making<\/b><\/h4>\n

This isn\u2019t the first study that Neumark-Sztainer \u2014 whose research focuses on adolescent health, nutrition, obesity and eating disorder prevention \u2014 has done on yoga. In\u00a0a study published last October<\/a>, she and her U of M colleagues reported that young adults who practice yoga \u2014 particularly overweight young adults \u2014 are less likely to gain weight over time.<\/p>\n

As with that earlier study, Neumark-Sztainer, got the idea for the current one about a decade ago, when she rekindled her own yoga practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf done correctly, yoga can help you come into your body more, reduce stress, and feel better about your body over all,\u201d she said. \u201cI was really curious to see if the practice would help with improving body image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Neurmark-Sztainer also wondered whether yoga classes might make vulnerable people feel\u00a0worse<\/i>\u00a0about their bodies. Her concern was that they might negatively compare themselves to their yoga instructor or other students in the class, perceiving them as being thinner, stronger and more flexible.<\/p>\n

Study details<\/b><\/h4>\n

For the current study, Neumark-Sztainer and her colleagues analyzed survey responses, taken five years apart, from 1,664 young adults (mean age 31) who had participated in the U of M\u2019s\u00a0Project EAT<\/a>\u00a0(Eating Among Teens and Young Adults), which began surveying young people in Minnesota about their dietary and physical activity habits in the late 1990s.\u00a0The participants answered specific questions about yoga, as well as ones designed to measure how satisfied they were with the shape and appearance of their body.<\/p>\n

\"Dianne<\/div>\n

Almost 23 percent of the women and slightly more than 7 percent of the men \u2014 or about 16 percent of all the participants \u2014 reported practicing at least 30 minutes of yoga per week over the previous year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that those who were practicing yoga showed an improvement in their body satisfaction over the previous five years, and that the improvement was particularly strong among those who had a low level of body satisfaction to begin with \u2014 suggesting that those in greatest need can benefit from this practice,\u201d said Neumark-Sztainer.<\/p>\n

The findings also held after adjusting for the participants\u2019\u00a0body mass index<\/a>\u00a0(BMI).<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the improvement occurred no matter where people received their yoga instruction \u2014 at a gym, at a yoga studio or at home via an online class.<\/p>\n

Frequency of practice did matter, however. \u201cThe more people practiced, the more improvement,\u201d said Neumark-Sztainer \u2014 although, as she and her colleagues point out in their paper, very few of the participants spent more than three hours a week doing yoga.<\/p>\n

Limitations and implications<\/b><\/h4>\n

This study comes with several important caveats. Most notably, it was an\u00a0observational study<\/a>, not an interventional one, so it can\u2019t prove that yoga helps improve body image. Furthermore, participants self-reported the amount of yoga they engaged in each week. Self-reports are not always reliable.<\/p>\n

Still, the study\u2019s findings \u201csupport our previous one about [yoga\u2019s effects] on changes in weight status,\u201d said Neumark-Sztainer, \u201cand the fact that we can see positive changes in both is really promising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further research is needed, she said, to support these findings and to determine what kind of yoga-based interventions might be most effective for improving body satisfaction among young (and older) adults. She also recognizes that yoga is not going to be an option for everyone.<\/p>\n

If you do decide to take up yoga, however, Neumark-Sztainer underscores the importance of finding a class in which you feel comfortable. Make sure the instructor is sensitive to the needs of people with all different body shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n

FMI:\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>You\u2019ll find an abstract of the study\u00a0on the website of the journal Body Image<\/a>, but the full paper is behind a paywall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young adults who regularly practice yoga tend to be more comfortable with their bodies than their non-yoga-practicing peers \u2014 no matter what their level of comfort was before they learned how to do\u00a0various yoga poses, according to\u00a0a new study\u00a0from the University of Minnesota. In fact, the study found that the association between yoga and improved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2224,2225,2226,2227,2228,2229,1527,2230,2231,54,2232],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}