The Respiratory System Aging and Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

Grasses in the Mist by Marie Lossky

It’s very easy to take your breath for granted—after all, it is the first action that states to the world you have arrived, with the cry you make as you take your very first breath. And once your breath gets going, you usually don’t have to give it any conscious thought for most of your life. Yet, as with all systems of the body, the respiratory system undergoes age-related changes to its various components, such as tissues, tubes, muscles and joints, affecting how efficiently they do their jobs. These changes can decrease your capacity both to take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. And a decreased capacity to breathe gradually reduces your ability to physically exert yourself—whether that is on the tennis court or climbing a long flight of stairs—causing shortness of breath and decreasing your overall endurance.

You can use both asanas and breath practices to maintain the health of your respiratory system overall. In general, asanas that move your spine in all directions of movement, and that stretch and strengthen the muscles all around your upper torso, will help support your respiratory system. And practice breath practices that lengthen your inhalation and exhalation, such as gradual lengthening of equal breath, or that include rapid inhalations and exhalations, like Skull Shining breath, can also help.

Airways. With age, the elastic quality of your airways gradually declines, reducing the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out of your lungs. This will eventually lower the amounts of oxygen in your blood needed for fuel. In the larger airways, the small hairs that move mucus and small particles up towards your mouth so you can cough or spit them out start to work less effectively. Plus, the nerves in the airways that trigger the cough reflex become less sensitive to smoke, bacteria, and viruses. The combination of these two changes in your larger airways increases your risk of developing respiratory infections or damage to your lungs.

By practicing poses that move your neck and upper spine in all their directions of movement, you can use your asana practice to maintain flexibility and movement in your airways. And the breath practices that foster health of your respiratory system will all have a beneficial effect on your airways.

Lungs. After the age of 25 or so, the ability of your lungs to function gradually declines. In general, exchange of gases between the air and blood stream happens less efficiently and provides reduced immune functioning. As the elastic tissue deteriorates, this reduces the ability of your lungs to fill and empty, reducing the size of your largest breath, and moves the air in and out more slowly. To support the functioning of your lungs, focus on breath practices that lengthen your exhalations and inhalations.

Respiratory Muscles and Diaphragm. Age-related changes in the muscles that enable you to breathe, including the muscles that support your ribs (intercostal muscles) and your respiratory diaphragm, can make the muscles weaker and smaller. This reduces your capacity to take full inhalations and exhalations, as well as your ability to breathe quickly. These changes can also contribute to poor coughing, which, along with changes in your large airways, increases your risk of respiratory infections. By practicing yoga poses that address your respiratory muscles, including forward bends, backbends, sidebends, and spinal twists, you can help maintain their strength. Breath practices that lengthen your inhalations and exhalations can also help strengthen your diaphragm and intercostal muscles.

Chest Cavity. Age-related changes to bones, fascia and ligaments of your chest wall, such as arthritis in joints of chest and osteoporosis of ribs and vertebrae, and thoracic spine deformities, such as kyphosis, and scoliosis, can lead to stiffness of the chest wall, leading to increased work of breathing. Combined with age-related changes to lung tissue and the muscles of breathing, this reduces the amount of air you can inhale and exhale. You can improve mobility and strength in your chest cavity by practicing yoga poses that stretch and strengthen the muscles all around the upper torso. To keep the bones of your spine strong and prevent fractures that could limit chest movement, focus on doing static holds of poses that take your spine in all directions of movement (see Strength Building: How Long to Hold Poses). To increase the amount of air you can inhale and exhale, try practicing gradual lengthening of equal breath.

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Clarification Aging Yoga and Science

by Brad

Winter Trees by Brad Gibson

Today’s post is largely in response to the question: How would one go about investigating the effects of yoga on aging scientifically? Before tackling this question—which I will get to in the next week or two—I will first attempt to define or at least discuss a few key terms and assumptions. The reasons for this will hopefully become clear.

In the broadest the terms, “aging” applies to how systems or entities change with time. To inanimate objects, such as your new car or jacket, this begins right after it’s manufactured or, more relevantly, after you bought it. This process of aging can be rapid or slow (weeks, months, or years), and depends a lot on what the object is and what it was designed for. In biological systems (including us), we typically think of aging as starting after development, or post-puberty in our case. We also tend to associate aging with a decline and/or loss of functions, both physical and mental. However, aging can include more positive properties or phenotypes, such as increased knowledge and skill sets, and it isn’t all that hard to name a few that fit into this category. But in most biological scientific studies of aging, we refer to aging mostly in the former sense, i.e., an accumulation of mostly pathological properties, such memory loss, frailty, neurodegenerative diseases, bone loss, muscle loss, and so on. Surprisingly there are quite a few competing theories of basic aging, such as error accumulation, telomere shortening, antagonistic pleiotrophy, free-radical theory, and entropy, just to name a few. What all (or most) of these theories seek to address is the underlying molecular and physiological event that drives these largely negative processes. 

The term “successful aging” is more recent, having come into wide use in the last few decades. If you want to read more about this concept, I found the first chapter in the book Successful Aging: Perspectives from the Behavioral Sciences by Paul and Margaret Baltes quite useful (for information see Cambridge ebooks). 

Even last week as I read the science section of the New York Times (see NY Times), I came across a short review of a just-published study on “Alcohol Consumption at Midlife and Successful Ageing in Women: A Prospective Cohort Analysis in the Nurses Health Study” (see PLOS). In this prospective correlative study, researchers at Harvard demonstrated that a modest increase in successful aging for women who consumed small, but regular amount of alcohol at mid-life. (Maybe a glass of wine after yoga class isn’t such a bad idea after all?). Here they defined "successful aging" in a more precise manner: "as being free of 11 major chronic diseases and having no major cognitive impairment, physical impairment, or mental health limitations." Of course, this more operational definition to successful aging made it easier to make clear and objective distinctions among the woman in this group, typical of population based epidemiological studies. 

When we chose the term ‘healthy aging’ for this blog, the purpose was to provide information not on just how practicing yoga might help to avoid or reduce your chances of acquiring one or more of these age-related losses, but also to better manage and minimize their impact when they occur. Indeed, this is the position most of us are in, whether is through the vagaries of our genetic background, chance, past behavior, or whatever. (This reminds me of the joke: Q: What’s the best thing you can do to insure a long life? A: Choose your parents well.) So as I go back and reconsider the original question on how science can study the relationship of yoga and aging, I will reframe this question a bit: How can science study the effects of yoga on our overall physical and mental health as we age? I’ll tackle this question next time…. But as a preview, there are few good places to start, including the 2009 pilot study in Lancet on comprehensive lifestyle changes and telomere length (a biomarker of aging and cellular senescence) and several recently funded NIH studies examining yoga’s effects on depression, fatigue, and menopause. 

And please leave any questions for the Friday Q&A in the comments.

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