Matters of the heart are never simple. From heartaches to heartbreaks to heart attacks, managing the heart has never been easy.
Heart health has been and will always be a significant concern for healthcare personnel the world over. Newer drugs, techniques, and lifestyles will be explored, evaluated, researched, and debated to find new ways of keeping the heart safe.
Recent among these efforts is the use of breath as a tool to manage cardiovascular risk. What seems to be picking up speed is the ‘newfound’ technique called cardiac coherence breathing. It involves controlled inhalation, breath holding, and exhalation, typically involving longer, deeper breaths.
How does that work?
Let us look at our heart rate (HR). Our heart normally beats around 60-100 times in a minute. The heart rate is different during rest and changes during exercise and other physical activity, emotional experiences, any kind of stress, and diseases of the heart. The time gap between two successive heartbeats is never exactly the same and varies slightly. This is known as heart rate variability (HRV). A good HRV indicates that the heart is healthy, adapting to the demands of the body by varying the heart rate as and when needed. A low HRV however, indicates that the heart is not able to adapt to the changing needs of the body. A high resting heart rate, also associated with a lower HRV reflects poorly on heart health.
One very important system in our body, known as the autonomic nervous system, has a direct and definitive action on the heart rate. The autonomic nervous system has two divisions - the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in when one is experiencing any situation that the body considers as an emergency or a ‘threat’, the effect of increased sympathetic activity on the heart - a higher heart rate and blood pressure, what is known as a ‘fight or flight response’. The parasympathetic nervous system has the opposite effect and typically slows down the heart rate and blood pressure, making one feel calmer and relaxed - in a ‘rest and digest' mode. With eka.care, you can measure and track your Heart Rate in and keep your heart healthy.
Now, can breathing make the heart healthy?
Studies show that practicing controlled breathing modulates the autonomic nervous system in such a way that the effects of the parasympathetic nervous system begin to dominate as opposed to the sympathetic nervous system(1). Activation of the sympathetic nervous system increases the rate and force of contraction of the heart whereas the parasympathetic nervous system acts in a manner exactly opposite to it. The result – is lower blood pressure and resting heart rate, better management of the heart’s oxygen demand, and overall, a safer environment for the heart.
Higher HRV is seen with parasympathetic domination and implies better cardiovascular health(2). Cardiac coherence exercises have proven to increase HRV and improve cardiovascular fitness.
What about sacredness?
What is less known is that coherence breathing has its roots in ancient Indian texts that have described the benefits of controlled breathing thousands of years ago - namely the Pranayama.
‘Prana’ means the subtle life force energy, ‘Ayama’ means controlling or giving direction.
The ancient texts describe Pranayama as one of the limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. It involves controlling with awareness, of the incoming and outgoing breath. There are many different pranayama techniques, each having a specific effect on the body-mind complex.
Heart health is just one of the benefits of regular practice of controlled breathing, which also has its influence on cognitive, psychological as well as emotional well-being(3).
Studies have reported that regular and continued practice of yoga and pranayama has also been helpful in reducing cholesterol levels and managing body weight - the essential risk factors of heart disease. (6)
Literature suggests that a reduction in the sympathetic tone and an increased parasympathetic response improves exercise capacity, and reduces levels of inflammatory markers like IL-6. Higher HDL cholesterol and reduction in LDL cholesterol levels have been reported among those practicing these techniques7. Improvement in mean arterial blood pressure, blood glucose, and cholesterol levels have been reported as early as 3 months of practice of certain specific types of pranayama8.
Cardiac coherence breathing practiced as a preventive intervention for better heart health -or yoga, practiced as a sacred technique from ancient wisdom to keep the mind-body-spirit complex in harmony – can definitely help solve some if not all matters of the heart.
Cultural appropriation might have turned long-known ancient techniques like Pranayama into Coherence Breathing and Yoganidra4 into Non-Sleep Deep Rest. The silver lining, however, is that age-old wisdom is finding its way back into our lives with scientific validation.
References
1. Tyagi A, Cohen M. Yoga and heart rate variability: A comprehensive review of the literature. Int J Yoga. 2016 Jul-Dec;9(2):97-113. doi: 10.4103/0973-6131.183712. PMID:27512317; PMCID: PMC4959333.
2. Bhaskar L, Kharya C, Deepak KK, Kochupillai V. Assessment of Cardiac Autonomic Tone Following Long Sudarshan Kriya Yoga in Art of Living Practitioners. J Altern Complement Med. 2017 Sep;23(9):705-712. doi: 10.1089/acm.2016.0391. Epub 2017 Jul 10. PMID: 28691853.
3. Tyagi A, Cohen M, Reece J, Telles S, Jones L. Heart Rate Variability, Flow, Mood and Mental Stress During Yoga Practices in Yoga Practitioners, Non-yoga Practitioners and People with Metabolic Syndrome. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2016 Dec;41(4):381-393. doi: 10.1007/s10484-016-9340-2. PMID: 27457341.
4. Devraj JP, Santosh Kumar B, Raja Sriswan M, Jagdish B, Priya BS, Neelu SB, Desai Rao V, Kumar M, Geddam JJB, Hemalatha R. Effect of Yoga Nidra on Blood Pressure, Hs-CRP, and Lipid Profile of Hypertensive Subjects: A Pilot Study. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2021 Dec 30;2021:2858235. doi: 10.1155/2021/2858235. PMID: 35003295; PMCID: PMC8739171.
5. Yoga as a Preventive Intervention for Cardiovascular Diseases and Associated Comorbidities: Open-Label Single Arm Study Kaushal Sharma, Indranill Basu-Ray,Natasha Sayal, Ariana Vora, Sridhar Bammidi, RahulTyagi et al.
6. Sengupta P. Health impacts of yoga and pranayama: a state-of-the-art review. Int J Prev Med. (2012) 3:444–58.
7. Prabhakaran D, Chandrasekaran AM. Yoga for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Nat Rev Cardiol. (2020) 17:536–7. doi:10.1038/s41569-020-0412-x
8. Ahmad N, Hasan S, Goel RK, Chaudhary L. Impact of sudarshan kriya yoga on mean arterial blood pressure and biochemical parameters in medical students. Int J Res Med Sci. (2016) 4:2150. doi:10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20161777