Yoga For Immune System

Boosting your immune system
Yoga is not only a 5,000-year-old form of exercise but also an integrated way of life. It is meant to affect the physical, mental, and spiritual status of a person. Practicing yoga on a constant basis will result in great benefits to your overall health. While yoga benefits all the systems of the body to a great extent, it is known to have the maximum impact of the immune system. Yoga is a good alternative for if you are interested in knowing how to improve your immune system in order to be able to combat daily ailments such as colds and coughs as well as aches and pains.

What is our immune system?
Simply put, our immune system is a defense mechanism that protects the body from bacteria, viruses, and toxins. While it does have a very simple role, it is in no way an easy one. In fact, most of us at some point or the other attempt to strengthen; after all, it is the key to good health.
Before we delve into how yoga can affect your immune system, let’s consider the factors that weaken the system:

* Being in a toxin-heavy environment
* Consuming foods that have toxins in them
* Bad diet habits and lack of exercise
* Leading extremely stressful lives

Yoga for immune system
Lets address each of the factors for a weak immune system and see how yoga helps to negate them. First, the most commonly practiced form of yoga, also known as hatha yoga, helps to improve the functioning of the immune system by flushing out unnecessary toxins from the body. Second, yoga is a form of exercise and it inculcates discipline. This helps in giving the body the required amount of physical exercise; the discipline taught by yoga helps us in improving our diet and lifestyle habits. Finally, practicing yoga on a regular basis decreases the amounts of stress hormones released in the body, thereby ensuring that the immune system is working effectively against viral and bacterial attacks.

Moreover, some yoga asanas, such as the Tortoise Posture (Kurmasana), if practiced regularly stimulates the thymus gland to produce antibodies. The thymus gland is important in that it is responsible for producing the required antibodies that combat viral and bacterial infections.

Listed below are some of the other ways in which yoga boosts the performance of the immune system:

* Improves circulation and oxygen flow
* Helps in clearing out mucus from the lungs and sinuses
* Increases lung mobility
* Stimulates all internal organs
* Soothes the nervous system