Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, they're
Speaker 1: brain stuff, Lauren Bogo bam here. Some like their yoga
Speaker 1: hot a hundred and five degrees fahrenheit or forty degrees
Speaker 1: celsius to be exact, but according to a study published
Speaker 1: in the journal Experimental Physiology, heat might have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the style's health benefits. Yoga is an ancient
Speaker 1: Indian practice. It dates back thousands of years. As William J.
Speaker 1: Brad describes in the Science of Yoga The Risks of Rewards.
Speaker 1: Its roots lay in quote an obscure cult steeped in
Speaker 1: magic and eroticism, but the practice has evolved over time,
Speaker 1: reaching the West in the mid nineteenth century and exploding
Speaker 1: in America during the nineteen sixties. Today, you'll find everything
Speaker 1: from spiritual yoga practices that invoke can do traditions to
Speaker 1: secularized models that target everyone from pro wrestling fans to
Speaker 1: death metal heads. And then there's hot yoga, most notably
Speaker 1: Bickram Yoga, founded by Calcutta born Bickram Chowdery in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. Bickroom Yoga centers around twenty six poses or
Speaker 1: asanas performed in a precisely heated forty six community studio
Speaker 1: for around ninety minutes of sweaty action. The official Bickram
Speaker 1: Yoga website claims that the heat helps you practice your
Speaker 1: postures optimally. But while critics have previously raised concerns over
Speaker 1: elevated body temperatures, no study has actually isolated the effects
Speaker 1: of heat in the practice. That's according to the authors
Speaker 1: of the aforementioned study, carried out at Texas State University
Speaker 1: and the University of Texas at Austin. They brought in
Speaker 1: eighty study participants, ages forty to sixty, all of whom
Speaker 1: had lived sedentary lifestyles for at least six months following
Speaker 1: health screenings. They randomized the participants into three groups, a
Speaker 1: thermonutral group, a heated group, and a control group. For
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, the heated group attended three Bikram Yoga classes
Speaker 1: a week in a traditional hot room, while the thermoneutral
Speaker 1: group attended the same number of classes only under you
Speaker 1: guessed at room temperature conditions that's seventy three degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or about twenty three degrees celsius. The control group did nothing.
Speaker 1: In the end, fifty of the eighty two subjects completed
Speaker 1: the interventions. And return for follow up testing nineteen hot,
Speaker 1: fourteen thermo neutral, and nineteen control. The researchers compared their
Speaker 1: findings and determined the Bickroom yoga can reduce changes in
Speaker 1: blood vessel lining linked to heart disease, and that it
Speaker 1: can possibly delay the build up of arterial plaque, which
Speaker 1: can lead to heart attack or stroke. But here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: The benefits were present in both the heat and room
Speaker 1: temperature groups, indicating that heated rooms that Bickroom calls torture
Speaker 1: chambers don't actually make a difference. That being said, many
Speaker 1: yoga practitioners do like it hot and sweaty, even amid
Speaker 1: legal scandals surrounding its founder. Bickram Yoga boasts studios around
Speaker 1: the world, and that's in addition to various other non
Speaker 1: affiliated hot yoga styles. If these latest findings hold true, however,
Speaker 1: that hot room might be no more essential to the
Speaker 1: practice than an iPod shuffle full of the traditional Kurton
Speaker 1: music or Campble corpse. Take a pick Today's So It
Speaker 1: was written by Robert Lamb and produced by Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other hot topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet tostof works dot com,