Why Medical Yoga Is Needed For Preventive Healthcare?

Medical doctor teaching yoga and integrated medicine is something very welcome and appealing to most of people and patient;, it builds reliability and trust on medical doctors taking care of integrating different therapeutic exercises and preventive health care therapies.

Non Commnicable Diseases (NCSs) constitute about 40 Million deaths per year, that's about 70% of all deaths globally. Seeing these staggering statistical data for sure we will be ready to adopt the medical yoga concept throughout the world for helping patients and reducing the burder of medical care cost, reduce medications, deaths and disabilities.

The Medical Yoga comes under the category of what is known as CAM or Complementary and Alternative Medicine or Integrative Medicine.

The picture of the typical patient-doctor dynamic that has emerged from numerous studies over the last half century may be summarized as follows:

• About 70% to 90% of all bouts of illness are managed outside the established health care system (through self-care or alternative therapies such as yoga, ayurveda, psychotherapy, acupressure, acupuncture, counseling, homeopathy, chiropractic, folk medicine or spiritual consultation).

• Of those who arrive at a primary health care clinic, over 50% have problems that cannot be classified as a formal disease entity. An estimated 25% to 75% of patients in primary care settings have psychosocial rather than biomedical reasons for their visits (Roberts and Norton, 1952; Stoeckle etal., 1964; Cummings and Vanden Bos, 1981; Kroenke and Mangelsdorff,1989).

• Most of these patients are actually presenting a complaint different from the one they report to the doctor (Cummings and VandenBos, 1981).

Considering the enormous scientific advances over the last century, it is ironic that the established medical system in the Western world has failed to develop a style of medical practice that is sensitive to patients' feelings and needs.

This failure has substantially undermined the doctor's role as a healer. Conquest of the common infective killers, as well as malnutrition, under nutrition, and many other health problems in the west has resulted in a progressive increase in life expectancy.

The difficulties of old age and, for many, the psychological demands of social and economic disadvantage have brought their own burden of stress related clinical problems. For the management of these problems, the medical profession seems poorly equipped.

How Medical Yoga Works?
Under Medical Yoga we incorporate almost all the CAM Therapies together to make synchronized tailor made therapies for different diseases and conditions and then take help of other system of medicine doctors like ayurveda, homoeopathy, acupuncture or naturopathy to see how effective the remedies are in treatment of a particular disease.

Then we use clinical psychological questionnaires to evaluate the mental status of a person and possibilities of anxiety and depression are checked.

At last we plan complete final Integrated Medical Protocol to adopt for that particular patient for his or her health care problems. This is the need of the hour to integrate and use therapies for betterment of patients and improve the quality of life.

Some of the following therapies are usually given under Medical Yoga Category:

• Workplace wellness and stress management programs
• Occupational health programs
• Yoga and yoga therapy programs
• Yoga therapy and therapeutic exercises for different ailments and conditions
• Counseling and therapy programs
• Rehabilitation center: rehabilitation programs like cardiac rehabilitation, respiratory rehabilitation and neurological rehabilitation like stroke rehabilitation, etc.
• Medical hypnotherapy programs
• Meditation techniques and autosuggestions for different diseases
• Therapeutic exercise programs and exercise prescription
• Cognitive behavioral therapies for different psychological and psychiatric ailments
• Stretching anatomy and exercises based on different group of muscles

The article is written by Dr.Shashikant, Integrated Medicine Physician, Vikram Hospital Bengaluru.