WASHINGTON: A prominent Indian-American cardiologist will present a new method at the upcoming Indian Science Congress (ISC) in Bengaluru to test the effectiveness of yoga as an intervention for treating many diseases.
Indranill Basu Ray, a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Veterans Hospital in Memphis, US, will present the "new protocol" at the 107th ISC to be held from January 3-7.
"Despite understanding the molecular mechanism, large trials of yoga using the standard protocol called RCT (Randomised Control Trials) has not shown as much promise as expected," said Ray.
"We proved tobacco was toxic not by doing clinical trials, but by following people who smoke and showing they develop a particular type of lung cancer -- it would have been almost impossible to prove this using an RCT other than being phenomenally costly," he said.
Ray claimed that "same is true for yoga, as a person who has a disease like hypertension that is due to chronic adaptation to stress may be treated with a yoga protocol to eliminate the disease."
With advanced molecular biology and commercially available wearable devices, the adaptive stress-response can be measured with yoga by monitoring hormone levels, a well-established biomarker of stress, Kolkata-born Ray said.
This, he claimed, may also be done through complementary physiological signals such as electrodermal activity and heart rate variability, proxies for the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system.
"It is the chronic arousal of this system due to adaptation to chronic stress that causes hypertension," Ray added.