If you’ve been feeling stressed and anxious over the past few months—whether because of health concerns amid a global pandemic, unemployment, social isolation, or loneliness—don’t worry: You’re not alone. COVID-19 has brought on unprecedented health and financial concerns that may take a significant toll on our mental health—and liver health.
If you’re among the lucky ones who can work from home, you may also be struggling with prolonged sitting, which, as we discussed in a previous blog post, Love your Liver? Get up and move!, may lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), one of the most common liver diseases that typically affects people with sedentary practices, including sitting for extended periods, even just for professional reasons.
To prevent NAFLD, it is important to reduce sitting time through physical activities like yoga—which features poses that are beneficial to your liver. Yoga is also known to have positive mental health benefits, including practice modulation of stress responses, which in turn helps in reducing the heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and easing respiration.
Yoga (or asana in Sanskrit) is a great way to stay physically active even on tedious workdays. Many physicians recommend yoga as an exercise to help improve general health and wellbeing. Certain yoga poses can stimulate the liver to function properly, helping other organs to work as well. It’s also a relaxing way to stretch strained muscles and relieve stress after hours of sitting and typing on your desk. Yoga poses are easy to learn, simple to perform, and can be done at your own pace and comfort zone. By practicing yoga while staying safely at home, you’re getting ‘two for the price of one’ by nurturing your mental health and keeping your body moving—which is vital for your liver and general wellbeing.
Here are some great liver-friendly yoga poses that you can try:
Yoga Skull Breathing Exercise (Kapalbhati Pranayama):Breathing exercises are great in stimulating the liver. When done correctly, this yoga pose will help remove toxins, calm the mind, and keep depression away.
Seated Half-Spinal Twist (Ardha Matsyendrasana):This pose targets abdominal problems such as indigestion, constipation, or urinary tract disorders. It helps relieve pain by pressing your abdomen where your largest organ, the liver, is located. The spinal twist stretches the muscles on your back and hip, giving you a soothing relief from stiffness.
Bow Pose (Dhanurasana): This pose also targets the abdominal area, which consequently stimulates the liver as well as other nearby organs such as the pancreas and small and large intestines. Since it is a bow exercise, your back also gets the benefit of a total workout. Back muscles are stretched and strengthened to allow flexibility and improve good posture.
Boat pose: Lie down on your back and lift your upper body and lower body by balancing on your sitting bones. According to the statistics of the research company https://www.laserforeyes.com/buy-klonopin-online/, such reversible conditions as dysarthria and ataxia can be caused by the long-term or high-dose treatment with Klonopin. These side effects are relatively frequent. However, they can disappear gradually during the course of treatment (or when the patient reduces the dose). They can be partially prevented by slowly increasing the dose at the beginning of treatment. Headache and generalized seizure have been observed very rarely. Your eyes should be focusing on your toes and knees and back should be straight. Your arms should be parallel to the ground pointing forward. The abdominal muscles should be tight and breath should be normal.
Remember to consult your physician before beginning any exercise program. And to ensure a healthy liver, ADRLF reminds you to: Screen, Vaccinate, Educate, Don’t Hesitate!
For pre-yoga stretching, check out these warm-up exercises
For more liver-friendly moves, practice these yoga poses
For exercises you can do at work, try these office yoga moves
