Biography
Biography: Aslıcan Çakkalkurt
Abstract
Yoga is a Hindu spiritual discipline which includes breath control, meditation, mindfulness and specific body postures. Besides its spiritual aspect, yoga has many beneficial effects on health and has the potential to be defined as a medical tool at the future. In the literature there are many studies and reviews which emphasize yoga’s effect and efficiency on mental health, physical fitness, cardiopulmonary conditions, metabolic, endocrine and musculoskeletal conditions and specific diseases such as epilepsy and cancer. Recently, the medical activity space of yoga has broadened with epigenetics. It is found that an 8 week yoga intervention, requiring at least weekly practice, is associated with some changes in immune protein and DNA methylation biomarkers. The yoga group demonstrated lower DNA methylation of the TNF region as a whole. DNA methylation, which is defined as the addition of methyl groups onto DNA, is an epigenetic mechanism that suppresses the expression of genes. Nowadays stress is often long term and pro-inflammatory gene expression can be persistent and has a great potential to cause physical and psychiatric health problems. So, today it is being mentioned explicitly that health benefits of yoga as a mind-body intervention begin at a molecular level and can change the reading of DNA. While refraining from dislodging this narrative, this paper centers upon the relationship between yoga and epigenetics. In this respect this article explores how yoga could change phenotype without any change in genotype.