Adding Yoga To Aerobic Physical Activity Guidelines Reduces Mortality Risk Compared To Meeting Guidelines Alone

PURPOSE: Research demonstrates the cardiometabolic benefits of yoga. Less is known about yoga’s association with mortality. This study examined associations of yoga participation and prospective all-cause mortality risk in the National Health Interview Survey. METHODS: Data for this study were from the 2007, 2012, and 2017. A subset of participants from each year were asked about their weekly aerobic physical activity participation in minutes/week and separately if they “practiced yoga in the past year” (yes/no). Participants were also followed up using the national death index through 2019 to determine their mortality status (n = 981 total deaths). Included participants were ≥ 18 years old, had eligible mortality follow-up, and answered the physical activity and yoga questions (N = 24,534). Participants were categorized based on their reported activity as INACTIVE: not meeting PA guidelines (<150 min/week of MVPA), ACTIVE: meeting PA guidelines but did not do yoga, and YOGA: meeting PA guidelines and did yoga. Survey weighted Cox proportional hazard models examined the risk for mortality during follow-up between the three groups with ACTIVE as the reference. Models were adjusted for total aerobic PA minutes, age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, smoking, and alcohol consumption. RESULTS: In unadjusted models, the YOGA group had 75% reduced risk of mortality compared to ACTIVE and the INACTIVE group had 300% increased risk for mortality (hazard ratios: 0.25 [95% CI = 0.17-0.35] and 3.00 [95% CI = 2.39-3.77] respectively). Similarly, within the fully adjusted models displayed in Figure 1, YOGA had 49% reduced risk for mortality and INACTIVE had 81% increased risk for mortality compared to ACTIVE (hazard ratios: 0.51 [95% CI = 0.35-0.73] and 1.81 [95% CI = 1.44-2.27] respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Yoga participation may provide additional and independent protective mortality benefits compared to meeting aerobic physical activity guidelines without yoga.