Sareeta is a 40 year old female. She is recently diagnosed with Diabetes. Apart from diet changes, her Dr asked her to change her lifestyle. She saw videos of yoga guru on line and started doing yoga with out any proper training or guidance. In few weeks she started complaining of back pain and knee pain. She met with me last week. I examined her and found that she was doing excessive exercises and I advised her to stopped all these wrong exercises. She is feeling better after some rest and medicines.
Yoga is best gift from india to the world. Yoga can take care of your life style problems like Diabetes, hypertension, anxiety , depression and back pain. But it should be done in proper manner and in guidance of an expert. Ideally yoga should be started at early age. Your body is more flexible so that you can trained your muscles in a better way. As we grow older muscles and bones also ages.
If you are at 40 plus, you already have weak back muscles and painful knee. If you do extreme yoga exercises without proper preparation you can damage your back and knee. I have seen people come to me after yoga sessions with pain in back and knees. They say that though they are feeling better in mind, their body is hurting like anything.
Many patient at 40 plus age has weak bones and deficiency of calcium, vitamin D and B12. In such cases if muscles damage take place than your body take long time in healing. Some time it can be weeks. So my suggestions is before doing yoga or any gym first get your self checked with your orthopedic doctor.
If your Dr permits you than only you start doing exercises. Avoid excessive forward bending or sitting on floor . It can damage back muscles and knee cartilage. Take proper doses of calcium and vitamin D and B12. So that your muscles recover early. If you are already having knee pain or back pain I would suggest you to avoid yoga at home and meet an orthopedic dr.