BrainStuff Classics: Does Hot Yoga Need to Be So Hot?

Do students of hot yoga, who practice at 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), reap more health benefits than room-temperature practitioners? Learn what the research says in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, I'm more in vogue. Bomb in today's episode
is another classic from our archives. One of the things
that a lot of us are missing these days are
gyms and fitness classes unfettered by the social distancing rules
and masks that are keeping us all safer until we
can get vaccinated. But when it is safe to be

(00:24):
indoors again, is hot yoga one of the things that
we should get back to, or is regular temperature yoga
just as good. Hey there, brain Stuff, Lauren boga bomb here.
Some like their yoga hot a hundred and five degrees
fahrenheit or forty degrees celsius to be exact, but according
to a study published in the journal Experimental Physiology, heat

(00:46):
might have nothing to do with the style's health benefits.
Yoga is an ancient Indian practice. It dates back thousands
of years. As William J. Brad describes in the Science
of Yoga The Risks of Rewards, Its roots lay in
quote an obscure cult steeped in magic and eroticism, but
the practice has evolved over time, reaching the West in
the mid nineteenth century and exploding in America during the

(01:08):
nineteen sixties. Today, you'll find everything from spiritual yoga practices
that invoke Hindu traditions to secularized models that target everyone
from pro wrestling fans to death metal heads. And then
there's hot yoga, most notably Bickram Yoga, founded by Calcutta
born Bickram Chottery in the nineteen seventies. Bickram Yoga centers
around twenty six poses or asanas performed in a precisely

(01:30):
heated forty to six humidity studio for around ninety minutes
of sweaty action. The official Bickram Yoga website claims that
the heat helps you practice your postures optimally. But while
critics have previously raised concerns over elevated body temperatures, no
study has actually isolated the effects of heat in the practice.
That's according to the authors of the aforementioned study, carried

(01:52):
out at Texas State University and the University of Texas
at Austin. They brought in eighty study participants, ages forty
to sixty, all of whom had lived sedentary lifestyles for
at least six months following health screenings. They randomized the
participants into three groups. A thermonutral group, a heated group,
and a control group for twelve weeks. The heated group

(02:12):
attended three Bikram yoga classes a week in a traditional
hot room, while the thermonutral group attended the same number
of classes only under you guessed at room temperature conditions
that's seventy three degrees farenheit or about twenty three degrees celsius.
The control group did nothing. In the end, a fifty
of the eighty two subjects completed the interventions and returned
for follow up testing nineteen hot, fourteen thermo neutral, and

(02:36):
nineteen control. The researchers compared their findings and determined the
Bickram yoga can reduce changes in blood vessel lining linked
to heart disease, and that it can possibly delay the
buildup of arterial plaque, which can lead to heart attack
or stroke. But here's the kicker. The benefits were present
in both the heat and room temperature groups, indicating that
heated rooms that Bickram calls torture chambers don't actually make

(02:58):
a difference. That be said, many yoga practitioners do like
it hot and sweaty, even amid legal scandals surrounding its founder,
Big Room Yoga boasts studios around the world, and that's
in addition to various other non affiliated hot yoga styles.
If these latest findings hold true, however, that hot room
might be no more essential to the practice than an
iPod shuffle full of the traditional Kurton music or cannibal corpse,

(03:22):
take your pick. Today's episode was written by Robert Lamb
and produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more
on this and lots of other hot topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. Rain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(03:42):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.