Guess what’s in your saliva! A lot of good stuff, that’s what. And it turns out that when we do our breathing techniques in yoga class, we are stimulating saliva production.
We know this thanks to the research of Dr. Sundar Balasubramian.
Dr. Balasubramanian is a pioneer in the area of research combining Pranayama (yogic breathing) with salivary biomarkers. He discovered that Yogic breathing promotes salivary secretion and it contains factors that are important to our healthy living. The components stimulated in the saliva include:
- nerve growth factor that helps our nerve cells (good for Alzheimer patients)
- immunoglobulins that are important for keeping immune system strong
- tumor suppressors that have the capacity to prevent cells from becoming cancerous
- and factors that reduce stress and inflammation
These findings are first of its kind, and provide novel insights into bridging ancient wisdom of Yoga and modern biology.
Dr. Balasubramanian is a Cell Biology researcher and founder of PranaScience Institute. He is currently studying mechanisms involved in resistance to cancer therapy at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). He is also a Yoga Biology researcher.
Dr. Balasubramania’s research work is mentioned in this New York Times article. You can also listen to him explain his work in this TED talk or go to his website.
And of course, with all this inspiration (Latin for breathing in!), we’ll be focusing on our breathing techniques in class this week!
(This post is adapted from Dr. Balasubramania’s website).
