Can you cure diabetes through breathing?

March 7, 2006 10:25 AM

Can anyone tell me about/lead me to any legitimate sources concerning the effects of pranayama breathing techniques on diabetes?

I have recently heard claims that pranayama breathing techniques are not only effective in the control of diabetes, but can also cure the disease as well. My searches on the internets have only turned up natural/eastern medicine sites. I am looking for some solid Western-type medical studies and reports that can back this up. Any literature on the subject is appreciated.
I understand that pranayama is more than simple breathing exercise, and that a teacher and practice are both essential for success. So bonus points go to anyone who can point me in the direction of a pranayama teacher in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

posted by msali to Health & Fitness (17 answers total)

Try a Bikram Yoga Studio. They have pranayama breathing in every session, and in fact do the same series of yoga postures over an hour and a half in a heated room. http://www.bikramyoga.com/
posted by bilabial at 10:36 AM on March 7, 2006

The reason you are having trouble find solid Western medicine scientific studies to back up the idea that breathing techniques can cure diabetes is that such studies do not exist. Breathing techniques cannot cure diabetes. Can. Not.

Yogo/Meditation/Breathing techniques can help a person relax and such, and can be part of a lifestyle change that helps to combat diabetes. But there is simply no way that it can "cure" diabetes.
posted by Justinian at 10:38 AM on March 7, 2006

I'll second Justinian. I have a healthy respect for 'alternative medicine', afer all, if you told someone today that chewing tree bark would relieve pain they wouldn't believe you.

That being said, I've also seen 'alternative medicine' kill because someone believed in it so much that they stopped conventional treatment It was heartbreaking.

Try everything but don't give up on the proven.
posted by m@ at 10:52 AM on March 7, 2006

I have recently heard claims that pranayama breathing techniques are not only effective in the control of diabetes, but can also cure the disease as well.

Those claims are lies. Over 150 million people worldwide have diabetes. If such a technique could cure diabetes, the first person to publish a controlled, double-blind study proving it would win a Nobel Prize for Medicine. Ergo those people are full of fucking shit and ought to be tarred and feathered.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 10:56 AM on March 7, 2006

The reason these studies are hard to find is because the West is so skeptical of anything resembling mysticism that they've been slow to do the studies.

Some information from Yoga Joural about some of the research being done in India, and about the difficulty of getting real attention paid to it in the West.

This article talks about some of the studies being done in the West about tai chi and yoga and breathing. It mentions Ezra and Dina Amsterdam; he's a professor doing these studies, she's his daughter, a yoga teacher, and a Stanford student who's starting her own studies.

I've actually taken a class with Dina, and she seems very open and nice. It might be worth tracking her down (she teaches at Yoga Tree in San Francisco) and asking if she has other avenues for information.

But again, I think most of the studies are going to be coming out of India -- you wouldn't, for example, be expecting tons of info about the benefits of aerobics to be coming out of Bombay, would you? ;-)
posted by occhiblu at 11:04 AM on March 7, 2006

(I should mention, none of those articles I linked to deal exclusively with diabetes, though it's mentioned in the first one. They're more of a general "how do these practices affect health" approaches.)
posted by occhiblu at 11:05 AM on March 7, 2006

Listen, for both types of diabetes there's only a handful of treatements:

Type 1: You need insulin injections to live.
Type 2: Exercise and a managed diet, and even then you'll probably still need to take some form of insulin.

Yoga could fall into the second category, if you've got type 2 and you're doing it as a form of exercise to stay healthy, great. But it will only be a partial solution, at best. And it is most definitely NOT a cure.

Seriously, do NOT fuck around with treating this disease. I've known several people that have died from diabetes-related complications, and the saddest part was that it was preventable.
posted by Gamblor at 11:20 AM on March 7, 2006

Response by poster: I am as skeptical as everyone else. I agree that until a rigorous long term study is undertaken to insure the effectiveness and safety of breathing techniques to cure illnesses, it shouldn't be trusted as an alternative treatment to diabetes. That said, however, I recently heard tell of a western medical doctor make the claim that he was able to cure his own type 1 diabetes through pranayama breathing techniques. This is merely anecdotal, to be sure, but it was a DOCTOR who claimed it! Otherwise, I would have dismissed it completely out of hand.
posted by msali at 11:28 AM on March 7, 2006

Hmmm, even the Yoga Journal articles mentioned only Type II diabetes.
posted by occhiblu at 11:33 AM on March 7, 2006

msali: Doctors aren't infallible. Far from it. They're just people, like everybody else. You could find a doctor to put forward just about any absurd thing you care to name. But when the overwhelming majority agree about something, one should pay attention.
posted by Justinian at 11:40 AM on March 7, 2006

This site is pretty resourceful. You can join the group AYP_forum on Yahoo Groups and post a question that can be answered by hundreds of other yoga practitioners. Or there is this forum.
posted by mojabunni at 1:28 PM on March 7, 2006

As a Type II diabetic, I can tell you that in *my* case (sample size n=1) stress management is absolutely key to managing my blood glucose levels; more stress, worse control.

So: Yoga, meditation, prayer, singing in the shower, taking long walks with the dog, working out at the gym, whatever does it for you - integrate that into your life without a second thought. And exercise and eat right, dammit.

There *is* no cure for diabetes; it can only be managed, more or less successfully, over time. Anyone claiming a cure for diabetes is either deluded themselves or attempting to defraud you.
posted by enrevanche at 1:59 PM on March 7, 2006

Diabetes is a problem that yoga cannot cure. Practice yoga if it interests you, but don't expect it to help your diabetes directly. If it relaxes you or improves your general health, that, combined with normal medical treatment, may help you live with diabetes.

I think a bit like Optimus Chyme does in regards to claims like this: supposing it were true, what would the outcome be? Wouldn't the person who could prove that [yoga/copper bracelets/homeopathic substances/whatever] cures [diabetes/cancer/Alzheimer's/whatever] be famous and rich? (If I could fool some people into believing I can fly, I would be a cheap entertainer, but if I could prove to scientists that I can actually fly, I would be the most famous person on the planet.)

There is no lack of yoga proponents in the world. Many of them must be doctors and medical researchers. Many must also be, or be close to, diabetics, so there is no lack of incentive. Wouldn't one of them have noticed by now that diabetics who took up yoga were curing themselves? Wouldn't one of them have come forward with some solid evidence if this claim about yoga and diabetes were true?
posted by pracowity at 4:24 PM on March 7, 2006

It may be that breathing techniques do help with diabetes, as enrevanche says, less stress = less diabetic problems.

That said, I think most western doctors would be very skeptical that breathing could cure diabetes, and wouldn't waste their time trying to study it. In other words, studies don't exist (one way or the other) because people haven't bothered to study it.

The argument that it can't be true because if it was true, someone would be rich and famous is silly. I don't think anyone became rich and famous for discovering that antibiotics can help cure ulcers (something most western doctors didn't believe for a long time). You can't rich unless you come up with something you can patent, and most research biologists are not famous at all.

Despite all the medical research done, I cannot name a single research biologist with the exception of David Ho, who helped come up with the anti-HIV cocktail, who was the TIME man of the year a few years back.

I personally think it's very unlikely that breathing exercises can cure diabetes.
posted by delmoi at 5:32 PM on March 7, 2006

The argument that it can't be true because if it was true, someone would be rich and famous is silly. I don't think anyone became rich and famous for discovering that antibiotics can help cure ulcers (something most western doctors didn't believe for a long time).

This year's Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine made the remarkable and unexpected discovery that inflammation in the stomach (gastritis) as well as ulceration of the stomach or duodenum (peptic ulcer disease) is the result of an infection of the stomach caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 5:59 PM on March 7, 2006

If you have pre-Type II diabetic, and you are super-dilligent, you can keep yourself from becoming clinically classified as "diabetic" through diet, exercise, and medication. For instance, my grandfather's identical twin brother is diabetic. My grandfather exercises and eats well and manages his blood sugar, so his diabetes never kicked in.
posted by radioamy at 11:48 PM on March 7, 2006

Response by poster: I don't know if anyone is still reading this question, but I thought I would clear up the misconception that I am the one with diabetes. I am not a diabetic, it is my niece, a beautiful little girl, 18 months old. She was diagnosed in October with acute onset type I diabetes. Her mother (my sister) recently met a medical doctor who claims that he cured his own type I (insulin dependent) diabetes through pranayama. He didn't claim to have improved it, he claims to have CURED it. My sister is too smart to discontinue her daughter's insulin injections and commence breathing exercises. She is also smart enough to realize that alternatives may exist that fall outside the realm of accepted western medicine. I thank everyone for their answers and thoughtful consideration to this matter.
posted by msali at 7:23 AM on March 8, 2006