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award. The paper has been published in the Cambridge University proceedings. All these patients have now been completely normalized, after three to six months of practice. We have just completed an eight year follow-up of these anxiety neurotics. Since then hundreds of such people have come to us and have been almost rehabilitated, in the sense that they take no medicine and they have no symptoms of anxiety neurosis.
We have carried out extensive research into respiratory ailments. So far, we have treated nearly 50,000 asthmatics, people suffering from nasal allergy, emphysema, bronchitis, etc. In modern medical science the basic hyper non-specific reactivity of the bronchus is the root cause of bronchial asthma. It is this over-sensitivity which we have to handle with the total approach of yoga.
The first paper that we published was a 54 month followup, a control study, 'Yoga for Bronchial Asthma', in the British. Medical Journal in 1985. Here we showed that medication was reduced considerably, an 80% reduction in the 'yoga group', compared to a 20% increase in medication in the 'non-yoga group'. In a randomized control matched group study, two groups were studied. The first group was given yoga, the second group continued with its normal medication. We found that the yoga group reduced their medication and improved their status, which further is shown by the peak flow rates which improved by 25%, showing that the person has started becoming normalized. Now hundreds and thousands of people who have come to us have been completely normalized in their own place after the regular practice of yoga.
A detailed paper on asthma was published in The Journal of Asthma, United States, in which the data of 565 asthmatics was given in detail. So far eight papers have been published in various forms. Today we can claim after thirteen years of follow-up on 600 asthmatic patients that yes, yoga can cure bronchial asthma, because in the very same place the persons go without any symptoms for ten years. Only after ten years follow-up can we say, yes, a person can be cured. Until then we cannot say that yoga can cure, or that any other medicine can cure. That is the strict definition in the medical world.
We cannot say that yoga can cure heart attacks or hypertension, but the research has been really overwhelming and very significant. We know that ischemia is due to insufficient blood supply to heart muscles and, therefore, the heart starts
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