What Is Wrong With Hot Yoga? Is Hot Yoga Actually Bad For Your Body?

I want you to envision yourself standing outside on a typical street corner in Phoenix Arizona in the middle of July. As you visualize yourself standing in the heat, imagine how you feel. Imagine the sun hitting your skin, imagine your body temperature rising as the sun greets you. Now imagine time passing, 10 minutes pass, now 30 minutes, after 90 minutes in this intense heat, imagine how your body feels, your clothes are probably drenched in sweat, you probably feel drained and want to sit down, and you absolutely are in need of hydration. If you've ever been to Arizona in July this probably won't be that hard for you to envision. The temperatures in the summer heat here are brutal, and they can drain and sap your body of energy even if you are just standing still. 

We get asked quite frequently why we don't offer hot yoga at the studio, and want to take a minute to share our opinion.  

Biologically: 


The American Council on Exercise conducted a study which raised concerns about hot yoga's effects on the body. This study was conducted on students who were both healthy and regularly practiced Bikram yoga, and during a 90 minute class core body temperatures  regularly reached 103°F. The study noted that" The National Athletic Trainer’s Association (NATA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) both state that exertion-related heat illness and heat stroke can occur at a core temperature of 104° F." It is important to note that this study was done on regularly practicing, healthy adults, and being a first time student or having any health concerns could potentially increase the potential for harm. Pregnant women and people with diabetes or any sort of cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure, should avoid hot yoga, according to recommendations from ACE and Canadian health groups. In fact, according to AZ Central "At Bikram teacher trainings, a medical tent is set up to aid those who vomit, pass out, have seizures or otherwise suffer from heatstroke and dehydration." 

If Heatstroke, dehydration, and passing out don't seem like serious concerns to you maybe this will. The biggest risk from hot yoga may very well be over-stretching injuries. The heat in a hot yoga room allows your muscles to stretch more, but more no matter what the Nike ads say, more is unequivocally not equal to better.  You can seriously damage yourself if you stretch too much. According to Dr. Sonja Stilp, over stretching in hot yoga can cause serious injury to the "hamstrings, knees and lower back" Scientifically there is a huge difference between muscular flexibility and joint flexibility. The reason for this is because your ligaments are in place to stabilize the joints. When you are in a heated environment, your blood flow increases making you feel like you are more flexible then you really are. Going deep into yoga poses in an unheated studio may feel more difficult, because your joints give you signals when you've reached your safe stoppage point, when the room is heated, you may not feel that stoppage point and you may surpass your safe zone and injury yourself.  The more often you stretch your ligaments past their safe stopping point, the higher your risk for tearing a ligament, or stretching your ligaments to the point where they can no longer support your joints. If you've ever rolled your ankle, you've stretched your ankle ligaments past their safe stopping point, and you've probably noticed that your ankle is less stable, it can stay that way for weeks, years or sometimes permanently depending on how seriously and how often you rolled your ankle. Its this same over stretching of the ligaments that can happen in hot yoga. It’s important to understand that when ligaments stretch out they can stay that way, and cause joint instability permanently.


Philosophically:

Yoga is the opposite of an Arizona summer, yoga is about cultivating energy, and harnessing your "prana" so you can refill your body with the energy that life, and the Arizona heat can drain from you. Yoga is not about extremes, but quite the opposite, yoga is about finding balance at the center. On the grand scale, extremes are actually easy, balance requires the cultivation of practice and focus. Putting your body into extreme conditions drains your body of energy, when you should be seeking yoga as an opportunity to refill it.     

Weight Loss:

This is one of the most interesting selling points of hot yoga, in a hot yoga studio you feel like you’re working really hard, your body is sweating because your body is doing everything it can to cool itself. But does sweat translate into burning fat or losing weight? Let's be honest, if being in a hot place was all you needed to burn fat, Arizona probably wouldn't have a square inch of unused real-estate and we'd probably notice how thin our bodies were getting each time we sat down on our blazing hot car seats. While sweating in a hot yoga studio can make you think you’re killing it in terms of shedding fat tissue and burning calories according to Dr. Brian L. Tracy, an exercise scientist at Colorado State University, this is not so, Dr. Tracy notes, "If you’ve spent time reading about (hot yoga) online, you might assume you’d be shedding up to 1,000 calories per session, but that’s not the case.” He says. His research shows men burn an average of 460 calories, while women work off about 330 in a 90 minute class. So what! Calories are calories, and they aren't a great measurement tool, what about all that sweat doesn't sweat translate to fat burning? Dr. Cedric Bryant, chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise said: 'The benefits (of hot yoga) are largely perceptual. For some reason Dr. Bryant notes "People think the degree of sweat is equal to the quality of the workout, but that's not reality." In fact evidence suggests that Bikram, and other types of hot yoga, are no better for you than normal yoga, and worse, for hot yoga's many fans who believe it helps them lose weight, it doesn't burn any more fat than yoga in a traditional room. 

Ok sure maybe I'm not burning extra fat, but sweating is good for me because I'm releasing toxins from my body right? Well, this is not 100% true. When we sweat most of what we are sweating out is water (99%), there are other chemicals that make up sweat including salt, potassium, ammonia, and urea. In reality physician Dr. Charles Smith, states "Sweat is not made up of toxins from your body, and the belief that sweat can cleanse the body is a myth you cannot sweat toxins out of the body,” Dr. Smith says. “Toxins such as mercury, alcohol and most drugs are eliminated by your liver, intestines or kidneys.” True toxin elimination comes from the kidneys and liver, and some from the colon which all actually need water to function. Doing a ninety-minute hot yoga session and sweating to death is not really releasing toxins, you really are just dehydrating yourself and losing water weight.

Conclusion:

In the end we agree with Dr. Karen Sherman, Ph.D., MPH, a researcher on alternative approaches to health at Group Health Research Institute when she says “I do not recommend that people seeking yoga for health use hot yoga,” Dr. Sherman believes there is an additional risk from the heat in super-hot yoga, and there is no evidence of benefits in hot yoga that don’t exist in conventional yoga.