Effects of Yoga Exercises on Diabetic Mellitus as Validated by Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Effects of practicing yoga in diabetic mellitus (DM) patients have been identified to improve in control of blood glucose levels. The purpose of this work is to evaluate changes in blood flow of calf muscles after specific yoga postures for patients with DM using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. Time of flight (TOF) magnetic resonance angiography maximum intensity projection (MIP), T₁ maps, T₂ maps, and diffusion-weighted Imaging are performed on volunteers and DM patients both pre- and post-exercise.

TOF MIP, T₁ maps with variable flip angles, and T2-weighted spin-echo imaging were performed on four volunteers (aged 30 ± 5) and DM patients (aged 32-68) preexercise, on a 1.5 T Siemens scanner. The total acquisition time was 6 min 20 s. Each volunteer and DM patient were then requested to perform yoga postures Supta Padangusthasana, Utkatasana, and Calf raise for 6 min 30 s at maximum effort, outside the scanner, and subsequently rescanned. To calculate significant signal increase, region of interests was drawn on TOF MIP coronal images in arteries of calf muscles. Student t-tests were performed to determine statistical significance.

Among volunteers, a significant signal increase in arteries of calf muscles was noticed, signal intensity graphs were plotted. In DM patients, signal increase in TOF MIP, T2-weighted images were seen in specific arteries (posterior, anterior tibial, and posterior tibial) of calf muscles postexercise.

The study indicates that yoga has a positive short-term effect on multiple DM-related foot complications. This study depicts that MRI provides potential insight into the benefits of yoga for DM patients through deriving biomarkers for preventive medicine relevant to yoga interception.