Prince Charles says yoga for elderly can save 'expensive' NHS resources

Prince Charles has backed plans for more yoga across the UK to keep the elderly healthy for longer and out of hospital, in a bid to to save ‘precious and expensive’ NHS resources.

Yoga contributes to 'health and healing'

In a written opening address to delegates at the Yoga in Healthcare Conference, the Prince of Wales said: "For thousands of years, millions of people have experienced yoga's ability to improve their lives.

“The development of therapeutic, evidence-based yoga is, I believe, an excellent example of how yoga can contribute to health and healing.

"This not only benefits the individual, but also conserves precious and expensive health resources for others where and when they are most needed."

The 2019 Yoga in Healthcare Conference was hosted at London's University of Westminister.

Prince Charles is a long-term advocate of alternative medicine and therapies and his daughter-in-law Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex is a yoga enthusiast. The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation already funds yoga and meditation for prisoners to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.

Speaking at the conference, Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England spoke of extra money promised under the government’s NHS Long Term Plan to fund yoga classes.

The NHS plan, supported by £20.5bn funding, will include money for social prescribing – an initiative in which health professionals can prescribe non-medical activities including yoga.

Health secretary Matt Hancock announced in January the need to support a “growing elderly population to stay healthy and independent for longer” with “more social prescribing, empowering people to take greater control and responsibility over their own health through prevention”.

Mr Selbie told doctors and yoga practitioners at the conference: "The evidence is clear … yoga is an evidenced intervention and a strengthening activity that we know works."

Eases arthritis and the psychological distress

Yoga is believed to bring wide-ranging benefits such as increases in strength, flexibility, balance and quality of life and reductions in stress, anxiety and depression.

Yoga, including chair-based yoga, has been practiced in care homes and yoga studios across the UK. Residents at Bishopstown Court care home in Cork, Ireland, have even taken part in laughter yoga- a therapeutic alternative combining laughter exercises with yogic breathing for a complete wellness workout.

New research, published in the journal 'Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience', found an eight-week regime of intensive yoga eases both the physical symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and the psychological distress that usually accompanies the condition.

Academics from Northumbria University have begun a £1.4m four-year study exploring the impact of yoga on older people with multiple long-term health conditions. In the UK, two-thirds of people aged 65+ have multimorbidity - which is defined as having two or more long-term health conditions (such as diabetes and heart disease).

Treatments for long-term health conditions account for 70 per cent of NHS expenditure so researchers want to look at the effectiveness clinically and cost-wise of an adapted yoga programme for older adults with multimorbidity, to reduce reliance on medication.

The Yoga and Healthcare Alliance (YIHA), the College of Medicine and the University of Westminister collaborated to bridge the worlds of yoga and healthcare with the first ever Yoga in Healthcare Conference. The YIHA is working with the NHS to provide yoga to patients. Its Yoga4Health programme is a 10-week yoga course commissioned by the West London Clinical Commissioning Group, for patients registered at a GP in West London.

In a statement, the YIHA said: “There is significant robust evidence for yoga as an effective ‘mind-body’ medicine that can both prevent and manage chronic health issues and it also delivers significant cost savings to healthcare providers.”

107-year-old: 'I don't like hospitals'

In his written address, Prince Charles told delegates at the Conference: "I will watch the development of therapeutic yoga in the UK with great interest and very much look forward to hearing about the outcomes from your conference."

A 107-year-old yoga enthusiast Eileen Ash is living proof of the power of yoga and agrees with Prince Charles’ support for yoga.

She has been practising yoga for 30 years and the centegenarian has said she hasn’t had an operation in her life. Eileen Ash said: “I don’t like hospitals. If you go into hospital you come out worse than when you go in”.