By Gretchen Reynolds
oga offers some obvi-
ous benefits: stress
reduction, muscular
flexibility, an
enhanced sense of
well-being, even cute
clothes. But does it qualify as
an aerobic workout?
Aerobic activity, characterized by an elevated heart rate
and increase in the body’s use
of oxygen, is closely linked to
improved health and prolonged
life spans; current guidelines
suggest that people get at least
150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise each week. Scant
research has examined whether
yoga is exercise under those
guidelines, though. Now two
new studies in Complementary
Therapies in Medicine indicate
that it can be, at least if it’s
done rapidly.
The practice of yoga in
America typically consists of
bodily poses interspersed with
or followed by breathing exercises and meditation. The most
famous movements are incorporated into the sun salutation,
a series of poses that includes
the downward-facing dog,
among others. These are usually performed near the start of
yoga classes and can be among
their most physically
demanding segments.
Yet according to a
2016 review of
yoga research,
the energy
expended by
those who
move slowly
during sun salutations generally
compares to the demands of a
stroll at three miles per hour.
(This was the case for both
standard yoga and the poses
used in Bikram-style hot yoga.)
Exercise scientists at the
University of Miami wondered
whether less-languid yoga
would be more aerobically beneficial. They outfitted 22
healthy adult male and female
volunteers with masks and sensors that measured energy
expenditure and muscular
activity and had them complete
as many sun salutations as possible in eight minutes while
taking either 12 seconds to hold
and flow from pose to pose or
three seconds. (The subjects
had experience doing yoga.)
Not surprisingly, doing yoga
faster required greater effort
and burned far more calories:
about 48 calories on average
during the eight-minute ses-
sions, compared with 29 calo-
ries while doing the standard
salutations. But the researchers
were intrigued to find that
most of this exertion took place
in between poses rather than
during the poses themselves.
The salutations, particu-
larly when done three
times as fast, functioned
as intense interval train-
ing, says Joseph Signorile,
a professor at the
University of Miami and
the senior
author of the
studies.
Transitioning from
pose to pose was
similar to sprint-
ing, he says,
while the poses
allowed for brief
recovery. Eight
minutes of almost
any type of high-
intensity interval
training qualifies
as an aerobic work-
out. Of course,
most yoga classes
are not structured as
this experiment was.
Those seeking physi-
cal exertion should
look for classes billed
as “power” yoga,
according to Melanie
Potiaumpai, who led
both studies as a doc-
toral candidate in Dr.
Signorile’s lab.
Dr. Signorile
acknowledges yoga’s
nonaerobic virtues.
“We’re not saying that
you should ignore the
meditative side,” he says.
The guided contemplation
of body and self provides
significant psychological
benefits. But the energy
expended to achieve those
gains is about the same that
you would spend taking a
nap.
— The New York TImes
Y
INDIA ABROAD February 24, 2017 33 HEALTH
INDIAABROAD.COM
Eight minutes
of almost
any type of
high-intensity
interval
training
qualifies as
an aerobic
workout
Two new studies in
Complementary
Therapies in
Medicine indicate
that it can be,
at least if it’s done
Does Yoga Qualify
as an Aerobic
Workout?
hotel to hire fewer people.
Bart Selman, a Cornell professor of computer science and artificial intelligence who studies
how technology affects the
workplace, said a service that
scans all social media postings to
develop a “sentiment report”
showing how customers feel
about a hotel brand, for example, has replaced people who do
that kind of monitoring.
These types of services are
also getting better at discerning
the meaning of customer mes-
sages and
posts on
social
media, and
can respond
to them
appropriate-
ly, so fewer
people are
needed for
that task.
“There
are definitely jobs that we
thought we couldn’t automate
five years ago that we are
automating now, using tech-
nologies like natural language
processing and voice recogni-
tion,” he said.
“A lot of the motivation is
cost driven. So if companies can
get away with using a technolo-
gy, they will do it more and
more.”
Digital keys on phones could,
in turn, be replaced with hall-
way cameras and facial recogni-
tion software to unlock guest
room doors, he said.
Technology, of course, will
not eliminate the human touch
completely.
A new Skift.com report on
travelers and the travel industry
found that meaningful personal
experiences are more likely than
efficient transactions to lead to
customer loyalty.
“The travel brands should
strive to understand how the
experiences they provide make
travelers feel,” the report said.
“High tech has become the
norm,” said Albert Herrera, senior vice president for global
product partnerships at
Virtuoso, a company whose
website connects travelers with
luxury travel advisers. “Hotels
need to embrace it and manage
it, but not forget why they are
there.”
“Sometimes,” he added,
“there’s no substitute for a real
person who delivers their
expertise.”
— The New York TImes
senting former employees of
Walt Disney Co., Abbott
Laboratories and other com-
panies in discrimination
claims pertaining to tech-job
outsourcing.
Some economists are skeptical about the claimed lack of
qualified workers, especially
an oft-cited 500,000 open
positions in technology that
cannot be filled.
“I’m sure employers might
not have as much choice as
they would like, but if the
shortage story were true, we’d
see wages rising more rapidly
than they are,” said Dean
Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and
Policy Research in
Washington. There is substantial unemployment, Baker
said, even among workers in
so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and
math) fields.
Lawrence F. Katz, a prominent labor economist at
Harvard, said companies like
the H-1B visa program
because it expands the pool of
applicants. That means having to pay less in salary and
retaining more control over
employees.
“From the point of view of
an economist, there are two
big winners,” he added. “The
workers who come here with
H-1B visas and the companies
that employ them.”
While it remains to be seen
what Trump will do, various
members of Congress have
proposed measures to change
the H-1B system. One idea is
to raise the minimum salary
of an H-1B worker to $100,000
or more from the current
$60,000 minimum. The hope
is that this will narrow the gap
between the standard pay for
an American tech worker and
that of a foreign worker.
Another proposed measure
is to change the current first-
come, first-served lottery sys-
tem that is benefiting out-
sourcing firms. Yet another
idea is for a salary bidding
system, in which companies
bid on what they would be
willing to pay an applicant,
potentially making it more
difficult to flood the applicant
pool with lower-cost workers.
— The New York TImes
Not
Everyone in
Tech Cheers
Visa Program
for Foreign
Workers
Continued from page 22
Hoteliers
Comb the
Ranks of Tech
Workers to
Gain an Edge
Continued from page 32